Vanessa, excellent article. The tendency to take a tiny fringe and turn it into a defining feature of Israeli society is clearly unfair. No country of nearly ten million people should be judged by the actions of a few hundred radicals, especially when the state itself confronts and arrests them. If anything worries me more about Israel’s internal balance, it’s the growing political influence of the ultra-Orthodox parties, not a fringe handful of extremists. That debate, at least, is a real and open issue inside Israeli society — unlike the distorted narrative so often pushed from the outside.
and if we are blanketing everyone with accusations- You are a vile antisemite who has purposely crawled onto a site dedicated to Jewish life to spread your racism and hatred. You attack Jewish people for their religion and for their right to defend themselves against terrorism — terrorism carried out by those who deliberately embed themselves among their own civilian population (their own children!), knowing full well the response it will bring, and then shamelessly use that suffering as a shield. You have no place here. Your bigotry is transparent, your arguments are as worthless as you are. GFY
Gee, I dunno…. In the gas chambers? Or pushed into the sea, as the Arabs have promised to do for 100 years?
Sadly, the phenomenon of the self hating “court Jew” is not uncommon throughout Jewish history. Whether through profound ignorance or some deep seated psychological need (ie Stockholm Syndrome) such individuals turn their backs on their own people, land, culture and history. What they never understand until it is too late is that there is no great success in being on the last train to Auschwitz.
Israel is not my land. Most Israelis are not even Jews, they are purchased Roma and tent dwelling tribesmen scraped from the desert. They mostly couldn't read until 30 years ago, and they behave like rabid hyenas.
Blanket accusations like that aren’t arguments. Exactly which “entire cities” are being blown up? And by whom? Israel is responding to organizations that openly call for its destruction and have fired thousands of rockets at civilian areas for years. When regimes and groups backed by Iran call Israel the “Little Satan” and the United States the “Great Satan,” and openly vow annihilation, pretending this conflict started in a vacuum isn’t serious analysis. It’s just rhetoric from a troll.
Andy, you’re right. Writing to him is a waste of time. But I don’t write for him. I write for the many decent people who might be reading the thread and are open to facts.
I'm curious..when you say "backed by Iran"...is that some sort of judgement? American colonial militias took assistance from whomever offered without reservation in their fight for a country free of occupiers. The US is a failing country with a 100+ years long history of racist white colonial human rights abuses. Including creating the current government of Iran by trying to regime change the Iranian monarch. US middle east policy and Israeli religous extremism are the "great satan" here..not Iran, which is a product of failed US policy.
Joe, almost everything in your comment is historically backwards. The current Iranian regime was not “created” by the United States — it came from the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which overthrew the Shah and established an Islamist theocracy under Khomeini. Since then, that regime has openly called for the destruction of Israel and “Death to America,” while funding and arming proxy groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis that have carried out attacks and fired thousands of rockets at civilian populations.
Comparing that to the American Revolution makes no sense. The American colonists were not a theocratic regime exporting militancy across the region. Whatever criticisms one may have of U.S. policy, they do not erase the fact that Iran’s leadership openly declares genocidal intentions toward Israel. I guess you never let the facts interfere with your agenda of hate.
The American colonists were not a theocratic regime? Um last time I checked religion was the #1 reason for colonists to emigrate to the colonies. You just have an anti-Muslim bias using words like "regime" and "proxy" vs as if the US doesnt have 300 year history of colonialism, forced theocratic conversion of NA and using proxies like Israel and Egypt. Israel doenst belong there and was taken iin a genocide called the Nakba by antisemitic western leaders after WW2 so they wouldnt have to resettle Jews in Europe. Jews need to move back to Europe or New Jersey. Its much safer there and they dont have to steal land and genocide the inhabitants.
Joe, what you’re writing isn’t history — it’s ideology. Religious freedom may have motivated some early settlers, but the United States was founded as a secular republic with a clear separation of church and state. That is the opposite of a theocracy.
Jews also did not suddenly appear in Israel in 1948. Jews have had a continuous presence in that land for thousands of years, and the modern state of Israel was established through international recognition and a UN partition plan that Jewish leaders accepted and Arab leaders rejected when they chose war instead.
And by the way, I’m not answering this because of you. Your comments are nonsense to me. I’m answering for the people who might be reading this thread — decent people who actually care about facts and want to hear the truth.
