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Tel Aviv, January 30 (RHC)-- A far-right Israeli lawmaker has been suspended from Twitter after tweeting his support for a deadly raid by regime forces and urging them to “keep killing them.”  Far-right Almog Cohen of the Otzma Yehudit party tweeted: "Nice and professional work by the fighters in Jenin, keep killing them." 

Cohen was reacting to an incursion on Thursday in which Nine Palestinians lost their lives following a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the northern part of the West Bank.  At least 20 Palestinians were wounded, including unarmed civilians.  After widespread condemnation from online users, the post was removed for "violating Twitter's rules."

Cohen, who has been a member of parliament since the November 1st election, worked for the Israeli police for 11 years as part of a SWAT team.  He founded an armed militia to stalk the Palestinians in the Naqab in May last year.

In October last year, Cohen published a photo of himself in the military kneeling over a Palestinian father and his two sons, with the caption "Those down there remember what I did in the army."  The sadistic caption was accompanied by a winking emoji.

In 2013, the three Palestinians testified that officers tied them up and threatened to shoot them in the head.  No disciplinary action was taken against any of the police officers.  The image, however, helped the three men identify Cohen as one of the officers who attacked them and ask the Justice Department to reopen the case.

He is not the first far-right Israeli official to celebrate the killing of Palestinians.  Back in December, Israel's new national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, hailed a soldier, who shot dead a Palestinian man, as a "hero," describing the killing as "precise, swift and rigorous."

Israeli forces killed more Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in 2022 than in any other year since the Second Intifada.  At least 220 people were killed in the attacks of the Zionist regime throughout the occupied territories in 2022, of which 48 were children.

The crackdown comes as since the start of 2023, Israeli forces have shot and killed around 30 Palestinians.
Most of the Israeli raids have focused on Nablus and Jenin, where regime forces have been trying to stifle a growing Palestinian resistance in the occupied cities.