"House of Contention" buyer speaks about role in Hebron riots

December 18, 2008

Morris Abraham, a New Yorker, who claims to have originally purchased the “House of Contention” that became the rallying cry of violent settler extremists in recent settler riots in Hebron, recently tried to distance himself from his role in the riots in an interview with the Jewish Telegraph Agency.

Asked about the so-called “price tag” strategy, whereby some Jewish settlers have vowed to spread mayhem as a price for further evacuations by Israeli authorities, Abraham said only a tiny minority was threatening violence.

“I don’t agree with the strategy,” he said. “I don’t agree, though, that you just walk out. I agree that there should be some sort of peaceful resistance.”

Yet his financial support of extremist settlers ambitions in the West Bank city of Hebron laid the foundation for extremist violence against Palestinian civilians and Israeli Defense Forces soldiers, which Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert called a pogrom. Abraham may not have pulled the trigger, but he, in effect, helped load the gun.

Those American Jews’ and others who provide financial support for the radical settler movement are actively undermining a two-state solution with the Palestinians and  Israel’s security as a Jewish and democratic state.