Yaalon: Targeting IDF Hurts Israel’s Settlements

HANDS OFF THE IDF – BELMAN

Strategic Affairs chief Moshe Yaalon said last night’s attack on the Ephraim Brigade by angry Jewish youth hurts the settlements.
By Gavriel Queenann, INN

Minister of Strategic Affairs and former IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon on Tuesday told Army Radio that angry youth who target IDF soldiers and materials are hurting Israel’s settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria.

“The settlement heads are also hurt by these outlaws,” Yaalon said. “They are also threatened. They are also victims.”

“This shoots the country in the foot – and the settlements,” he added. “We are not against the settlements.”

Yaalon’s comments were made during an interview about last night’s raid on the Eprhaim Brigade headquarters in Samaria by some 50 angry Jewish youths who had heard rumors demolition orders against Jewish outposts were to be carried out. During the raid, which saw clashes with soldiers, tires were burned and Molotov cocktails and stones were thrown. Soldiers had to call for police reinforcements to regain control of the compound.

In a separate incident, the Ephrain Brigade commander was injured when stones were hurled at his vehicle.

However, while Yaalon praised settlement leaders for denouncing the attacks, he placed the onus for dealing with the phenomenon clearly on the shoulders of the police and prosecutors.

“Their condemnation is right, but they are not the police, not the prosecution, and not the courts,” Yaalon said. “The authorities are the ones who must act with more determination against last night’s rioters at the Eprhaim Regional Brigade headquarters.”

“You need to arrest them, to bring them in for questioning, and to prosecute them,” Yaalon explained. “Not just those few rioters who have been arrested so far. All of them.”

Yaalon’s interview was given shortly after a special cabinet session convened by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was held to discuss the Ephraim Brigade incident. During the meeting Netanyahu called on senior security officials to draw up an ‘Emergency Plan’ for dealing with violence against soldiers in Judea and Samaria.

Like Yaalon, Netanyahu sought to make a distinction between the actions of those who staged the attack and the Jewish mainstream in Judea and Samaria.

“There is a very small core that speaks of ideological unlawful acts. There is no such thing. It is just unlawful,” Netanyahu said.

“This is something small that could become something large and bad. We will stop it now,” Netanyahu said.

Condemnation of the incident has been widespread among the heads of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria who described it as “shameful and disgraceful.”