Israeli settlers forcibly captured 25 apartments in seven buildings in the Silwan neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem today, smashing in the locks on the buildings and changing the locks before locking themselves in and demanding a police presence to defend them.
The settlers claimed to have bought the apartments, but one local, whose family owns three of the apartments, denied they had sold them. Lawyers Mohammed Dahla promised to contest the takeovers in court.
That’s an uphill battle, as questionable purchases are often upheld by Israeli courts on the grounds that some of the Palestinian owners are residents of “enemy countries.”
Settlers groups are bragging about the expansion of settlement into East Jerusalem, saying that this is the biggest influx they’ve seen in years. The groups, bankrolled by hawkish foreign donors, often hire private security forces to back up claims of property purchases, and to pressure neighboring Palestinians to leave the area.
when you move out on to a grassy hill side, that is someone else's property but is at least for the moment undeveloped and you build a house and live in it and claim the property as your own, i will let you get away with calling your self a "settler" but when you walk in to an apartment building and kick out the tenants and move in yourself you are just a plain thief.
Any nation in which this is done is either without laws or it's laws are per se criminal. It is time for leaders of the civilized world to get on the phone and tell Bibi these thieves are out in 12 hours, and we do not care about your "legal system", or your banks here are closed down, no landing rights for El Al, your Jewish students here are immediately deported, etc. A people that puts itself beyond the Pale belong there.
The scales of justice will eventually be reversed…it is inevitable. I was going to say the scales would be leveled, but I don't think they will "level" until after the complete reversal has had time to satisfy a bloodlust of a generation of people stomped down and humiliated by their oppressors.
Relatedly, there is news that the ebola virus is spreading.
I never can understand why these thieves are called "settlers". What are they settling? Old scores? Imaginary grievances? There's certainly no Old West frontier there to "settle" (if that's what you want to call what was done to western North America). So, why do they get the name "settler" instead of "thief" or "rounder" or "robber"?
If Palestinians barge into a Jewish neighborhood and kick the people out and steal their homes, are they also called "settlers"?
It is so easy for Zionists to recruit for their case. Just promise to some self-proclaimed Jewish people in poor Ukraine or Belarus or Russia free apartment or even a house and you have immediately a hard core Zionist.