Lol. I am a Jew. I had family, (most of it, in fact), that died in the Holocaust. You're just a bot. Paid or an AI, making blind comments from Bangladesh for money
And your comments reflect only ignorance and venality. If I didn't loathe ad hominem attacks masquerading as factual debate and analysis, I might be tempted to say, "And you are worse than Goebbels."
Vanessa, I very much appreciate your writing and analyses, but I found the present essay to be somewhat below par. It's tainted by your partial acceptance of some of the propaganda that has defined the issues in terms that handicap Israel from the starting gate.
Your arguments about the practice of selecting fringe social phenomena to represent Israeli society as a whole are entirely valid. But you missed the opportunity to inform readers of the extent to which the entire narrative of the "wild hilltop youth" has been grotesquely exaggerated and dishonestly framed to make a mountain out of a mole hill.
The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) maintains an online database of incidents involving settler violence. The NGO Regavim managed to obtain the spreadsheet that feeds into the UN database. The data was carefully analyzed by Gadi Taub in an essential essay that was published in Tablet (https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/settler-violence-myth). Here is a closer look at the "data": Of the 8,332 incidents of settler violence in that period, 2,047 of those incidents involve settlers as VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE. More gems:
'OCHA counts any Jewish pilgrimage to the Temple Mount, no matter how peaceful, as “settler violence.” It also classifies as settler violence clashes between Israeli security forces and rioting Muslims on the Mount, even when no Israeli civilians are involved. Also listed as violence are “tourists visiting archaeological sites, infrastructure work carried out legally by the State of Israel itself, traffic accidents,” and other common activities that in no way can be categorized as “settler” related or “violent.” ... “After filtering out thousands of irrelevant cases,” the report says, “only 833 incidents remain over a seven-and-a-half-year period—a mere 10 percent of the original list.”
So much for the myth of settler violence. As for the "disputed territories," I would argue that it's also time to discard that terminology and stop shooting ourselves in the foot. The meticulous legal arguments and analyses that have been provided by Eugene Kontorovich and Natasha Hausdorff should convince everyone apart from the ICC judges that no one has a more valid right to live in Judea and Samaria than the Jews. We need to get off our back foot in this discussion as well. Our enemies have invested their resources in framing the conversation to be about "occupation" and "illegal settlements" and "stolen land." We will never persuade them to abandon their narrative, but we do have the freedom to begin treating their propaganda with the contempt it deserves.
Too many Jews in the US are totally ignorant of the facts on the ground in Israel. Outside of the US, many more Jews know the situation as they have strong personnel connections to Israel. Many American Jews depend on the grotesque propaganda churned out by TV channels, print media, and social media.
The article in the Free Press that she’s responding to is written by Haviv Retig Gur, an Israeli. He lost a lot of credibility and respect with me and I will not look at him the same way again.
You have to give the bad guys credit for figuring out the best places to invest their efforts. Once they wormed their way into teaching positions at the most prestigious journalism schools and took over, they were able to seed the next generation of activist "journalists" on TV, print, and social media. The project of creating a false narrative about Israel and the Jews took decades to push through, but, today, young Jewish graduates of our Ivy League schools have learned to appreciate the noble goals of Hamas and Mamdani.
Excellent comment! I too have read Gadi Taub’s analysis and those of Kontorovich and Hausdorff all of which is excellent and in my own writing have started referring to Judea and Samaria by their real name. And when someone takes exception to that use my rejoinder is “ You have no problem with aboriginal Canadians calling Canada Turtle Island so why do you object to my calling Judea and Samaria by their original namr?”
Excellent comeback! It's odd, isn't it, how only the Jews are reviled for claiming that portions of their land are sacred. If Native Americans claim sanctity for a mountain or a valley, everyone drops whatever they are doing and fights to avoid the desecration of holy lands.
Unfortunately, this has been more of a self-inflicted wound than a leftist stratagem. From my conversations with "settler" friends, I learned that they quite like the name. It fulfills an emotional need to relive the glory days of the original settlers who drained the swamps, planted the forests, and renewed agriculture on barren lands. They see themselves as following in the footsteps of heroic pioneers, and they see no need to stop talking about settlers and settlements. Meanwhile, the Left grins all the way to the newsroom.
The first time you actually visit a "settlement," like Ma'ale Adumim for example, you find that it has much more in common with Boca Raton or Rohnert Park than with Davy Crockett's frontier settlements. But no one in TV land knows this, and this helps immensely with the Left's project to vilify the inhabitants of Judea and Samaria as "illegal trespassers."
