Danish Khan

🚨 TODAY: settlers and army assault village in West Bank This morning at approximately 10 A.M in the village of Ras al Ein, a group of Israeli settlers, some of whom were under the age of 18, began attacking Palestinian infrastructure. Settlers attempted to dig up multiple buried water pipes, trespassed on Palestinian properties, and began assaulting activists. With them, settlers brought children as young as toddlers to witness and support the violence. Shortly after the attack began, Israeli security forces from nearby settlements, along with police, and military personnel responded to the scene. Upon arrival, security forces accused activists of participating in illegal activity and detained them en-masse for nearly three hours. During this time, Ahmed Jahaleen, a local Palestinian man was kidnapped by Israeli military personnel and transported to a local military base. He was released later in the evening. While detained, police officers demanded that all activists present identification. One activist, Dean Talkoff, a dual Israeli-American citizen, demanded that officers produce a justification for the request. In response, police officer Offir Aharonovitch brutally assaulted the activist. Aharonovitch punched Dean in the face, choked him, and repeatedly slammed his body into rocks. Dean endured multiple assaults before being forced into a police vehicle and transported to Shaar Binyamin jail. He has not been released. These assaults are just the most recent events in an escalating pattern of settler violence in the village of Ras Al Ein. The village is largest remaining Bedouin community in the Southern Jordan Valley, and following the complete ethnic cleansing of the neighboring village of Muarrajat, has become a prime target of settler gangs. Currently, Ras al Ein is surrounded by multiple illegal outposts where over the last eighteen months, settlers and their supporters in local security forces, have mounted an increasingly violent campaign of terror designed to expel the Palestinian community from the area. Dean Talkoff is the fourth activist in the last month to be seriously injured in a settler-led assault.