President Herzog: Settler Violence Is Much More Than A “Small Handful”

Dear President Herzog,

As much as I appreciated the strong words by you and others about settler violence since the recent spate of publicized attacks began, I must correct you. Sadly, the violence against Palestinians and human rights defenders that sometimes shocks the nation when security forces are also attacked are perpetrated by much more than what you termed a “violent handful” You know the legend of the golem brought to life by the Maharal of Prague to defend Jewish community until it became uncontrollable. Hence our saying about the golem that turned on its creator.

Yes, the State of Israel and our security forces guided by the leadership of the settlement movement are the creator of the golem that is settler violence unleashed to further the settlement enterprise. It is ours, and it sometimes turns on its creator.

The all too few of us who are defending against this violence with our own bodies day and night and sometimes paying the price are first hand witnesses with endless documentation showing just how extensive settler violence is, how many are involved and how security forces are allowing and sometimes actively supporting it. We have recordings of security forces refusing to come when settlers are threatening and footage of uniformed soldiers joining settlers in civilian clothes grazing their flocks on Palestinian fields and trees. We have long lists of complaints to the police with clear evidence that were summarily closed. Afterwards, we often discover that the police investigative files were empty. There had been no attempt at investigation. Here is a small thing in light of all the violence, but indicative. 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!

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

I have been personally injured by settlers many times and was myself present when settlers carried out a pogrom on October 25th in the Palestinian village of Mukhmas. Two human rights defenders volunteering with Torat Tzedek, the NGO I lead 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, the shots fired at my defenders and Palestinians as they were fleeing didn’t hit anybody. I was one of many who called the police and sent pictures to the army, but they didn’t show up until two hours after the first call. At that point all that was left to do was to try to extinguish the flames and get the injured to hospitals. The cost of repairing the damage and buying new sheep will come to over NIS 250,000.

If Jews were being attacked by Palestinians in this way, the army would have been there within minutes, if armed settlers didn’t kill the attackers first.

Just yesterday, the settlers attacked in Mukhmas again. A tent was ripped up. An older member of Torat Tzedek was pepper sprayed. His tires were slashed and windows shattered. The army and police that had been more vigilant since the October 25th pogrom had again ceased to come quickly when called. They only showed up after the fact, although they did arrest two.

The previous night security forces never showed up at all when a settler tractor worked between the Bedouin neighborhood and the Nahalat Tzvi outpost, even as the noise of a chainsaw was heard above in the direction of the outpost. Eighteen wheel truck after truck arrived. The settlers blocked the car of Torat Tzedek human rights defenders and eventually tried to tow them. They chased my car around and around and they eventually blocked us, threatened, pounded my windows, tried to open the door and threw gravel on the car.

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Our soldiers are in this deep. We have footage of soldiers watching as settlers make away with Palestinians sheep or shooting tear gas at Palestinians trying to put out flames in their fields set alight by settlers. We have pictures of “soldiers” in uniform literally guarding settlers as their sheep devour Palestinian trees or enter Palestinian homes. Sometimes these soldiers are driving the all terrain vehicles supplied by the State to outposts illegal even according to Israel .

I actually received a WhatsApp message from the army saying that one of the two huge new outposts in Duma is “permitted,” and the army’s Civil Administration is not recognizing the ownership documents of the Palestinians in the entire area. They are allowing the settler flock to graze on what they deem “State Land” and say that the Palestinians must remove all of the fences around their fields and groves. Young trees have been devoured, and the area is littered with torn down fences. The settlers don’t wait for the army’s Civil Administration to take care of supposedly illegal fences or allow the owners to defend their lands and fences in court. They take the law into their hands.

I know it is pointless to go into all the ways that Israel declares private Palestinian land to be state land, to note that international law stipulates that state land in an occupied area is for the occupied people, or that the Hague Convention of 1907 states that the occupying power is not allowed to interfere with civilian affairs such as zoning and planning unless there is a clearly defined security justification. When we asked our High Court to return zoning and planning to Palestinian hands we saw in the faces of our judges and heard in their comments that they knew that there was an unfair system in place designed to prevent Palestinians from building legally. But they said that they would not interfere with a system that had been in place for so long (סידורי בראשית).

