A far-right Israeli lawmaker took a sledgehammer to a Palestinian memorial in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, with army escorts standing nearby. Video showed Zvi Sukkot, a Religious Zionism member of the Knesset, and several others striking the stone monument in Madama, south of Nablus. “This is something we cannot leave standing here, because any place that glorifies terrorism, we must remove it,” he said on the footage. He posted that he had asked the military to take the monuments down in Madama and Burin, they were still there, “so I went there myself.”
Rami Nasar, head of Madama’s village council, told the BBC the memorial went up in 2008 to remember Palestinians killed in the 1968 battle of Karameh and in the first and second intifadas. He told AFP it also includes names up to the present. The Israel Defense Forces said it had approved a “tour” of monuments for Sukkot and diverted soldiers from operational duties to protect him. Then, it said, he and his aides “acted deceptively and manipulatively, without authorisation,” and started demolishing the Madama memorial. Soldiers reported it, commanders told them to stop, and the group was “quickly escorted out of the village.” The military called it a misuse of its protection and said it views the episode “with the utmost severity.” Nasar rejected that account, telling Haaretz via Middle East Eye that soldiers stood by.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office condemned the method, not the target. “The IDF is the sovereign authority in Judea and Samaria,” the statement said, using the biblical term for the West Bank. “Taking the law into one’s own hands, especially when it involves public figures, is a reprehensible practice that prevents the IDF from focusing on its missions of combating terrorism and incitement to violence.” Gadi Eisenkot, Netanyahu’s main rival ahead of the October 27 election, called Sukkot’s behavior “a disgrace” and said the prime minister was “allowing anarchists like Zvi Sukkot and his ilk to do whatever they please.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who leads Sukkot’s party, aimed his fire at the opposition for rushing to condemn Sukkot “rather than terrorism itself.”
The temperature in the West Bank was already high. Israeli media reported Monday that Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, the senior officer there, told Netanyahu in a closed meeting that mounting settler violence could ignite a major escalation. Madama itself has been hit by settler attacks. The army, even as it scolded Sukkot, said it regularly destroys “memorials and symbols of incitement” when the paperwork is in order. Sukkot called the sledgehammer “a small taste.”
Sources: BBC; Agence France-Presse via The Straits Times; The Jerusalem Post; Middle East Eye.
