Harvesting Olives or Land? Settler Violence, US Impunity
Armed settlers assaulting farmers in Ein Yabrud isn't random malice; it's a feature, not a bug, of an occupation strategy (dating back to at least 1967, if not 1948). These aren't just 'attacks'; they are incremental land grabs, plain and simple, designed to make Palestinian life untenable and facilitate further settlement expansion. The UN's own Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
(OCHA) has extensively documented this pattern for decades—over 3,200 settler attacks in the West Bank since 2006. So, when mainstream reports call it mere 'harassment,' one might wonder if they're simply omitting the context of state-sanctioned ethnic cleansing. While Palestinian farmers lose their livelihoods, the US provides weapons and diplomatic cover, ensuring these land seizures face no
meaningful international consequence. Our tax dollars, funneled through military aid and unquestioning UN vetoes, are not just passive observers but active enablers of this systematic dispossession. Perhaps we should call it 'agricultural aid with extra dismemberment.'