An Israeli lawyer who lives in an illegal settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has told the BBC that all the Palestinians living in villages around his settlement, the Havat Gilad outpost, should be killed, and said that one Jewish life is worth 10 million Palestinian lives.
Yehuda Shimon made the comments in reference to a security guard from the outpost who was killed during a settler attack on Tal, a nearby Palestinian village. Four Palestinians and one other Israeli were killed during the confrontation, which came as settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is at an all-time high.
“I think now after they kill one Israeli people, we need to kill all the people in Tal and Sarra, even Jit and Farata,” he said. “Why? Because we don’t want it to happen again.”
The BBC reporter, Lucy Williamson, said it sounded like Shimon was saying one Jewish life was worth thousands of Palestinian lives. “[No], million,” Shimon responded. “One Jewish life, it’s ten million, ok?”
Williamson said Shimon sounded racist, to which he answered in the affirmative, claiming Jews had the biblical right to the land. “Yes, I know, I know. But this is the truth. Because God choose us. Because of this, you are jealous,” he said.
The idea that Jews have the God-given right to the West Bank is shared by US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, a Christian Zionist, who said earlier this year that Israel had the right to all of the land between the Euphrates and Nile rivers, sparking a diplomatic incident.
