Israel should 'erase' Palestinian village, minister says after settler rampage
A senior Israeli official has called for the state to “erase” the Palestinian town of Hawara, which was the site of a settler rampage over the weekend.
TEL AVIV — A senior Israeli official on Wednesday called for the state to “erase” the Palestinian town of Hawara, which was rampaged by Jewish settlers over the weekend.
“I think the village of Hawara needs to be erased. I think that the state of Israel needs to do it. God forbid that regular people should do it,” Israel Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said.
His comments came after he liked a tweet that called for Hawara to be “wiped out” in the wake of a Palestinian gunman's attack that killed two brothers, Hillel Menachem Yaniv, 21, and Yagel Yaakov Yaniv, 19, who lived in the Israeli settlement of Har Bracha, around 5 miles away.
Israeli security forces were searching the Hawara area for the attacker when Jewish settlers gathered and stormed the village.
Smotrich, who is the chairman of the far-right Religious Zionist Party and has been put in charge of many of Israel’s policies in the occupied West Bank, said that he has also called for calm during the violence. But on Monday, after the brothers were killed, he said that Israel should strike back “without mercy.”
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