During a raid of the Al-Khalail area, […] settlers poisoned a flock of sheep belonging to Palestinian farmer Rizq Abu Naim, killing three of them, WAFA news agency reported, citing local sources.

Settlers regularly target the village of Al-Mughayyir, including lighting cars on fire, spray-painting racist slogans, stealing agricultural equipment, and the grazing their own livestock on Palestinian land in an effort to destroy the livelihoods of its Palestinian villagers.

In a similar incident late last month, CCTV footage showed […] settlers slaughtering sheep during an attack on the Palestinian village of Al-Samu, near Hebron. Settlers killed and maimed 10 animals, beating them with sticks, throwing heavy cinder blocks at them, and gouging their eyes out.

Settlers also invaded a Palestinian home, used tear gas, and damaged property.

The attacks are reminiscent of operations carried out by [neocolonialists] against Palestinians in 1948. Pre-state Zionist militias poisoned drinking-water wells in Palestinian villages as part of a biological warfare operation known as “Cast Thy Bread,” Haaretz reported in 2022.

On Friday, […] settlers, accompanied by Israeli soldiers, razed dozens of dunams of Palestinian land in the village of Iraq Burin, south of Nablus, WAFA reported.

The soldiers and settlers uprooted more than 200 trees and destroyed retaining walls and water networks on land belonging to residents Fathi Ahed Faqih, Omar Talal Qaddous, and Ahmed Muhammad Qaddous.

The attacks are part of a broader effort to expel Palestinians from their lands and open the way for […] settlement in their place.

In a raid carried out on Saturday, Israeli soldiers beat two Palestinian brothers, Baha, 33, and Issa, 32, in their home in the town of Zatara, east of Bethlehem.

[The] occupation forces detained and interrogated dozens of Palestinians on the same day during raids in the Hebron governorate.

Israeli soldiers also stormed several neighborhoods in the town of Beit Ummar, raided and ransacked numerous homes, and detained more than 30 Palestinians for several hours.

The men were held in the yard of a brick factory near the home of the family of Walid Sabarna, who was one of two Palestinians shot and killed on Tuesday evening near the Gush Etzion illegal settlement south of Bethlehem.

The men were killed after “a ramming and stabbing attack” that left one settler dead and three others wounded, according to Israeli sources.

On 20 November, Israeli occupation forces killed two Palestinian teenagers — Sami Ibrahim Mashaikha, 16, and Amr Khaled Al-Marboua, 18 — during an overnight raid on the town of Kfar Aqab near Ramallah.

The teenagers were shot and later died of their wounds.

Israeli soldiers took up positions in the streets and on top of the town's buildings before opening fire on residents.

A recent report from National Public Radio in the U.S. stated that, “As the world looks to Gaza, settlers in the West Bank are seizing land and terrorizing villages with impunity.”

The report noted that since coming to power in December 2022, Israel's National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has handed out record numbers of arms to […] settlers in the occupied West Bank as part of a bid to ethnically cleanse the territory of Palestinians and annex it to Israel.

I hesitate to do this since questioning abusers’ piety does not necessarily makes their victims feel better, but anybody who understands the principle of tzaʿar baʿalei chaim can confirm that these perpetrators are not the mindless products of religious teachings, but autonomous beings who are fully culpable for their atrocious choices.