Settler Violence is Reshaping Religious Zionism
Recently, several Religious Zionist rabbis in Israel have taken to discussing the matter of settler violence publicly, which is important, since the previous position of many was to deny that it exists, to label the perpetrators as “some troubled youth,” and other dismissive responses. When Rabbi Natan Slifkin had previously addressed this problem, there were voices in the Religious Zionist community who shamefully called Rabbi Slifkin a “Kapo” for stating the obvious, so it looks like we have made some progress. The reason this crisis can no longer be ignored are the weekly videos and images showing Jewish men with kippot, large beards, and pe’ot going into Palestinian villages, destroying property, stealing property, beating Palestinians up, and behaving in ways that shock the conscience of any decent human being.
Before addressing the actual issue of settler violence, it is important to understand the transformation in the Religious Zionist world that this shows. A few months ago the city of Tel Aviv elected a Haredi chief rabbi. When that happened, Rabbi Yuval Sherlo and Rabbi David Stav published an op-ed in Makor Rishon in which they pointed out the election of eight mostly non-Orthodox Israeli cities that had recently elected mostly Haredi rabbis. Rabbis Stav and Sherlo pointed out that after two years of war, in which army service has been so central to the Israeli ethos, many secular Israelis would rather have a Haredi rabbi who has not served in the IDF, nor will their children serve in the IDF, rather than vote for a Dati Leumi candidate. The rabbis said that is most likely because of the judicial reform and other legislative initiatives that have made liberal Israelis feel like an existential threat to who they are has come from the Religious Zionist community.
There is no question that over the past four years, the Religious Zionist community, represented in the Knesset by the likes of Ben Gvir, Smotrich, Rothman, Amichai Eliyahu, and Avi Maoz, has played a critical role in leading the most divisive four years Israel has ever seen. Secular Israelis have begun seeing themselves as an endangered minority; the ramming of judicial reform down the throat of Israelis in a time of war has certainly had a heavy price. While no one is surprised that Haredi parties signed off on various troublesome policies in exchange for budgets pandering to their base, Religious Zionism’s role in this near civil war has been by far the most significant and ideologically driven.
It is therefore no surprise, Rabbis Stav and Sherlo note, that liberally minded Israelis are distrustful of Religious Zionist candidates seeking rabbinic positions in liberal Israeli cities.
Simply put: Religious Zionism, which was originally meant to be a bridge between religious and secular Israelis, is at best no longer a bridge between the religious and non-religious; in many cases, it is even a wedge between the two.
Much has been written recently about the shrinking of Modern Orthodoxy in the diaspora and its relocation to Israel. While there are many reasons for this shrinking, many of which are economic, the hostile takeover the Har Hamor or Hardal branch of Religious Zionism has staged over the past decade has turned much of the Religious Zionist world towards the Smotrich-Ben Gvir brand of Judaism, and far away from the Rav Kook, Rabbi Soloveitchik version of Religious Zionism. It is no surprise then to see many genuinely Modern Orthodox Jews in the diaspora grow more comfortable with Chabad and Haredi Judaism, and less comfortable with the Religious Zionism they met in their year of study in Israel. Seeing the apologetics for settler violence coming from people who think of themselves as liberally minded and Modern Orthodox is probably another reason we see diaspora Modern Orthodoxy turn farther away from the Israeli Religious Zionist brand towards a more Chabad/Haredi style of Judaism.
Now to the issue of settler violence.
Rabbi Yoni Rosensweig from Beit Shemesh had recently written: “Would the people who most strongly condemn settlers behave differently if they themselves lived on isolated hilltops under constant friction and danger?… Jewish presence on hilltops and in disputed areas materially prevents Palestinian territorial expansion and increases Israeli security.”
Being intimately familiar with the Hilltop Youth and perpetrators of settler violence we are talking about, seeing well-meaning apologists romanticize this violence is shocking. The perpetrators of this violence are not a fringe minority, nor are they on the outs or the margins of the communities they live in. They are part of an ideological movement that reads books like Torat HaMelech and Baruch HaGever, Kahanists with a perverse worldview in which they believe it is permissible to kill and steal from Palestinians. I have spent far more time on those hilltops and around those bonfires, and unfortunately, say this with a strong degree of confidence. The Hilltop perpetrators share a delusional worldview in which they are pious students of great Hasidic masters of peace like Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, members of the pre-1948 undergrounds Irgun and Lehi, and somehow also are the original halutzim, pioneers, building the Land of Israel from scratch and creating a new Jewish state.
They do not see themselves as bound by the laws of the State of Israel and use their Breslov-style Hasidic unconventionalism to ensure they are not overly restricted by Torah law, as they reserve the right to interpret Torah law as they wish. Simply put, in case you have not gathered this from their actions, they are not governed by or committed to any set of rules. The only supreme values are tribal attachments to their little cliques of people, uncompromising hate for Palestinians, and contempt for anything that seems to be “leftist” and weak to them. When they go into Palestinian villages, it is not to preserve Israel’s security; it is not even a “price tag,” like they used to say; it is an attempt to drive all non-Jews out of the land—that is what they say.
Ironically, with their deep contempt for Palestinians, they seek to emulate Palestinians in many ways. From the musical instruments they play, to the music and clothing, to arriving at weddings on a horse with rifles all around, the similarities between the Hilltop settlers and their Palestinian neighbors are staggering. While they are happy to decry some diaspora Jews as assimilated, it is fair to say that they are one of the most assimilated groups of Jews among Jews all over the world.
