West Bank – Extremist Jews ripped off branches and cut the roots of Palestinian olive trees in the West Bank village of Burin, residents said Saturday, as the yearly harvest of the important crop begins.
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The attack came at the beginning of the 45-day Palestinian olive harvest. It’s traditionally a time of heightened violence, as a minority of extremist Jews tries to provoke Palestinians.
Some two dozen men from a nearby Jewish settlement damaged the trees in Burin after they tried to attack Palestinians bulldozing an access road to their fields, said Bilal Eid, who witnessed the incident.
“The settlers began cutting the trees, trying to kill the roots. They are trying to scare us,” Eid said. The damage could kill the trees, which were meant to be harvested this week, he said.
A military spokeswoman said Israeli forces ordered the Jewish intruders to leave.
Spokespeople for Jewish settlers did not respond to telephone calls, most likely because it would violate Sabbath rules of work.
The olives are a staple of Palestinian cooking, used for food and oil. Palestinians are sensitive about any damage done to their trees, which can live for hundreds of years. The olive tree is also viewed as a symbol of the Palestinians determination to remain in their homeland.
Collectively, Palestinians own about 15 million olive trees, according to Salah al-Baba of the Palestinian Agricultural Ministry.
Underscoring the trees importance, the prime ministers of the rival Palestinian governments both turned up Saturday to be photographed picking the fruit.
Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, donned a baseball cap as he plucked green olives. His rival, Salam Fayyad, wrapped a traditional peasant’s scarf around his head and climbed a ladder to pick olives in the West Bank village of Iraq Burin — about three kilometers from the similar-sounding Burin village.
I understand that its issure to harm fruit bearing trees in eretz. no?
Doesn’t the Torah forbid destruction of fruit trees?
OK, not the smartest form of retaliation for decades of attacks & abuse from the Arabs, but still! Let’s put it in perspective.
They moan about a few olive trees when they deliberately destroyed all the orchards, factories & whole towns given to them after we left Gaza??? Stop whining, get over it & be glad they were trees that were destroyed, not people. Like you do to us.
how fast we forget how in the past years these arabs destryoed many olive trees belong to the jewish people.
Every year it’s the same, same. The Arabs accuse the Jews of messing with their olive trees and the media just accepts it, without any evidence or proof.
Hopefully the IDF or the security forces will go in a bulldoze some of the fields and fruit trees of these fanatical settlers and manybe that will teach them a lesson. These idiots seem to want to provoke violence so perhaps the best way to squash them would be to treat them with their own medicine.
Sham on them!! Why starting again with the arabs? They will fight back all the way, & when it will ba an attack u will cry they are rotzcim
#7
spoken like a true kapo
Every year the arabian colonists make up these stories and kapo liberals accept it as truth, yet no settler would do this on Shabbat. One would think that the arabs would at least be smart enough to fake crimes on days other than Shabbat
It occurs to me now that they both deserve each other.
#7 ,
I can’t believe you are advocating something expressly forbidden by the Torah on a frum site.
what the hell, people?
faanatics
To Charlie Hall
What is forbidden by daas torah which says “an eye for an eye” (ayin tachas ayin) etc. The behaivor of these settlers is a bushah and risks the lives of other peacefule settlers and all Israelis. Why not punish them in the only langauge they seem to understand??
made up story? reread the article
A military spokeswoman said Israeli forces ordered the Jewish intruders to leave.
unless they know that this particular farmer is involved in terrorism it is wrong. You cannot punish someone even an Arab for the sins of another Arab
How can so many of you believe such incredible lies about our own people?
Aren’t you ashamed?
Who wrote this pile of trash?
#7 and #14 ,
Really?!?! What do you know?!?! For almost 8 years I have lived in yehuda, shomron and aza.
Firstly the arabs need no excuses to kill us, they just use it to pass blame and paint it that they were provoked.
#2, the arabs provoke me all the time and sometimes I wana beat the s*#
out of them but you don’t see me doing it right?
#3 the olive harvest draws a swarm of radical leftist anarchists resembling badar meinhof etc… YES they DO stage these vandalism’s which have been proven dozens of times.
#4 the article is from the ap, as far as I’m concerned the onion is more accurate.
#5 the arabs use the olive harvest to attack and kill jews.
Oh and number 14, there’s 67 jews waiting in shamayim for some blood for blood in chevron eh?
#16 seems to have it right.its all a lie.how easy it is for you guys to decide the settlers are guilty on the word of the arabs.without proof.shame on you.it’s well known arab families fight like angry pigs between themselve and take all sorts of revenge methods like the destroying of property.if your looking for faults among your own kind i’d suggest number one.your own hats on fire.
“Palestinians are sensitive about any damage done to their trees, which can live for hundreds of years”
Maybe they should be sensitive about human being lives too, women, and children, who can live more than a hundred years, before they blow up restaurants and cafes with innocent civilians in them
But at least they are sensitive about the trees (ehhhemmm….which can live hundreds of years)
nekama is also a sin!! We also have to look to the future and there will be no future if Jews behave like this. We are better than they are. The settlers there should know better!! They are only asking for more problems on fields that are Jewish owned!! Then what??