Israeli settler filmed harassing Palestinian boy addressed UK parliament in 2019: Report

Avichai Shorshan was filmed harassing a Palestinian boy in the occupied West Bank village of Khan al-Ahmar on August 29, 2023. (Photo via social media networks)

An armed Israeli settler who recently took a lot of flak over harassing a young Palestinian boy in the West Bank had been invited in 2019 to speak at a UK parliamentary event in defense of the Israeli military, according to a report.

On Tuesday morning, Avichai Shorshan was filmed harassing a Palestinian boy and her pregnant mother in the village of Khan al-Ahmar near occupied al-Quds.

In the footage, shared by the Middle East Eye website, Shorshan, who was armed, can be seen detaining the Palestinian child. When the boy tries to move, Shorshan stops him and yells at him, “Sit here and don’t move.”

Reports said two women from Khan al-Ahmar, one of whom was filming the video, attempted to intervene and were arrested by Israeli forces.

According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, Shorshan was recruited into the Israeli police earlier in 2023 despite repeated complaints from locals of routine harassment of Palestinian farmers around the Khan al-Ahmar area.

Back in 2019, Shorshan was invited by Ian Austin, a crossbench peer in the British House of Lords, to speak at a parliamentary event focused on countering negative perceptions of the Israeli occupation army, the Middle East Eye reported.

Austin, who chaired the event, was previously a Labor MP but resigned from the party in 2019 over what he claimed was a “culture of extremism, anti-Semitism, and intolerance” in the party under then-leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The village of Khan al-Ahmar has been demolished and rebuilt several times in recent years and has endured repeated harassment from Israeli settlers.

In September 2018, the Israeli regime’s Supreme Court approved the demolition of the occupied West Bank village, despite calls from European countries, human rights organizations, and activists for Israel to halt the process.

Nearly 700,000 settlers live in more than 250 settlements and outposts across the occupied West Bank and al-Quds in violation of international law.

The international community views the settlements – hundreds of which have been built across the West Bank since Tel Aviv’s occupation of the territory in 1967 – as illegal under international law and the Geneva Conventions due to their construction on the occupied territories.

The UN Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories in several resolutions.