West Bank Olives Under Attack by Masked Men, Not 'Conflict'
Al-Monitor covers the brutal assault on Afaf Abu Alia, 55, during the olive harvest in Turmus Ayya, West Bank, by 'masked men' identified as settlers. What this framing often fails to highlight is that these attacks are not random acts of individual malice; they are part of a systematic, decades-long effort to displace Palestinians and seize their land, openly encouraged by various Israeli
government policies. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has documented hundreds of such settler attacks annually, often with complicity or inaction from Israeli security forces. This 'harvest season brings new settler attacks' narrative, while factually correct, normalizes the abnormal. It's like saying 'winter brings new snowfall' when what you mean is 'the
government actively funds snowplows to dump snow on your doorstep.' The violence, property destruction, and intimidation are tools of dispossession, not mere agricultural disputes. And while the US State Department issues its standard 'deeply concerned' statements, the annual $3.8 billion in unconditional military aid to Israel continues, providing the blanket of security under which such
'incidents' repeatedly occur. How many beatings before we call it what it is: state-backed ethnic cleansing?