Police investigating apparent hate crime in Palestinian village

Police on Wednesday opened an investigation into an apparent hate crime targeting the central West Bank Palestinian village of Deir Jarir.

Residents found dozens of grapevines and fruit trees uprooted and several Hebrew phrases daubed on adjacent stones along with a red Star of David in the village north of Ramallah.

The phrases included “regards from Kfar Etzion,” referring to a settlement targeted by vandalism last month, and “price tag,” the phrase used to describe vandalism and other hate crimes usually carried out by Jewish ultra-nationalists in retaliation for government policies against the settler movement.

Earlier this week police opened a probe into a suspected hate crime targeting a Palestinian section of a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem, where residents woke up Monday to discover 12 vehicles had been vandalized.

The tires of 12 cars belonging to Palestinians in Pisgat Ze’ev were slashed. One vehicle’s window was smashed and another was graffitied with the Hebrew phrase “Jewish blood is not cheap, Jews wake up.” On a wall near another one of the targeted cars, the Hebrew phrase “Jews do not sleep when God’s name is desecrated” was daubed in black spray-paint.

Last month, vandals slashed tires of vehicles and sprayed graffiti on walls in the West Bank village of Battir, south of Jerusalem. Among the cars that had their tires punctured was one that was daubed with the Hebrew phrase “We don’t rest while our brothers are being murdered.”

In December, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released a report that showed a 69 percent increase in settler attacks on Palestinians in 2018 compared to 2017.