Nov. 3 (UPI) — Israeli firms flattened Gaza homes while Jewish extremists in the West Bank stole Palestinian crops, earning condemnations of ethnic cleansing from civil rights groups as Benjamin Netanyahu’s war continued Sunday.
A video uploaded by the worker of one Israeli company, obtained and published by Al Jazeera, purportedly shows Israeli companies bulldozing homes in Rafah, Gaza. The video was condemned Sunday by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a U.S.-based rights group.
CAIR blasted Israeli fighters for its “campaign of extermination, forced starvation and ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians.
“Our government has the ability and legal duty to stop this genocide, regardless of President Biden’s remarkable indifference to human suffering and steadfast subservience to a genocidal foreign government,” Nihad Awad, the organization’s executive director, said in a statement.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, a group of Jewish extremists accompanied by Israeli fighters attacked the village of al-Mughayer, northeast of Ramallah, targeting olive harvests owned by local farmers, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
Palestinian officials tracked at least 360 attacks against Arab olive farmers in the West Bank last month, marking what they called a “significant surge in violence.”
Jewish extremists, considered illegal settlers under international law, are known to carry out violence against Arabs in the Palestinian enclave. In June, gangs of Israeli settlers attacked athletes at a soccer stadium, hurled rocks at cars in Ramallah and set fire to land near Duma.
The Israeli Defense Forces claimed Sunday that it detained an “Iranian terror network operative” in Syria named Ali Soleiman al-Assi, releasing a video purporting to show him being interrogated by Israeli authorities.
Al-Assi, a Syrian citizen, was accused of gathering intelligence on IDF troops in the border area for what Israeli officials called a “future terror activity of the network.”
Middle East Spectator, the independent Telegram news channel that first reported about a major leak of U.S. intelligence on Israel’s planned strike against Iran, has reported that Al-Assi was allegedly a simple farmer “asked by anonymous bypassers to ‘keep an eye on the border’ due to the strategic location of his farm.”
And after Israel allegedly captured a naval commander for Hezbollah, a major political party in the country that maintains its own militia, the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission known as UNIFIL has denied it was involved in helping with his alleged capture.
“UNIFIL has not been involved in facilitating any kidnapping or other violation of Lebanese sovereignty,” the mission said in a statement on Telegram. “Disinformation and false rumors are irresponsible and put peacekeepers at risk.”
The naval commander has been named as Imad Amhaz, who was allegedly kidnapped in a raid carried out by the Israeli Navy’s Shayatet 13 commando unit, which Lebanese officials have suggested could violate a peacekeeping resolution from the U.N. Security Council.