I don’t enjoy writing these words about my country and my people and my army. I know that as president you believe your role is to unify Israelis and not to seem to be opposing any sector of Israeli society. You therefore feel obligated to choose your words carefully. We would all sleep better at night if we could tell ourselves that the violence is committed by what you termed a “handful” not supported by the vast majority of law abiding settlers and certainly not by the rest of us. But the efforts to portray the violence as being committed by a few non representative troubled youth opposed by the settler leadership will not end the violence. Yes, there are settler leaders who oppose this violence. They also come under attack, as do high ranking army officers who largely allow the settler movement to carry out their plans but occasionally dare not to do their bidding. The truth is that the violence supports the undeclared but very real policy of successive Israeli governments. If it is impossible at this point to entirely expel Palestinians from the Occupied Territories, the interim goal is to remove them from Area C still under full Israeli control and containing much open and concentrate them in the more urban Areas A and B.

Some of the perpetrators are in fact youth at risk who have dropped out of school or yeshiva, who say they are religious but do not respect even settler rabbis, and are estranged from their parents who may have founded settlements themselves. They need help. But not all are dropouts by any means. Many are acting on what they were taught at home and in their communities and in many other formal and informal structures. And the Welfare Ministry pays for those who are actually troubled youth to be taken in by settlers living in outposts illegal even according to Israel, let alone international law. To the best of our knowledge, nobody is insisting that those who are minors go to school. All too many deem these children in need of help as sweet youth dedicated to the Land of Israel and to be admired. One settler taking in these youth proudly told me that he gives them a good environment and a profession. In fact, these troubled youth are given a “legitimate” outlet for their violent tendencies. And let’s not forget those youth who have been attacked and sometimes murdered when sent to tend flocks alone.

The idea, planning and funding of the illegal even according to Israel shepherding outposts taking over and holding on to Palestinian land comes from the heart of the leadership of the settlement movement, not from these youth. In February 2021 Zeev Hever, the long time settlement idealogue and strategist convicted in an Israeli court for his activities as part of the terrorist “Jewish Underground,” spoke at a conference of “Amana,” the major settler organization that he leads. He proudly declared that they had already set up thirty shepherding outposts as the most effective means of taking over and holding on to Palestinian land, and were planning on setting up many more. They have done so, and they couldn’t be doing it without the behind the scenes support by the State. The violence or threat of violence is an essential component of causing Palestinians to flee their homes, a key goal of the outposts. Another essential component is support by security forces for settlers grazing their flocks on what were previously the grazing lands of Palestinian shepherds, displacing them and making shepherding no longer economically viable.

The level of State support for the outposts that are the source for much of the violence is demonstrated by the fact that Israeli security forces and the army’s Civil Administration only rarely remove settler outposts illegal even according to Israel and the Israeli High Court refuses to force them to do so, even when they clearly serve as a base for terrorizing nearby Palestinians until they flee. It would be advisable to look into how much funding for these theoretically illegal even according to Israel outposts comes from government sources. The base from which settlers carried out the Mukhmas pogrom was the new outpost “Kol Mevaseir” set up a few days earlier. Appeals to all possible authorities by the Mayor of Mukhmas and by us were to no avail. Several days before the pogrom Palestinians heard chainsaws cutting down trees near the outpost in the middle of the night. In addition to the Palestinians calling the police, we have recordings of Torat Tzedek’s human rights defenders who were there that night calling the security forces who refused to come. In the morning they discovered the cut down trees. Not only has this outpost that has been the source of so much violence and destruction not been removed, but it has actually expanded in the the last few days.

We currently have a High Court case demanding the removal of the Wadi Khokh outpost that caused shepherds from Wadi A Seeq to begin fleeing soon after the day it was set up in February 2023 and prevented landowners from farming their adjacent lands . The settlers grazed their sheep on what Palestinians had planted before the outpost was set up. One day not so long after the outpost was established the Civil Administration arrived with bulldozers to demolish it, but they then abruptly turned around and left. We can only guess who placed a phone call to cancel the evacuation.

