Haaretz on Israeli Settlers: How Mean Can you Be?

Israeli settlers in the West Bank have shot Palestinians, stolen their land, stolen their water, chased them out of their homes, put their own orchards off limits, and generally been about as mean as you could be short of an actual concerted war. They have also lobbied successfully to keep Palestinians stateless, about the closest the modern world comes to large-scale slavery.

And now the big colonies have convinced Prime Minister Olmert just to unilaterally steal the Palestinians' land on which the colonists are squatting!

But when you push little children into thorn bushes, somehow that is more eloquent than all the other things I just said. It reminds me of the jeers and jostling engaged in by American whites when the first southern black students walked on to previously segregated campuses.

'Palestinians: Settlers once more assault schoolchildren

By Michal Greenberg, Haaretz Correspondent

Palestinian schoolchildren from the West Bank village of Umm Tubba were assaulted Sunday morning by settlers who approached them from a community called Ma'on ranch, Palestinians said.

The children who were making their way to school were escorted by Israel Defense Forces soldiers, but the escort did not prevent the assault.

The children said a woman pushed two of them unto thorn bushes at the side of the road.

The IDF [Israeli army] has been escorting the Palestinian children to school daily due to the intensified assaults by settlers.

On Sunday three soldiers and an army jeep escorted the children, but the Palestinians say that the soldiers did nothing to stop the settlers from assaulting the children.'