In latest hate crimes, 2 West Bank villages find cars graffitied, tires slashed

Tires were slashed and Hebrew-language slogans were found spray-painted on the walls of two Palestinian villages in the West Bank Monday morning, upping the tally of apparent hate crimes in the past week to seven.

Israel Police reported the first instance to have taken place in Ramun, east of Ramallah, where the phrases “Let us take care of them” and “We’ll take our fate into our own hands” were graffitied on cars as well as a fence surrounding a home.

A number of vehicles also had their tires slashed, a statement from police said.

A second instance took place in Beit Iksa, northwest of Jerusalem, where photos from the Yesh Din rights group showed homes spray-painted with the Hebrew-phrases “Fight the enemy, not your loved ones” and “Administrative revenge.”

The latter slogan referenced the dozens of administrative orders issued by police in response to hate-crimes, largely carried out by young, far-right settlers.

Administrative orders, when used to prevent settler violence, can include detention, bans from entering the entire West Bank, and bans on contacting certain individuals, as well as nightly curfews.

Administrative detention is also widely used against Palestinians and has been criticized by many rights groups as it allows Israel to hold detainees for long periods of time without trial, access to a lawyer or information on accusations against them.

Monday’s two instances in Ramun and Beit Iksa joined five other occurrences reported in the Palestinian villages of Burqa, Burin, Urif, As-Sawiya and Luban a-Sharqiya.

Attacks have included the chopping down of dozens of olive trees, stones thrown through the windows of homes and cars and graffiti calling for the explicit murder of Arabs.

A police spokeswoman said that authorities were still looking into the apparent hate crime in Beit Iksa, and that forces were preparing to enter Ramun to investigate the crime there.

Yesh Din slammed the “incompetence” of authorities to make a single arrest in any of the instances over the past week.

“The incompetence of law enforcement has provided a tailwind for ideological crimes against Palestinians who suffer from almost daily violence aimed at dispossessing them of their land,” the left-wing NGO said in a Monday statement.

Earlier this month, arsonists torched a mosque in the northern West Bank village of Aqraba before dawn. Footage captured by a security camera at the entrance to the mosque showed a pair of assailants setting the door of the building ablaze. Their faces were covered throughout the clip.

[mappress mapid=”6344″]

Messages of “death,” “revenge” and “price tag” were found graffitied on the walls of the Sa’ada Mosque in the small Palestinian town of several hundred residents.

“Price tag” refers to vandalism and other hate crimes carried out by Jewish ultra-nationalists ostensibly in retaliation for Palestinian violence or government policies perceived as hostile to the settler movement. Mosques, churches, dovish Israeli groups and even Israeli military bases have been targeted by far-right vandals in recent years.

On Sunday, the Shin Bet security service released statistics showing far-right extremists’ hate crimes against Palestinians have increased significantly since the beginning of 2018.

Through the first four months of the current calendar year, the Shin Bet documented 13 “price tag” attacks (not including Monday’s instances). This contrasts with only eight such incidents in the entirety of 2017.

Attacks characterized as “at least as serious as arson” are also on pace to eclipse those from last last year. So far in 2018, two such attacks have been carried out; while in 2017, the final tally was five, the Shin Bet said.