JERUSALEM (JTA) — Cars were set alight in an Arab-Israeli town and in a West Bank town, part of a rash of so-called price tag attacks against Arab citizens of Israel and Palestinians over the last month.
The latest incidents came early Wednesday. In one between the Arab villages of Iksal and Daburiyya, located in northern Israel, graffiti was spray-painted in Hebrew on a stone wall that read “Jews, let’s win.” In the Palestinian town of Dir Amar, near Ramallah in the central West Bank, spray-painted graffiti in Hebrew read “We will take our fate in our hands.”
Last week, “Arabs out” was spray-painted on the wall of a mosque in the northern Israeli city of Umm al-Fahm and the door of the mosque was burned. At the end of March, anti-Arab graffiti was spray-painted in the central Israel city of Jaljuliya and 20 cars were vandalized. Among the slogans used in the vandalism was “Arab criminal.” Graffiti sprayed in recent weeks in eastern Jerusalem included “Stop administrative orders” and “Administrative price tag,” as well as “Deport or kill.”
On Tuesday evening, dozens of protesters demonstrated against such attacks by right-wing extremist Jews in front of the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem. The protest was organized by the Tag Meir organization. The NGO’s name is a play on the Hebrew word for price tag, or “tag mechir.” Meir means “he who illuminates.”
On Sunday, the Israeli Security Agency, or Shin Bet, released a report showing a leap in the number of attacks by Jewish extremists against Palestinians in the West Bank since the beginning of the year. The report indicated that there had been 15 such incidents, a number that has since increased to 18.
