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Official PA daily op-ed: Israeli "settlers" are "criminals, mass murderers, obsessed with bloodshed, wild unbridled foreigners... devoid of the elements of human nature" who "dance on the bodies" of Palestinians

Excerpt of an op-ed by Muwaffaq Matar, a Fatah Revolutionary Council member and regular columnist for the official PA daily

Headline: "The settlers are sacrificing the Palestinians' blood as a sacrifice to Netanyahu"
    "Criminals, mass murderers, obsessed with bloodshed, wild unbridled foreigners, but also directed - these are the settlers, the colonialists, the pawns of the racist regime in Tel Aviv.
[They are] criminals who are being activated by a remote control with dual controls - one in the hands of the heads of the occupation army, and the second in the hands of the heads of the coalition of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's government. Both of them are trying to inflict a heavy toll on the Palestinian citizens by means of groups of people devoid of the elements of human nature, who have no connection to the civilized societies other than [their] human form...
Netanyahu and [Israeli Minister of Defense Avigdor] Liberman are using the settlers in order to terrify the Palestinian residents. They give them the opportunity to choose the means and tools to commit the crime - even if they are taken from the period of wild human societies, such as burning children and families alive, as happened to the Jerusalem child Muhammad Abu Khdeir (i.e., Palestinian teenager murdered by Israeli extremists) and the Dawabshe family (three members of the family died when their house was set on fire; Israeli extremists are suspected of having set the fire -Ed.), or killing in the way of people from the Stone Age, such as in the crime of the murder of Aisha Al-Rabi (Palestinian woman killed when rocks were thrown at her car. It remains unclear whether her murderers were Israeli/Jews or Arabs, see note below -Ed.)...
The crime was committed within sight and hearing of the Israeli occupation's soldiers and officers at the checkpoint of summary executions, which is called the Tapuach checkpoint...
Did not one of them - whether their rank was general or private - ask themselves if the Palestinian victim has another sibling, other than her Martyr (Shahid) brother, who might think to avenge her death? [...]
The Netanyahu government's ministers and its army's commanders know that most of the young people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip... think that those who sit behind the barbed wire fence or behind the settlement wall, and those that are entrenched in a military bunker and armed with the most modern killing technology, are the ones occupying and oppressing... So how do they not understand that these young people will continue to invent 1,001 means until they achieve their freedom?
It may be that many of these same young people do not believe in our outlook - we the adults, who believe in peaceful popular resistance. Their boiling blood, their erupting emotions, and their nerves prevent them from thinking rationally when they see their sisters, mothers, and brothers wallowing in their own blood while the settlers dance on their bodies and the soldiers drag them mercilessly, or leave the wounded to bleed until their hearts stop.
The occupiers and the settlers are criminals. They have gone beyond the natural bounds of wild animals, which kill only when they are hungry... while they kill only to satisfy their desires. According to their belief, by murdering Palestinians they are carrying out religious ceremonies, and through the sacrifices they are drawing nearer to their great God - Netanyahu."
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Muhammad Abu Khdeir - Palestinian teen kidnapped and murdered by Israeli extremists in Jerusalem on July 2, 2014, in revenge for the kidnapping and murder of Israeli teens Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaar and Naftali Fraenkel in the West Bank on June 12. Following Abu Khdeir's murder, Palestinians took to the streets of East Jerusalem in violent and continuous protests. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli ministers immediately condemned the revenge murder in the strongest terms. Israeli police arrested six Israeli suspects on July 6 of whom three confessed to murdering Khdeir. One of the murderers, Yosef Ben-David, is serving 1 life sentence and an additional 20 years. His two accomplices, both unnamed minors, are serving 1 life sentence and 21 years respectively.

Duma arson attack - On July 31, 2015, two Palestinian houses in the West Bank village of Duma were set afire by Molotov cocktails thrown through their windows. 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh was murdered in this attack, as was his father, Saad Dawabsheh and mother, Reham Dawabsheh, who both died of their injuries later. The only survivor of the attack was the couple's other son, 4-year-old Ahmad, who suffered burns on 60% of his body and was treated in Israel. Israeli leaders and citizens from all sectors of society condemned this attack, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas that all Israelis were disgusted by the crime, adding, "We will not countenance terrorism of any kind." He ordered the security forces "to use all means at their disposal to apprehend the murderers and bring them to justice forthwith." Israeli Police has treated the attack as a nationalistic crime carried out by Jewish extremists in revenge for Palestinian terror attacks. In early December 2015, Israeli police arrested several Jewish extremists who were believed to have been involved in the attack, and in January 2016, Israel indicted 21-year-old Amiram Ben Uliel, a member of the radical Jewish group "Hilltop Youth," with three counts of murder, attempted murder, arson and conspiracy to commit a nationalistically-motivated crime. Ben Uliel confessed to police that he carried out the attack in revenge for the murder of Malachi Rosenfeld, an Israeli who was shot and murdered in a terror attack in the West Bank. Ben Uliel's defense has claimed that his confession was made under torture and suspicions have been raised that the arson and three other subsequent arson attacks against other Dawabshe family members are part of a family feud. The trial of Ben Uliel and a minor whose name remains under a police gag order are still pending.

Aisha Al-Rabi - 48-year-old Palestinian woman who was killed when rocks were thrown at her car on Oct. 12, 2018, at Tapuach Junction near Nablus. Palestinians claim Israelis/Jews committed the attack, but it remains unclear whether Israelis/Jews or Palestinians threw the rocks and the matter is still under investigation as of Nov. 5, 2018.

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