Israel must confront the wider system enabling settler violence - opinion

Israelis are now outraged, primarily because the violence, long ignored and often supported by successive governments, security forces, and the settlement movement, has erupted in settler attacks against soldiers and police officers.

Those settlement leaders who oppose the violence are often condemned. Senior army officers who support the settler enterprise require additional protection when they occasionally don’t carry out the settler’s bidding.

The planning and funding of shepherding outposts, taking over land that is disputed and Palestinians call “occupied,” comes from settlement movement leadership, not from the youth.

In February 2021, Zeev Hever, the long-time settlement ideologue, strategist ,and confidant of prime ministers convicted in an Israeli court for his activities in the terrorist “Jewish underground,” spoke at a conference of Amana, the major settler organization that he leads.

He declared that they had set up 30 shepherding outposts and were planning on setting up many more. They have, yet couldn’t, without state support, although outposts are illegal according to Israel.

Violence or the threat of violence is an essential component of the key outpost goal of causing Palestinians to flee their homes. They now need the support of security forces to graze flocks on what were previously their grazing lands, displacing Palestinians and making shepherding no longer economically viable.

Torah Tzedek and others defending Palestinian shepherding communities with our bodies are firsthand witnesses. We have endless documentation showing the scope of settler violence and how security forces are allowing and sometimes actively supporting it. We have recordings of forces refusing to come when settlers were threatening.

We have footage of uniformed soldiers actively participating in outpost activities, sometimes driving all-terrain vehicles provided to the outposts by the government. They participate with settlers in civilian clothes grazing their flocks in fields and olive groves belonging to Palestinians according to Israeli state maps. We have footage of soldiers watching as settlers steal Palestinians’ sheep, and shooting tear gas at Palestinians trying to put out flames in their fields set alight by settlers.

Torat Tzedek and fellow human rights organizations have long lists of complaints filed with the police that were summarily closed, despite clear evidence. We often discover that the investigative files were empty.

Here is a minor but indicative example in light of all the violence. I filed a complaint, submitting clear footage of being attacked and having my phone stolen last month. The perpetrators were clearly identifiable. I discovered that the case was closed several days later, only because the police said they had called me and I didn’t pick up.

I have been injured by settlers many times and was present when settlers carried out the October 25 attack on Mukhmas. Two human rights defenders volunteering with Torat Tzedek, the NGO, and I – defending the human rights of both Jews and non-Jews – were injured along with five Palestinians. My car windows were broken, homes were burned, and sheep were stolen.

Luckily, shots fired at my fleeing defenders and Palestinians didn’t hit anybody. Others and I called the police many times and sent pictures to the army. Forces didn’t show up until two hours after the first call. If Jews were being attacked by Palestinians, the army would have arrived within minutes.

These settlers continue to be violent because they know they will, in all likelihood, pay no price for their actions. They sometimes get a slap on the wrist if they attack Jewish human rights defenders.

The settlers who carried out the Mukhmas violence came from the Kol Mevaseir outpost set up a few days earlier. Appeals to remove it, by the Mukhmas Municipality and by Torat Tzedek, were of no avail. Several days before the attack, Palestinians heard chainsaws cutting down trees near the outpost in the middle of the night. In the morning, we discovered the cut-down trees.

We have recordings of Torat Tzedek’s human rights defenders present that night, calling the security forces who refused to come. Not only has this source of violence and destruction not been removed, but Kol Mevaseir has actually expanded in recent days.

The violence has been passively and actively supported by successive governments because it serves undeclared but very real state policy: If Palestinians cannot, at this point, be expelled from the entire West Bank, they should be intimidated or expelled at gunpoint from the 60% of the West Bank that is Area C but not officially part of Israel. They should be concentrated in the more urban Areas A and B.

The State of Israel and our security forces, guided by settler leadership, have created the golem [in Jewish lore, a protector, a “robot” made of earth] that is settler violence, unleashed to further the settlement enterprise. It sometimes turns on its creator.

If we ever want to have the peace and security we Israelis deserve, let alone live up to our highest Jewish and human values, we must make the painful effort to cease projecting the blame onto a small handful of youth, saying that the perpetrators are “not us.” They absolutely are us, serving the goals of successive governments we elected.

Those supporting outposts support settler violence, intentionally or unintentionally.

In the coming weeks, in our cycle of Torah readings, Jacob will wrestle with a mysterious being that is, in fact, the part of himself that cheated and took advantage of his brother Esau.

Jacob had to acknowledge and take responsibility for that part of himself before he could embrace Esau and reconcile in the morning. His ability to do so made him a worthy patriarch of the Jewish people.

The Maharal of Prague eventually took responsibility for the golem he created and returned it to lifeless clay. We must wrestle with the golem we have created, take responsibility for it, and put an end to it.