The Council of Communities in Yehuda and Shomron met in an urgent session to discuss the alarming increase in verbal attacks by lawmakers and civil servants against residents of the yishuvim.

As has become an annual event, anti-settler sentiments run high during the period of Yitzchak Rabin’s yahrzeit, usually accompanying state memorials and events marking the English and Hebrew dates of his assassination – supported in no small part by the mainstream media.

This year, the anti-settler sentiment is unusually high, with cabinet ministers and members of Knesset calling for a hard-hand against settlers, seemingly grouping the overwhelming number of law-abiding residents of Yehuda and Shomron in a collective law-breaker category.

There has been an alarming increase in the use of administrative orders against settlers, depriving them of a basic right to defend themselves in a court of law, resulting in the eviction of some from their homes and others being incarcerated without being charged with any crime.

Council head Danny Dayan has sent an urgent letter to President Shimon Peres, asking for his assistance as well as a meeting in the immediate future in the hope of taking action to reverse the current trend.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)