I received this morning an urgent appeal about the growing anti-Palestinian violence in the West Bank, from my friend, Yigal Bronner, and David Shulman, both Israeli Indologists, translators and peace activists. Major points below…
Dear friends and whoever else is listening!
We are writing this with very heavy hearts and an acute sense of mourning and loss, exactly a week since the terrible terrorist attack perpetrated by the Hamas started on October 7.
So many innocent lives lost, wounded, still missing, or held hostages. We know some of them personally. This violence must stop, as must the brutal and indiscriminate killing of civilians in Gaza, where millions innocents are bombed and trapped without shelter and basic needs.
Please write, shout, and raise your voices to help bring this nightmare to an end before it gets much worse.
Indeed, there is more bad news from elsewhere that you must also know.
There is now a wave of desperate calls for help from many Palestinian communities all over the West Bank. These communities have for the past years suffered increased harassment from armed gangs, based in the settler outposts, who with violence, threats…
and constant acts of them, especially of land, have made life for Palestinians unbearable. A few communities have already been forced to abandon their homes and escape to safety.
Since October 7, the settlers, with the complete support of the army and police, have been on a violent rampage, shooting innocent Palestinians point blank (as in the village of a-Tuwani and Qusra), invading their homes, beating up men, women, and children, destroying property…
The trickle of evacuations is becoming a flood (Al Qanoob, Wad-i-Sik, families from Al-Mhabas and Samra, are just a few examples from the last 4 days). We are facing an acute danger of vast proportions—an irreversible disaster.
So when you call upon your leaders to stop the attacks on civilians and immediately release the hostages, please tell them to also heed these calls for help and demand that the Israeli government stop settler attacks in the West Bank immediately.
