Two weeks ago, there was a discussion about the morality of collective punishment in the context of the latest wave of terror attacks in Israel.

The town of Beit Tzurif, located next to Cfar Etzion, just south of Bethlehem, on the road to Tel Aviv, has given full and complete support to the murders of Israeli citizens that have been performed by at least 18 of its residents.

Every journalist who has visited the town is amazed by the sight – children, old people, women, men, you name it – support the killings.

And this is a well-to-do village, not a refugee camp, posesses lands under its ownership and productive fields of fruit trees, while a high percentage of the town works in academia, services and government.

Indeed, the man arrested for masterminding the murders of 11 Israelis and wounding 49 Palestinians is none other than the director of the main hospital in Hebron and a resident of Beit Tzurif.

This town is the same village that “took credit” for massacring the 35 Haganah reinforcements to Cfar Etzion in January 1948 and massacring Cfar Etzion AFTER their surrender in May 1948. This is also the home village of Faisel Husseini.

In 1967, Israel Minister of education Yigal Allon, who commanded the Palmach in 1948, suggested hat the IDF raze the village of Beit Tzurif, an idea that Israel Minister of Defence Moshe Dayan rejected.

As things stand now, Beit Tzurif is about to join the Palestine Authority, with the IDF transforming it into another “legally” armed camp of the Palestine Liberation Army, in striking distance of Tel Aviv.

Most people in Israel do not know where Beit Tzurif is – the Israeli media reports that it is in the “Hebron district”, which means “somewhere over the rainbow” to most people.

It is no comfort to note that most residents of the Jewish communities of the Etzion region have no idea where Beit Tzurif is located.

How should Israel cope with a village that is committed to killing Jews?

David Bedein
Media Research Analyst
Beit Agron International Press Center,
Jerusalem, Israel
e-mail: media@actcom.co.il
Fax: (+972-2) 623-6470

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David Bedein
David Bedein
David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.

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