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US terror report details 'price tag' violence by Israeli settlers

The State Department's annual report on terrorism includes acts of violence by Israeli settlers along with terrorism by Palestinians.
A Palestinian man stands near a door and wall of a mosque which were vandalised in the West Bank village of Deir Istiya, near the Jewish settlement of Ariel January 15, 2014. The mosque in the north of the Israeli-occupied West Bank was partly set on fire on Wednesday, in what Palestinians residents said was an attack by Jewish settlers living nearby. The main gate of the mosque and some of the carpeting inside were charred by the flames. Graffiti in Hebrew, reading "Revenge for spilled blood" and "Arabs Ou
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On April 30, the US State Department issued its annual Country Reports on Terrorism 2013. The report catalogues the multifaceted local, regional and global security threats to US interests characterized by Washington as terror. Included in this catalogue of dangers is what the Barack Obama administration, taking its cue from the Israelis, defines as “price tag” actions — that is, destructive and intimidating actions by Israelis directed against Palestinians and their property, including mostly land but also mosques and vehicles in the West Bank, and increasingly in Israel itself.

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to legally characterize such actions as terror. The Israeli security cabinet has authorized the Ministry of Defense to classify groups that perpetrate “price tag” attacks as “illegal associations,” a less emotive and legally extreme kind of transgression.

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