'Potential ethnic cleansing’: Ex-IDF pilot accuses Israel’s extremist ministers of enabling violent settler attacks

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00:00We can now bring into the conversation Guy Poran, former Israeli Air Force pilot and current member

00:04of the Mislakim Organization, an Israeli civic organization founded in 2021, made up of Israeli

00:10citizens concerned with human rights and opposed to the occupation of Palestinian territories.

00:15He speaks to us from Tel Aviv. Thank you so much for joining us, Guy. We have reports from the

00:20United Nations. 260 settler attacks in the month of October alone, 126 since the start of the olive

00:28harvesting season. That is a huge amount. Absolutely. Every year during the harvest of the

00:36olive harvest, there have been attacks, but never so many and so violent as this year. Now, while the

00:45number of incidents, as you indicated, have increased significantly, the number since Minister

00:54Benkvir has taken office, the number of investigations into these violent activities has dropped 73%

01:04and the indictment are negligible. So when you combine these two, one cannot understand it in any other

01:15way that the government, the current government, is encouraging this kind of behavior by the violent

01:25settlers. This is part of what they see as a potential ethnic cleansing. Now, the fact that the government

01:35is encouraging it has been clear to every Israeli. But the amazing thing, the incredible, is that the army

01:44forces and the regional police that are supposed to take care of the security of both the Jewish

01:51settlers and the Palestinians have not, and these security forces are very quick and efficient

02:00to search and locate and arrest every Palestinian youngster who throws a stone, are completely incapable

02:11or actually unwilling to do anything about stopping the violence of the settlers.

02:17Let me just give you a statistic there. There's less than 4% of the settlers prosecuted, according

02:23to Watch Dogs. And just this last week, a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old were killed in the West Bank,

02:30as you say, being targeted by the Israeli forces. You understand the directives given to IDF soldiers.

02:38What do you think they are being told by the government officials right now?

02:44Well, the situation is pretty complicated because formally you hear ministers and you hear army generals

02:53and the chief of staff condemning the violence of the settlers and committing to the fact that the armed forces

03:01will do everything within their power to stop. But the reality on the ground is not so.

03:10Many of the local commanders that are there are associated with, some of them are even living

03:17in some of those settlements over there. And every day we see here pictures and videos

03:24of incidents where soldiers and police forces are standing by, and in some cases even helping out

03:35those violent settlers. So there is a big difference between the official position of the Israeli government

03:42and the underground encouragement of some of the extreme ministers that are not even ashamed and shy

03:53to say that. They are claiming all sorts of, you know, that actually the violence is also by the Palestinians

04:02and that most of the settlers are okay and it's only but a very, very minor group that is acting violently.

04:11Everybody in Israel knows that this is not the case.

04:16That's a point that I really want to touch on because this minority framing by the likes of

04:23Bezeles Matrich, Itmar Ben-Givir, is that being bought by anyone in the Israeli public

04:28or is this being condemned from the inside?

04:33It is being condemned. I think that only those people very close to this ideology, the settlers,

04:41are using this kind of argumentation. Nobody believes it because every day on the Israeli media you see

04:51and you hear about the attacks on innocent Palestinians by hundreds, by groups of many, many, many settlers

04:59putting on fire cars and buildings and ship pans. Everybody sees it. So I don't think that any normal Israeli

05:13believes this kind of propaganda.

05:16Gaiporan, thank you so much on that final note coming to us there from Tel Aviv, a former IDF pilot,

05:22but currently a member of the civil organization against the occupation of Palestinian territories.

05:28That's Mr. Klim.

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