Jewish Voice for Peace expresses outrage and sadness over attack on bus in Arab Israeli town.

Added: (Sat Aug 06 2005)

Pressbox (Press Release) - Contact: Mitchell Plitnick, cell: 510-484-6472, office 510-465-1777
Jewish Voice for Peace expresses outrage and sadness over attack on bus in Arab Israeli town.
Demands right-wing groups end incitement to violence.

Friday August 5, 2005 (Oakland, CA) - American peace group Jewish Voice for Peace expressed its sadness and outrage at the murder of four Palestinian citizens of Israel by an AWOL Israeli soldier. The attack also injured 12 other innocents on a bus in the Arab town of Shfaram in Israel. The soldier, Edan Natan-Zada, who was killed by enraged residents of Shfaram, was apparently a member of the radical group, Kach, which calls for the expulsion of Arabs from Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. He had deserted the army about one month ago, in opposition to the planned Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip.

"This attack was the direct result of the extremist rhetoric and ideology of the settler movement,” said Mitchell Plitnick, JVP’s co-director. "The killer was a 19-year old soldier, who had recently moved to a West Bank settlement and apparently came under the sway of so-called ‘religious Jews’ who preach a doctrine of hatred and of valuing Jewish life above others. This atrocity is the result of the same ideology that inspired Baruch Goldstein over a decade ago and led to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. It is high time that Jews everywhere took a firm stand against the preachers of hate in our own community.”

On February 25, 1994, Dr. Baruch Goldstein of the Kiryat Arba settlement near Hebron, killed 29 Muslim worshippers at Friday prayers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. On November 4, 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was killed by a fanatical law student named Yigal Amir at a peace rally in Tel Aviv. Natan-Zada, Plitnick said, was inspired by the same ideologues that inspired Goldstein and Amir.

“These preachers of hate are the inevitable result of the settlement ideology, which claims the West Bank and Gaza Strip without the slightest thought to the needs of non-Jews. World Jewry must stand up and say enough is enough. The settlements breed killers among both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. Only with their removal and with the clear and honest move by Israel toward being a state where all of its citizens have full and equal rights will horrors like yesterday’s be ended.”

Jewish Voice for Peace is a national grassroots organization dedicated to promoting a US foreign policy in the Middle East based on democracy, human rights and respect for international law. JVP is a voice for the silent majority of American Jews who polls consistently show support a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. For information about the conflict and expert sources go to www.JewishVoiceforPeace.org.
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