On October 12th 2023 settlers from the outpost backed by additional settlers drafted into reserve duty after the barbaric October 7th massacre committed by Palestinians and regular soldiers expelled the remaining Wadi a Seeq residents at gunpoint, telling them they must be gone within an hour or they would be dead. One Palestinian had a rod shoved up his anus, his back jumped on and cigarettes extinguished on him. Soldiers roughed up and handcuffed five of our human rights defenders for several hours, and threatened them never to come back. In addition to our human rights defenders’ unanswered calls to the police, my chairperson went into the Binyamin police station to plead for help. The police didn’t come. Despite all of this, and countless additional documented cases of police and army not coming when called, the High Court judges are incredibly saying that the community must voluntarily put their heads in the hangman’s noose and return unprotected. The court will not order the evacuation of the outpost at this point. They have told the community that if the police fail to protect them the community can come back to the court. However, the court is not ordering any protection for them if they decide to try to return. The families that all have rising debts, are being forced to sell off their flocks and have to move from location to location every few months now have to decide whether to risk their lives in order to perhaps escape from their current misery. In the mean time, violence backed by our security forces and not countered by our courts has paid off and the Wadi Khokh outpost continues to expand its sphere of control also to the western side of road 457, causing more shepherding families to flee.

And what happens in the rare occasions when the Civil Administration does remove an outpost? They rebuild within a few hours and crowdfund to pay for the rebuilding. The Ma’aleh Ahuvia outpost that has taken over much of Dir Jarir’s lands was evacuated several times after it was set up in December 2020. I personally communicated with the Deputy Defense Minister at the time of at least one of those evacuations, warning that it would rebuilt by 3:00 that afternoon. He said it wouldn’t. I sent him pictures when it did happen, and he then said there was nothing he could do. The Sadeh Yonatan outpost connected to the Kol Mevaseir outpost has been evacuated a number of times. After the last evacuation MK Limor Son Har-Melekh filmed herself helping them rebuild. In between evacuations, they have taken over much of the surrounding land and on a daily basis were sending their flock between the homes of the Bedouin neighborhood of Mukhmas before some of those homes were burned to the ground in the pogrom. Recall that Israelis were also outraged in June when settlers attacked the army trying to prevent settlers from rebuilding the outpost set up between Kufr Maleq and Dir Jarir after a pogrom in Kufr Maleq. The settlers were “rightfully” outraged from their point of view because the army never comes back to prevent them from rebuilding.

The outpost from which several times settlers have come to torch homes and cars in the Bedouin neighborhood of Jabba, frequently come to pelt stones, arrive almost every Shabbat to harass and have cut down many olive trees, is inside a closed military area. It hasn’t been removed. I myself was injured by stones thrown at point blank while security guards from either the nearby Adam settlement or Geva Binyamin stood by.

When settlers set up an outpost sixty meters from the outer home of Mgyher al Dir, the army told us that it would be removed within two days. It wasn’t and the community fled. The settlers attacked as they were dismantling their homes and packing. Some eleven Palestinians and one Israeli required hospital care. Security forces finally arrived in the nick of time as Palestinians report that the settlers were pointing guns at the heads of their Mukhtar and his son, and they believe the settlers intended to murder them. To the best of my knowledge, the forces didn’t arrest anybody. I hope I am wrong.

According to legend, the golem of Prague was created to defend Jews before it went wild. One propaganda point by those advocating for the hilltop youth and legalizing the shepherding outposts is that they are defending Israelis living inside our internationally recognized pre 1967 border. Some cynically use security as a talking point to speak to Israelis who will not be convinced by claims about the need to redeem the entire Biblical Land of Israel. Others truly believe they are defending all of us. The exact opposite is true. Our sages taught “The sword comes into the world because of justice delayed and justice denied” (Pirkei Avot). Even those who desecrate God’s Name by only caring about fellow Jews should realize that the hatred engendered by settler violence and land takeover drives Palestinians into the hands of Hamas. Without exonerating the murderers of October 7th or any other terrorist acts, the violence and injustice committed against Palestinians with State support contribute to the death of Jews as well.

Many are pleading helplessness and saying that there is nothing to be done. Yes, it is true that there is danger of violence against those who will take firm action to remove all of the outposts illegal even according to Israel, and to really investigate and attempt to convict perpetrators of violence. That would not bring peace or end the Occupation, but it is the minimum that must be done. The minimum of the minimum might be to take a page from the playbook of then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, albeit when the support of political parties for the outposts was much less. Facing a spate of violence in 2005 he made it clear that those outposts near where violence was taking place would be moved to the top of the demolition list. The violence abated quite quickly.

If we ever want to have the peace and security we deserve, let alone live up to our most cherished Jewish and human values, we must start by making the painful effort to cease projecting the blame for settler violence onto a small handful, saying they are not us. They absolutely are us, serving the goals of successive governments we elected. In a few 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 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.