IDF Destroys Memorials to Terrorists in Nablus and Ya'bad
Five memorials were destroyed in Nablus, according to the city's deputy mayor, and one in Ya'bad commemorated a prisoner who died serving a life sentence. The army said it targeted monuments to terrorists.
IDF troops destroyed memorials in Nablus and Ya'bad in Judea and Samaria overnight between Tuesday, October 6, and Wednesday, October 7, and during Wednesday, in an operation the army said targeted monuments to terrorists. Five memorials were destroyed in Nablus, according to the city's deputy mayor, and a sixth was razed in Ya'bad, near Jenin.
An army spokesperson said the operation was directed at monuments honouring terrorists.
Five sites in Nablus, one in Ya'bad
Nablus deputy mayor Iyad Bakeer said five memorials in the city were destroyed. The identities of everyone commemorated at the five Nablus sites have not been published, and the Ya'bad memorial is the only one of the six whose dedication has been made public.
In Ya'bad, Hala Abu Baker, spokeswoman for the Jenin governorate, said the memorial that was demolished commemorated Yasser Hamdouni. According to reports, Hamdouni was accused of killing an Israeli in 2003 and died in an Israeli prison in 2016 while serving a life sentence.
A campaign against monuments to terrorists
The demolitions follow political pressure inside Israel to remove memorials that honour attackers. Israel National News reported that Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Religious Zionism MK Tzvi Sukkot had promoted a campaign to map such monuments across Judea and Samaria.
According to the same report, troops left messages at the sites warning against the glorification of terrorism, the same rationale the army gave for the operation.
The wider mapping campaign and the number of memorials actually destroyed are separate figures: the confirmed toll from this operation is the five sites in Nablus and the one in Ya'bad.
An operation on the anniversary
The operation took place as Israel marked the third anniversary of the October 7 attack, in which Hamas terrorists murdered about 1,200 people and abducted 251. The army did not explicitly link the timing to the anniversary.
Palestinian officials described the sites as memorials to Palestinians. The IDF's position is that the monuments glorified terrorists, and that is the stated reason for their removal.
