(IsraelNN.com) Residents of the Gush Etzion hilltop community of Sde Boaz had hundreds of grape vines and scores of fruit trees uprooted and destroyed Friday. The latest vandalism, though the most costly yet, is just the latest in a string of attacks on the community’s property.
Residents of the agricultural community said that in addition to the destruction of the Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards and fruit trees Friday, expensive irrigation systems were damaged and stolen as well. The vandals used donkeys to plow under the hundreds of vines and uproot the fruit trees.
As Omedia notes, mainstream Israeli media refuses to even mention Arab destruction of Jewish agriculture, seemingly because it happens on the "wrong" side of the Green Line:
This accumulation of facts attests to a situation in which Israel is gradually conceding its sovereignty and its rule of law while abandoning Jewish agricultural property to the mercy of the Palestinians. The myth that the Palestinians are deeply attached to trees, perhaps as opposed to the Jews, plays into the hands of those who use trees for political purposes. When the trees belong to Jews, the tree is merely considered another tool in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. It is well known that the Jewish-Arab conflict in Israel is tied to the struggle over land, such as the struggle between the Jewish National Fund’s pine and cypress forests (only in recent years have they begun planting olive trees), and olive groves, typically seen as a Palestinian symbol.As I have shown in the past, Palestinian Arab destruction of trees and other Jewish agriculture predates 1948 and PalArabs have been found to destroy their own trees when it can make the Jews look bad. The idea that trees are somehow sacred to Palestinian Arabs is a preposterous myth, one that is all too ready to be swallowed by even more preposterous supporters.All of the above information was only made public on Arutz Sheva, a radio station identified with the settlers, and never managed to reach the general public. Why was such pertinent information never published in Ha’aretz or on central news sites such as NRG? Such information is obviously newsworthy. Perhaps these media outlets consider the uprooting of Jewish trees by Palestinians too commonplace – a “dog bites man” story – or see it as a mere curiosity. Whatever the reason, tree removal by Palestinians deserves media exposure as well.