MK Yaakov Katz (Ketzaleh)
MK Yaakov Katz (Ketzaleh)Israel news photo: Hezki Ezra, Arutz Sheva

MK Yaakov "Ketzaleh" Katz on Tuesday chided IDF Central Command chief General Avi Mizrachi for being selective in expressing "shock" at "hatred" directed at IDF personnel by angry Jewish youth who stormed the Ephraim Brigade headquarters in Samaria.

“Why doesn’t Mizrachi castigate left wing anarchists who express far more outrageous anti-IDF violence every week at Biliin village," Katz said, citing routine sabatoge and violence against the IDF by left-wing activists in Judea and Samaria.

"The right wing produces the IDF's finest," Katz added. "A handful of its youth was motivated by provocateurs to vandalize the IDF base Monday night, but the same youth will serve loyally in the IDF - which the anarchists never will.”

Katz was reacting to a statement by Mizrachi, who expressed shock and dismay after touring the Ephraim Brigade headquarters, which saw violent clashes between on-duty soldiers and some 50 angry Jewish youth who raided the compound upon hearing rumors demolitions of Jewish outposts were to be carried out.

The youth burned tires and hurled Molotov cocktails and stones during the incursion. Soldiers were forced to call for police reinforcements to drive the youths from the compound. In a separate incident the Ephraim Brigade commander was injured when stones were hurled at his vehicle. His attackers reportedly called him a "Nazi" during the attack.

“Whoever attacked the army is a provocateur planted by the Shabak, dominated by the left-wing, with an objective of blackening the image of the settlement movement and paving the way for more government demolitions," Katz said earlier on Tuesday.

“Anyone who acts against the IDF is not part of the settlement movement and actually works against it,” he added.

Strategic Affairs Minister and former IDF chief of staff Moshe Yaalon told Army Radio the incident harmed Israel's settlement enterprise after an emergency meeting of the cabinet convened to discuss the incident. During the meeting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called on senior security officials to draft an 'emergency plan' to address the targeting of IDF personnel and materials in Judea and Samaria.

The incursion at the Ephraim Brigade headquarters was denounced across the board by Jewish communal leaders in Judea and Samaria who called it "shameful and disgraceful."

Dozens of Samaria residents arrived at the Ephraim Brigade headquarters on Tuesday evening to rally in support of the IDF – and to express their own dismay Monday night's incident.

At the time of the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, observers predicted that using the IDF to banish Jews from their homes would lead to estrangement from the IDF of idealistic, young people who were shocked to see soldiers following orders that destroyed their lives and contradicted the Zionist values the IDF is sworn to defend. However, there was no avoidance of enlistment on the part of the youngsters who came to the Katif Bloc to protest or were exiled from their homes there during the disengagement.

Some of those young people, however, felt that the peaceful, quiet protests that preceded the disengagement  were a tactical mistake, because the government ignored them, although hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets against the disastrous move.