More disheartening news out of Palestine and Israel today:
A group of Jewish settlers have attacked five international workers, including members of two church-sponsored monitoring teams, who were escorting Palestinian girls from a school in the divided West Bank city of Hebron.
Shouting "We will kill you!," some 15 young Jewish settlers threw stones and kicked the foreign activists, who sustained minor injuries, mostly bruises, according to a spokesperson for the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI).
"They were escorting girls from a school which is directly opposite the Tel Rumeida Jewish settlement. The monitors take the schoolgirls to and from school each day," said EAPPI spokesperson Gemma Abbs. "They (the settlers) were waiting for them to come out of the school when the incident happened."
Abbs said about 15 young men disembarked from a bus at the settlement and immediately began stoning the fleeing monitors. "They threw stones at their backs as they tried to run away."
The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), an initiative of the World Council of Churches in agreement with the Heads of Churches in Jerusalem, identified its two accompaniers as Karin Laier from Germany and Tore Ottesen from Norway.
Three other activists working with the International Solidarity Movement and Christian Peacemaker Teams also were among those attacked, witnesses said. Among them was a 79-year-old woman who was kicked by the mob, Gemma Abbs added.
Click here for the full story.
Is there an answer that will end the on-going violence and bloodshed?
There are groups and individuals in Israel working for peace in opposition to the dominant political forces. Groups like B'Tselem focus on human rights for both Jews and Palestinians. Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center works to bring one Christian perspective to the crisis through the eyes of Palestinian Christians. We must support those who seek peace through our gifts and prayers. And always, we must condemn those on every side who use violence as a political tool.
