Jewish extremists boast of attacks against Palestinians in public WhatsApp channel

A public WhatsApp channel run by Jewish extremists posted a message in the group on Thursday boasting of how many attacks had been carried out against Palestinian civilians and their property in the West Bank over the course of the Hebrew month of Tishrei, which ended on October 22.

The channel called Anshei Shlomeinu, or “Our People,” posted a list of Palestinian villages which had been attacked by Jewish extremists, the number of times they had been attacked, and had a rundown of how many vehicles had been burned, homes set on fire and the number of “Arabs” injured.

“Happy New Month! An overview of the struggle against the Arab enemy in the Holy Land in the month of Tishrei,” the post starts.

It said that 33 vehicles belonging to Palestinians were burnt during the course of the month, 12 homes were set on fire and 25 Palestinians injured during extremist settler attacks.

The post also boasts that “thousands of olive trees were uprooted,” the tires of dozens of vehicles were punctured, hundreds of vehicle windscreens were smashed, and dozens of fields and orchards were set on fire.

Among the villages that the post said had been attacked were Surif, south of the Gush Etzion region, which was attacked six times; al-Mughayyir, north of Ramallah, five times; and Turmus Ayya close to the Shilo settlement, five times.

The post was accompanied by a montage of video footage from the last month of Jewish extremists attacking Palestinians and burning or vandalizing Palestinian property, including from a brutal incident in Turmus Ayya last week in which a masked extremist was videoed bludgeoning a 52-year-old woman around the head while she was harvesting olives.

In two incidents over the last five weeks, arson and vandalism attacks were carried out against Palestinian property and were accompanied by graffiti on nearby walls, apparently declaring that the attacks were perpetrated by the Anshei Shlomeinu group.

Just this past Friday, several vehicles were set ablaze in the village of Deir Dibwan close to Ramallah, and the words “Greetings from Anshei Shlomeinu” and “revenge” were spray-painted on one of the walls of the homes in the village along with a Star of David.

And on September 19 in the village of Ramun, which is just a seven-kilometer (4.3-mile) drive from Deir Dibwan, a vehicle was set ablaze and the words “Greetings from Anshei Shlomeinu” were spray-painted on a nearby wall.

Most of the posts in the Anshei Shlomeinu channel do not directly take responsibility for attacks, but record that “Arabs are reporting” attacks by Jews in the West Bank, and post video footage of the incidents.

In one post about the Friday attack on Deir Dibwan, the group uploaded security camera footage originally posted by an Arabic-language WhatsApp channel in which four people can be seen setting fire to a car. The caption accompanying the post read: “Footage of the true soldiers of God working tonight in the Deir Dibwan village.”

The Yesh Din organization, which campaigns against settler violence and which first drew attention to Anshei Shlomeinu’s monthly review post, denounced not only the group but also the police’s failure to tackle what has become now become a rampant phenomenon of Jewish extremist attacks against Palestinian civilians living in rural parts of the West Bank.

“The policies of the Ben Gvir police are expressed not just in the increase in number and severity of violent incidents and injury to Palestinians by settlers, but also by the fact that they are not afraid to take pride in these crimes in public,” the organization said.

“The violent settlers know that they will not be put on trial and their sense of impunity exposes defenseless Palestinians to further terrorist violence.”

A spokesperson for the Judea and Samaria District police covering the West Bank did not immediately respond to a request for comment.