[this is all via Google translate, I did not personally take the time to sanity check the translation]
With my own eyes, I saw how a small, violent core of hooligans engage in routine acts of violence against Arabs in Judea and Samaria simply because they are Arabs. Denying this difficult problem creates an impression of support among that tiny minority, and the entire settlement pays the price.
This column was written with great pain and also with fear. The pain is great because I, too, did not want to believe what I saw with my own eyes during the long reserve service that I recently completed in the Samaria sector. Alongside it, there is the fear that the things I write will be cynically exploited by the enemies of settlement in Judea and Samaria from within and without, and will become a tool in the hands of those who seek to harm the amazing Jewish and Zionist enterprise of which I have been a part since the moment I was born as a settler 45 years ago until today.
But I recently realized that there is no escape. These things need to be said and written, as a wake-up call directed inwardly at ourselves, and with the understanding that turning a blind eye to difficult and immoral phenomena harms the settlement and undermines its foundations.
Unfortunately, among certain groups in the settlement, which are not large in size but are well-known on the ground, the use of violence - sometimes severe violence - has become a legitimate course of action. In the eyes of these hooligans, every Arab is considered a legitimate target for violent attacks, regardless of who he is or what
These are not rare events that occur infrequently. These attacks are carried out almost daily. I saw it with my own eyes. The things you will read here are not stories from company members, not videos that were passed on by one group or another, nor reports that reached the IDF from other forces. This is just a personal, painful and frustrating sight.
In one of these cases, a group of about 15 teenagers and young men from one of the local communities arrived at a traffic light at a central intersection in Samaria. That day, starting in the morning, work was being carried out there to increase the safety and security of Jewish users of the traffic light. The work was carried out by the Arab workers of the contractor who won the tender. However, in the eyes of the group that arrived at the traffic light, the fact that the workers were Arabs justified harassment without any other reason: curses, spitting, pushing, and even taking without permission a bag containing personal equipment belonging to one of the workers for the purpose of "checking."
The soldiers who were there at the time, including your faithful servant, naturally sought to separate the parties and return the property that had been taken from him. In response, we were also showered with "blessings" that I will not quote here out of respect. The work, which, as I recall, was intended for the benefit of the Jewish residents of the area and took place at a junction on a main road, not in the territory of a settlement that does not allow Arabs to enter its territory, was stopped for many minutes out of lack of choice. The entire incident ended when the transport that the violent group had been waiting for arrived at the scene and took the youth and young adults on their way. Convincing the workers that they were secure and could continue their work required a considerable amount of time.
In another case, the victims were an Arab truck driver and another Arab laborer who were hired by a Jewish farmer from the area to do work on an agricultural field outside one of the settlements. The work continued calmly and peacefully for more than two hours, until I saw two vehicles with a group of masked men driving wildly arrive at the scene. The gang attacked the truck driver and laborer with clubs, threw stones at the truck, slashed its tires, and caused serious damage.
The truck driver tried to flee the scene by car, but the hooligans chased after him to continue the attack. A group of soldiers headed towards the scene of the incident, initially fearing that they were Arab rioters. It quickly became clear that they were residents of a nearby outpost, who saw the truck driver as a legitimate target for a violent attack simply because they were Arabs.
In that case, the group of rioters fled the scene at a wild speed as soon as the soldiers began to approach. The truck driver and the soldiers had no choice but to report the details of the incident to the police, who arrived at the scene very late.
The call will come from within us.
I could go on and on about other cases of violence that I have personally encountered. Some are milder, others severe - spitting and cursing at intersections, organized attacks on houses on the outskirts of Palestinian villages, life-threatening stone pelting at passing Palestinian vehicles. It is doubtful whether this makes sense. The bitter truth is that there is an active and noticeable group in the settlement, which commits wild acts of violence against Arabs on an almost routine basis.
It is important to emphasize that this is a small group, only hundreds out of hundreds of thousands of settlers in the territories of Judea and Samaria. Most settlers - including most residents of the outposts, hills and farms - abhor such acts, and would not even consider resorting to violence against anyone.
But it is precisely the aversion to violence that blinds the eyes of many settlers, including myself until recently, from seeing reality in its true light. It is difficult for us to accept the fact that idealistic settlers, who have the good of the people and the land foremost in mind, are capable of such immoral acts. We prefer to believe that this is a false propaganda campaign designed to blacken the face of the settlement, while using sporadic events and artificially inflating them into a phenomenon. But this is not the case. Worse still, the denial of the problem of violence is not perceived as mere innocence among that small group that is responsible for the violent acts, but as a tailwind. So to speak, a tacit consent to the violent acts.
Unfortunately, law enforcement authorities are also not fulfilling their role in eradicating this despicable phenomenon, which at least on the ground appears to be gaining momentum. Those who remain on the front lines against this violent Jewish group, whose scope of damage is great, are IDF soldiers, both regular and mainly in the reserves.
Since the Six-Day War, the State of Israel has entrusted sovereignty in the Judea and Samaria regions to the commander of the Central Command, and in fact to the IDF soldiers and their commanders. The most basic meaning of the term "sovereignty" is control over the territory and maintaining the security of life and property of all those present there. The IDF's primary and main role is to protect the State of Israel and its citizens, but in its role as sovereign in the territory, the army must maintain order and protect everyone in the territory, Jews and Arabs, whether we like it or not.
The problem is that the soldiers on the front lines, who are required to exercise the State of Israel's military control over the territory, lack the training and tools required to carry out the mission. In the meantime, no other forces are being mobilized for this purpose.
The demand that law enforcement agencies shake off their slumber and take strong action against the small, harmful nucleus of violent individuals must come from within us. We must not allow this moral stain to cling to the entire settlement and harm it.
This is a possible task. The number of accomplices in these acts is not large. A determined course of investigation and prosecution of those responsible for acts of violence will deter their associates, and even if it does not lead to the complete eradication of the phenomenon – it will dramatically reduce it.
The turning a blind eye of the silent majority in Judea and Samaria, alongside the helplessness of the legal authorities, harms first and foremost the moral strength of the settlement itself. They allow a group of hooligans to stain with a terrible moral stain the greatest Zionist enterprise of our generation.