Now to the lie that somehow settlements, of any size, defend Israel. On the eve of October 7th the IDF had 2–4 battalions on the Gaza border and in the Gaza Envelope. The IDF also had 3–4 battalions on Israel’s northern border while it had more than 30 (!) battalions in Judea and Samaria. Had Hezbollah gone all out for a coordinated attack on Israel at the same time Hamas did, it would have been able to easily walk into northern Israel, as Hamas did in the Gaza Envelope.
Rabbi Rosensweig wrote the often-mentioned fallacy romanticizing this group, saying: “The only reason I can live in Beit Shemesh peacefully is because people live in Gush Etzion and create a layer of defense. If anyone will get killed—it will probably not be me, but rather them. And the only reason they can live as peacefully as they do is because of the smaller settlements that dot the hilltops.”
With the vast majority of IDF soldiers now tied down in the West Bank, we saw on October 7th exactly how this works and how this dangerous fallacy almost brought full destruction on Israel. Few soldiers on the Gaza border, few soldiers on the Syrian and Lebanese border, and more than 80% of the Israeli army tied down to small settler communities.
When you have more soldiers defending hilltops and small communities than are protecting you from hundreds of thousands of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terror groups’ operatives, it is a tragic but natural outcome that Israel’s borders can be overwhelmed. Settlements in fact spread the IDF too thin for it to realistically defend Israel on its outer borders and do not contribute to Israel’s security.
Why does this matter? Because the backbone of the settlement movement and Jews living in Judea and Samaria is an ideological one, and while those who moved to Efrat and Gush Etzion did so out of the belief that Jews should be able to live in any part of our ancestral Land of Israel, the Hilltop movement also has an ideology that is religious and unshakable. The Hilltop settlers, the Kahanists, and a growing number of people in Judea and Samaria believe in driving the Palestinians out of the land. This is not science fiction or some obscure hypothesis; it is all over their literature and public statements. This is not a debatable fact, but an easily verifiable reality.
The violence, the theft, and the intimidation of Palestinians we see every weekend come from a very clear and premeditated worldview of driving all Palestinians, and then Arabs, and then non-Jews, from between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. The numerous attacks on Christian clergy and houses of worship in East Jerusalem have caused Israel an extraordinary amount of diplomatic harm, but to Hilltop settlers, this does not matter. Violence is, in fact, their preferred method of operating and, as former head of the Mossad Tamir Pardo have warned in the strongest terms, this violence is not likely to stop at Israel’s 1967 borders or with one group of the population they are targeting. We have already seen several incidents in which the gangs of Jewish terror have targeted and even hurt IDF soldiers who got in their way.
From “Hilltop Youth” to “settler violence” to many other names, there is no name that properly captures who this group is, because they are not easily defined, and that is their greatest strength. They are embedded in the Religious Zionist community, in the army, in the various Breslov auto-spirituality groups, and they answer to nobody. As a movement that believes in violence as a primary way to achieve its goals, they do not see anyone else’s interpretation of Jewish law as binding, nor does it see the laws of the State of Israel and international law as binding.
While they answer to nobody and no law, over the past four years they have infiltrated Israel’s most powerful institutions, from the Knesset with representatives like Ben Gvir, Smotrich, Har-Melech, Amichai Eliyahu, Tzvi Sukkot and more, to the IDF and Israel’s security services, to Israel’s legal system. This poses an existential danger to the State of Israel as a group of people who do not believe in the founding principles of the state and the validity of its legal system have come to use the power of the state to implement their rogue agenda. They defile and incriminate the IDF when they use IDF personnel as cover for their illegal and violent operations in Palestinian villages, and they endanger Israel’s legitimacy.
The ability of this violent movement and Jewish terrorists (not my term for them, but the term used by senior IDF and Mossad leaders for violent settlers) to hide itself within legitimate institutions and embed itself in civil society is most serious in the Religious Zionist community, which is naturally why this community has the hardest time coming to terms with how serious the issue of settler violence is. Those committing immoral atrocities and violence against Jews and non-Jews in Judea and Samaria go to the same schools, yeshivot, synagogues, and workplaces as other Dati Leumi Israelis. They are your friends, relatives, and neighbors. It is not easy to call them terrorists, a danger to Israel’s future, or to say that they have crossed a red line.
Thirty-two years ago, when Baruch Goldstein carried out his heinous terror attack in Ma’arat HaMachpelah, Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein zt”l famously issued a strong letter condemning Rabbi Dov Lior’s decision to eulogize Goldstein in a Hesder yeshiva. Today, Rabbi Lichtenstein is no longer with us, but Rabbi Dov Lior has several members of the Knesset who follow his path and directives. The Religious Zionist movement is in dire need of responsible adults who will offer an alternative to the rising influence of the Hardal-Ben Gvir brand of Judaism.
Jews around the world already understand this, because they have seen firsthand the cost of the kerosene this brand of violent Judaism pours on the flames of antisemitism. Religious Zionist rabbis, especially English-speaking ones who know the damage the settler violence movement is causing the Jewish people, would be well advised to speak out more forcefully against the immorality and unbridled violence that movement espouses, before it is too late.
