Residents of the West Bank Palestinian town of Yatma, 15km south of Nablus, reported on Tuesday, August 13, an apparent “price tag” hate crime in which in tires of several cars were punctured and the slogan “Jews don’t remain silent” followed by a Star of David was spray-painted on a building during the course of the previous night.
The Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din confirmed the residents’ account, saying the phrase was scrawled by settlers on a building near the entrance of the town. The defaced building serves as offices for the commercial mobile network operator Jawwal.
A threat spray-painted in red “Jews don’t remain silent” defaces the entrance gate to a building in the occupied West Bank town of Yatma, 15km south of Nablus, August 13, 2019. The building serves as offices to Jawwal, identified by its logo to the right, a major Palestinian-owned cellular communications company. (Photo: Al-Ittihad)
Hadash MK and Joint List candidate Ofer Cassif called the incident “an act of terror aimed at threatening the town’s residents and sowing fear.” Cassif added, “When the prime minister tries to interfere with Arabs voting at the polls, the message is clear – the ‘price tag’ is the continuation of the government’s policy by other means.”
Last month, Police said they were investigating a possible hate crime in the Arab town of Jisr az-Zarqa, along the Mediterranean coast just north of Caesarea, after the tires of 21 cars were pierced and a house was sprayed with graffiti saying, “The hill in Izhar, we won’t forget and won’t forgive.”
On the same day, death threats were sprayed in Tel Aviv outside the offices of Amnesty International Israel and ASSAF, an organization working to assist refugees and people seeking asylum in Israel. Concurrently, a box containing death threats and a dead mouse was left in front of the entrance to the Elifelet Children’s Activity Center for African refugees. On the same evening, Hadash MKs Aida Touma-Slima and Cassif paid a solidarity visit to the offices of Amnesty, ASSAF and Elifelet.
On Sunday, July 28, settlers damaged several trucks and spray-painted racist hate messages such as “Death to Arabs” in the central Arab town of Kufr Qassem. Some of the trucks had their tires slashed and others had their windshields smashed, police reported. Xenophobic and chauvinistic graffiti on the vehicles and on adjacent walls of homes included the slogans “End assimilation,” “Racism or assimilation,” and “The people of Israel lives!”
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