Peace Partners or what Lefties do on their downtime when visiting Israel

I meant to blog about this story last week and I even saved a rough version in blogger's draft mode. Then I totally forgot about it until I went looking for something else. I decided to post it anyways because its one of those stories which receives very little press internationally, and yet, the systematic destruction of "settler" agricultural crops is a far more wide spread practice in Judea and Samaria than one would suppose from the coverage. Just ask Shlomi Cohen – taken from Arutz Sheva:

IsraelNN.com) Left-wing extremists and PA Arabs destroyed thousands of grape vines belonging to local Jews in Samaria Wednesday. Some one hundred Arabs and leftists, along with dozens of Arab TV crews certified by various news agencies, marched to a Jewish vineyard near the town of Dolev, northwest of Jerusalem, and proceed to systematically uproot and destroy thousands of young grapevines.

The PA- appointed mayor of Ramallah took part in the march. Though the police and army had been forewarned that the Arabs and leftists were planning a provocation, security forces arrived only after most of the vineyard had already been uprooted.

The vineyard's owner, Shlomi Cohen told Arutz-7 that 5,000 vines were uprooted by the vandals, who arrived Wednesday at noon. "They also burned pipes, irrigation equipment and sprinklers – after fifteen minutes everything was charred." Cohen said that he was informed Tuesday evening that a group planned to destroy the vineyard. "We informed the army. I enlisted everyone I could, including the municipality and local security officers, but for some unclear reason the IDF did not arrive on time."

When the IDF did arrive, Cohen said, more than half the vineyard was already destroyed. "The army chased the vandals away, but did not arrest any of them," he said. "They didn't do anything to them. They just said [the police] would come investigate and that I could file a complaint, but in the meantime there have been no arrests."
(…)
MK Uri Ariel (National Union-NRP) has asked to convene the Knesset's Internal Affairs committee to address the police's failure to protect the farmer's vineyard from the rioters.

"What happened to the swift response we get from the police every time they are called to act against the national camp," asked Ariel. "Why is the same swiftness not used against left-wing lawbreakers?" The Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria (Yesha) issued a statement on the incident, saying that given the prior warning of the expected riot, "[the council] views the security forces' inaction very severely…The culprits must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law - whether they are Arabs, foreigners or left-wing extremists."

The phenomenon of left-wing extremists, from both Israel, Europe and the United States, destroying Jewish vineyards and orchards in Judea and Samaria, though widespread, has rarely been covered by Israel's state-run media and has never appeared in foreign news agency reports.

The PA Mayor of Ramallah takes an active role in the destruction of Cohen's fields but I doubt an arrest warrant will ever be issued by the Israelis as it would belie the whole notion of "moderate" Palestinian Authority government officials.