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Extremist settlers exploit pandemic to step up violence

While the Israel Defense Forces and the political leadership are busy fighting the novel coronavirus, Israel's notorious hilltop youth are rioting and attacking Palestinians with impunity.
JERUSALEM - JANUARY 24 : A view of Hebrew racial slurs on the wall of the mosque sprayed by Jewish settlers as eyewitnesses reported that a group of settlers set fire to the Badriya mosque in Beit Safafa town in Jerusalem on January 24, 2020. (Photo by Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Israel was under lockdown during the Passover holidays. Large police and military forces manned checkpoints outside the cities and patrolled the streets to ensure that the curfew was enforced. Yet even as a modern-day plague ravages the country, it's clear who the country’s favored residents are.

On April 6, about 20 of the young extremist settlers known as the "hilltop youth" were ordered to self-isolate after coming into contact with a coronavirus patient. Some of them had even shown symptoms of the disease. They refused to be confined in a hotel in Jerusalem and then rioted on the way to a confinement facility in the south of Israel.

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