Qusra is a Moral Failure. It’s Also Government Policy.
This week, in the village of Qusra, we saw the inhumanity of this Israeli government’s West Bank policy reach its tragic, but entirely foreseeable, conclusion.
Extremist settlers laid siege to Palestinian families, trapping them in their own homes and trying to force them out. They cut off access to food, water, and electricity. One of the trapped families is a couple with two young daughters, ages two and four.
Where was the army? Protecting those laying the siege. Soldiers were seen taking selfies with the settlers. When journalists tried to reach the scene, the IDF blocked them, using the usual excuse that it was a “closed military zone.”
Only after days of mounting outrage did the IDF condemn the settlers’ conduct as “illegal, reprehensible, and unacceptable” and take action. Just this morning, the authorities arrived with a new plan—but the Palestinians paid the price. Eight families were ordered to evacuate their own homes so the army could dismantle the settler outpost sitting on their property. Some outposts came down and one Israeli was detained, yet settlers remained on the hill. Families who complied came home to stolen cash, damaged furniture, and torn pages from a Quran.
I keep returning to the small, damning details, because that’s where the moral failure lives most clearly.
It’s the soldiers posing for selfies instead of intervening. A family rationing water while cameras record the men besieging them. Children spending days trapped in their own homes. This is what it looks like when someone decides that others are not fully human.
This is how power has operated in the West Bank for years: settler violence with impunity, encouraged by allies at the highest levels of government, and accountability only when the world is watching enough to make silence embarrassing.
NIF and our partners will keep insisting on accountability—not only because settler violence is a strategic threat to Israel’s democracy and Israel’s stability, but because failing to see the humanity of the people in front of you is a moral failure. Every family deserves to live in dignity and security, regardless of who they are or where they live.
Qusra is a failure of our shared humanity. It is also, unmistakably, what this government’s West Bank policy is intended to produce.
NIF and our partners will keep strengthening protective presence activists, telling these stories, and demanding accountability and justice. Through our work coordinating a response to settler violence, we’re making sure that people know what’s happening in places like Qusra, ensuring that footage is sent to media outlets and policymakers, both in Israel and internationally.
This work may not stop violence on its own, but it’s the reason that US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called this incident “Jewish terrorism.”
We cannot let the shock of these incidents subside—for the sake of everyone’s humanity.
