Officer: Tree-cutting borders on terror

Scathing attack:

"Jews who have made a habit of uprooting Palestinian olive trees in the West Bank pose a greater danger to the Jewish people than terror acts, a senior IDF official told Ynet Thursday.

"Those who are uprooting the Palestinians' trees are a subversive group…bordering on terrorism. This is a group of very, very extreme people, and there is nothing I would like more than to capture them," he said.

"I am speaking both as an officer and as a Jew. With the estimations pointing to a Jew as the person behind these acts (tree-cutting,) I am not relaxed," he said.

The senior officer added that "some of the radical phenomena emerging among those extremists endanger us as a people more than nationalistic sabotage (terror) activity."

The issue of extremist Jewish teenagers in the West Bank must be viewed as a national problem, the army official warned."


http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3199606,00.html

Trees take a while to come back.

Maybe Israel isn't a genocidal apartheid state after all?

radical extremists who will & have done everything to stop peace & negotiation. I have no time for either extreme. They are both hate-mongers.

They are soulless eating machines and they want our honey.

And our picnic baskets.

And the hermaphrodite polar bears want to recruit our children.

an Israeli PM. A decade ago. Mosad thinks so.

:sarcasm:

And welcome to my ignore list.

They have no right to settle land that is not theirs.

Some folks took great offense, and twisted my words to mean something entirely different. Uprooting these trees is an attack on people, and therefore to be condemned as an attack on civilians... the definition of terror.

It is clear such actions are a threat to everyone. I do not understand why some would downplay it, unless their agenda includes disregarding the lives of the people of the Middle East.

In all seriousness, it sounds like there is more to it than just simple vandalism.

And for the record, it is The Israeli Defense Force (that alleged instrument of genocidal apartheid) condemning this action on behalf of the poor, innocent, defenseless Palestinians.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/668697.html
It's not the olive trees By Amira Hass

The shock, however, is selective. The Israel Defense Forces has uprooted thousands of olive and fruit trees, cultivated lands and greenhouses, and continues to do so - in order to secure the roads it uses and to increase visibility for soldiers; to build watchtowers, checkpoints and the separation fence; and in order to pave more and more roads and construct security fences around the settlements.

In the village of Qafeen alone, for example, 12,600 olive trees were uprooted for the separation fence. Thousands more trees - perhaps tens of thousands - and thousands more acres of the West Bank are trapped behind the walls and fences and buffer zones surrounding the settlements. In Qafeen alone, 100,000 trees are imprisoned behind the fence, and throughout most of the year their owners are prevented from reaching them. All they can do is gaze on the neglect from afar. The reason given is "security," of course, but for some reason security always ends up with the effective plundering of more Palestinian land for the benefit of the neighboring settlement, or in order to widen and blur the Green Line and the annexation of the land to Israel.

Trees have also been taken and sold.
"Palestinian olive trees sold to rich Israelis "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/20...
Israel's Defence Ministry is investigating reports that Palestinian olive trees uprooted to make way for a security fence are being sold illegally to rich Israelis and town councils, sometimes for thousands of pounds each.

The illegal trade in olive trees has flourished as Israeli contractors, supported by armed guards, clear Palestinian agricultural land where an 80-mile electronic fence is being built to seal off the West Bank.

Thousands of olive trees have been dug up to make way for the 150-ft wide barrier and security zone. Its route usually passes inside Palestinian territory, not along the old pre-1967 border, and thousands of Palestinian farmers say their livelihood is being taken away.

Sale of the olive trees emerged after the owner of a contracting company offered two reporters from a popular Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, 100 large olive trees for £150 each.
*****************
Again, I think to downplay this crime is to disregard the lives of everyone in the Middle East.

People in America may not generally think of olive trees as something one needs in order to survive.

Olives are something the airlines stopped putting on salads to save $300 million a year, and gosh darn it, we were mad!

Try reading this thread for more info:
Shin Bet: IDF did nothing to stop settlers uprooting olive trees

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=124&topic_id=111158&mesg_id=111158

So these trees not only represent an important income/food source for the immediate future, cutting them down leaves the farmers destitute for years to come.

Older tress are larger and produce more crop. Century-old olive trees are just hitting their stride. There are living olive trees over a thousand years old, and they are cherished as cultural treasures in almost every society where olives have traditionally been grown. This is destruction of an exceptionally mean, base and wasteful sort.

brought this to the attention of the public. As a result there has been such a public outcry against those committing these cruel acts, that the government had to call a meeting to see how to deal with the situation. The IDF was instructed by the government to investigate the crimes, which it had not done previously.

The IDF didn't take action without prodding; there had to be orders from above in order to finally get them to do their job.

But you are correct in one thing. It is the responsibility of Israel, as the occupying power, to protect innocent, defenseless Palestinian farmers. (You don't think all Palestinians are terrorists, do you?)

I know. That's why I posted this. :thumbsup:

to punish farmers for siding with the Resistance.

for recruitment. Recruiting for the resistance that is.

Planted well before the chimp was welped.

so there was no recored of a time before their own rule. Made it harder for people to conceive of their not having "always been there". Maybe ** has a similar contempt for the past.