Approximately an hour before Shabbat, about 150 residents of the Palestinian Authority village of Sinjil launched a premeditated assault on an Israeli-owned farm in the Nahal Shilo region, uprooting the fence surrounding the farm.
Israelis who rushed to defend the farm were brutally attacked with clubs and stones. One resident was injured in the face by sticks and rocks thrown at him. He suffered a broken nose and was treated by an Magen David Adom (MDA) team at the scene before being taken to hospital care.
Additional Israeli residents of the area who arrived a short while later, as well as the IDF forces dispatched to restore order at the scene, were likewise attacked with hurled stones. It was only over an hour later, after two more residents were injured, that the IDF forces managed to drive the rioters back to Sinjil and restore order in the area.
This is not the first attack on Israeli farmers in the area. Two days previously, Israeli farmers working in the area were attacked, as were those who attempted to defend them. Two Israelis were wounded in the head as a result of stones thrown at them by the rioters, and two more were wounded in the hand and stomach. A number of residents' vehicles were also damaged.
"We quickly drove to the area after receiving a call for help from the farmers, and found ourselves attacked by a mob," said Yedidya, an eyewitness to the incident. "We entered the road that leads to the farm and suddenly we realized that we were surrounded on both sides by Arab rioters who were pelting us with stones."
"An Arab jeep emerged from behind us and hit our vehicle violently. We got out of the vehicle and tried to defend ourselves, but the Arabs redoubled their attacks. At one point, the resident sitting next to me was hit in the head by a stone. By now his head is swollen. Our vehicle was completely smashed, and a club that had been thrown at us was stuck through the windshield. On another windshield, you can still see the handprint of one of the rioters who tried to lynch us. It's just a miracle that we survived," Yedidya recounts.