it sounds like the worst kind of antisemitic polemics, but in this case it's straight outta the BBC's mouth. and not only that, it seems par for the course for current politics. remember the right-wing israeli attempt to storm the Noble Sanctuary the other week? as the news article notes, "The Jerusalem compound, housing the 1300-year-old al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques, is Islam's third holiest site." and the jewliban, angry at the government's decision to (mostly) remove them from the gaza strip and illegal settlements in palestine, decided the best recourse was to threaten it. apparently, they weren't kidding when the gazaistas insisted they wouldn't stop their protests there.
Amnesty: West Bank farms poisonedpoisoning wells and poisoning the lands. "if we can't have it, no one can."
BBC, 25 April 2004Amnesty International has called on Israel to investigate the deliberate contamination of Palestinian farmland - allegedly by Jewish settlers. The human rights group said that toxic chemicals had been spread on fields in the Hebron region of the West Bank.
Farm animals had died and farmers had been forced to quarantine their flocks, the organisation said. It also demanded that Israel put an end to "increasingly frequent" attacks on Palestinians by West Bank settlers.
"These poisoning incidents appear to be part of a deliberate attack on the livelihood of Palestinian farmers in the West Bank," said Kate Allen of Amnesty International UK. "The Israeli authorities should mount a full investigation and bring the perpetrators to justice."
Rat Poison
The chemicals were spread on fields near the villages of Tuwani, Um Faggara and Kharruba in March and April, the group said. Sheep, gazelle and other animals have been contaminated by the chemicals, and farmers livelihoods had been affected, the organisation said.
According to Amnesty, Israeli and Palestinian scientists who analysed the chemicals spread on the fields found two types of rat poison - one of which is banned in Israel. Amnesty says that the Israeli authorities have made no attempt to remove the chemicals safely from the fields or to investigate the poisonings.
The villages affected are in a part of the West Bank that is under Israeli military control. Palestinian security services are forbidden by Israel from operating there. Palestinians also complain of violent intimidation by Jewish settlers in the Hebron area.
In July 2004, Israeli police said they suspected Jewish settlers were responsible for poisoning a Palestinian well in the same area.
2 comments:
isn't there something in the old testament about how some invader "salted the earth" to destroy the land's potential for agriculture? i seem to remember something like that and as i recall, the bible wasn't exactly approving of the practice.
with so many fundamentalist settlers, i wonder what they think of doing the modern equivalent now
with good land in short supply over there, one wonders if they are just screwing themselves over.
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