Israeli Knesset member Zvi Sukkot, a member of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, smashed a Palestinian memorial in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, drawing condemnation and criticism from the Israeli military. Sukkot was filmed using a sledgehammer to damage the Palestinian Martyrs' Monument in the village of Madama, south of Nablus. In a video posted to Facebook, he said the monument commemorated two Palestinians who had killed Israelis and argued that it should be removed.
Sukkot, who chairs the Knesset Education Committee, was accompanied by Israeli military personnel during the incident. However, the Israeli military later said that the destruction of the monument had not been authorised. According to Israel's public broadcaster Kan 11, Israeli forces had raided several Palestinian villages in the Nablus area after Sukkot submitted a formal request to inspect memorials in Beita, Burin and Madama.
The military said the demolition of the Madama memorial had not been approved through the proper channels and that its forces intervened to stop the destruction. At the same time, the military acknowledged that its forces regularly remove Palestinian memorials and symbols that it considers incitement, describing such actions as part of its campaign against terrorism. Footage from the incident showed several members of Sukkot's staff participating in the destruction alongside him.
His spokesman, Yossi Rainer, also posted a photograph on X showing himself holding a sledgehammer in front of the damaged memorial. Rami Nassar, head of the Madama village council, told Haaretz that the monument had stood for around 20 years and had never previously been damaged, despite repeated Israeli demands for its removal. The incident comes amid heightened tensions and increasing Israeli military and settler activity in the occupied West Bank, where Palestinian symbols, monuments and memorials have increasingly become the subject of disputes and removal campaigns.
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