Episode notes
Right, so while Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to make settler violence disappear as fast as possible because the consequences of it are clear to see, an inconvenient truth for him as that is in the eyes of the world, and notably here as the latest attacks see a Palestinian family in Salfit burying Mashhour Shaher Yassin, who was 51 and whom Palestinian officials say settlers shot dead in Yasuf.
And as the olive harvest begins, farmers across the West Bank are reporting attacks, stolen crops and being shut out of land their families have worked for generations.
That is why Netanyahu’s settler claims right now have disintegrated as hard as they have.
It is a family burying a man. It is farmers losing the one harvest they rely on. It is the same pressure and oppression and racism showing up across different villages, all with the same effect: Palestinian life on the land becomes harder, poorer and more dangerous.
Olives are food, income and inheritance. Drive a farmer away at harvest time and you don’t just steal a crop. You tell that family their future on that land can be stolen too.
Netanyahu is heading towards an election while Israel’s image is being battered by evidence he can’t make disappear nor dismiss out of hand, and his answer to all of it is about to make the whole thing so much worse for him and for Israel, because his answer is not that this isn’t happening.
His answer is that it doesn’t mean anything.
That it is not settlers. Not a system. Not a political problem he owns.
Just a few bad boys.
The West Bank's hottest new youth club: BYOG-bring your own gun, leave your conscience at home. That’s who is to blame apparently.