Absolutely right Vanessa, many journalists seem to opt for the path of least resistance and consequently reinforce a pre-existing narrative. Omitting essential historical context simplifies the situation but conceals a hidden agenda.
The many journalists , many who are now Muslim or who have worked for Al Jazeera, like the six of so journalists writing about the ME in the Washington Post, know that if they do not blame Israel for everything, they will be fired by their bosses. In the West, Jews are to blame for anything within their countries, and Israel for everything in the world. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of Christian bSudanese have been slaughtered by Muslim Sudanese, and there is total silence in the media.
Reprint of my comment on the disgusting article on TFP-
Today is Yom HaShoah — Holocaust Remembrance Day. The day the Jewish people pause to mourn six million murdered simply for existing. The day the world is supposed to reflect on where hatred of Jews, left unchecked and fed by useful propaganda, ultimately leads
The Free Press chose today to publish a sensationalized piece framing Israel — a nation currently fighting for its survival on multiple fronts while still counting its October 7 dead — as a society defined by extremism and predatory violence against Palestinians. Whatever Haviv Rettig Gur's intentions, the editorial decision to run this today is indefensible. It is not brave contrarianism. It is not "complexity." It is reckless.
Here is what actually happens when pieces like this get published. The author and editors picture a thoughtful reader weighing nuance. What they get instead is the full ecosystem of people who blame Israel — and Jews broadly — for every conflict, every death, and every grievance in the Middle East, now armed with a new citation from a publication that is supposed to be serious. Every antisemite with a Twitter account, every campus agitator, every Iran-funded propaganda outlet will clip this article and use it. The author just became a useful idiot for movements that don't share his nuance, don't read his caveats, and don't care about his qualifications. They just needed the headline.
This piece reveals its bias before the argument even begins — starting with the name. The author, like much of the Western press, uncritically uses "the West Bank" — a term that did not exist before 1948. It was coined by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan after its army invaded the territory during Israel's War of Independence. Jordan occupied and subsequently annexed the area in 1950, naming it "West Bank" to distinguish it from its own "East Bank" — an annexation widely considered illegal even by the Arab League. The proper name — Judea and Samaria — predates Jordan by millennia and was even used by the United Nations in its own 1947 Partition Plan. Calling it the "West Bank" doesn't make the author neutral. It makes him a passive adopter of Jordanian colonial nomenclature.
He identifies the "Hilltop Youth" — the violent fringe responsible for settler attacks — as young people, many from troubled homes, numbering in the several hundred. He even acknowledges the IDF took down six outposts by force in response to their violence, demonstrating that the Israeli state actively opposes these actors. So by the author's own account, we are talking about a few hundred disaffected youth, not a systemic national policy of terror.
Apply that logic consistently. When a few hundred gang members commit crimes in New York City, we do not write essays titled "New York Has a Crime Problem" implying the entire city is morally compromised. We identify the criminals, note law enforcement's response, and move on. The author refuses to extend Israel that same basic analytical courtesy — and then uses it to construct an inflamed national indictment. The double standard becomes even more glaring when you consider what is entirely absent from this article. There is no equivalent piece titled "Palestinian Society Has an Extremism Problem" — despite the Palestinian Authority's Pay-to-Slay program, which is not a fringe phenomenon but official, budgeted government policy.
In Judea and Samaria right now, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are actively rebuilding the same terror infrastructure that made October 7 possible. The IDF's ongoing operations in Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams exist precisely because these areas are being used to plan and launch attacks. Dismissing this to write a profile of a few hundred troubled Israeli teenagers is not nuance — it is a deliberate inversion of proportionality.
Congratulations, Haviv. This piece will certainly earn you more appearances on the BBCs, CNNs, and Al Jazeeras of the media world — the same outlets that have spent years sanitizing Palestinian terror while holding Israel to standards applied to no other nation on earth. You've written exactly what they need. I've read your work for years, but after this — published on Yom HaShoah of all days — I no longer pay attention to you.
Everyone can make a mistake from time to time. Haviv, for all his fine qualities, is not immune. For those who care about reality, it has been skillfully presented by Gadi Taub in his recent Tablet article. Hopefully, Haviv will read it at some point and stop making a fool of himself:
'The entire narrative of the "wild hilltop youth" has been grotesquely exaggerated and dishonestly framed to make a mountain out of a mole hill.
'The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) maintains an online database of incidents involving settler violence. The NGO Regavim managed to obtain the spreadsheet that feeds into the UN database. The data was carefully analyzed by Gadi Taub in an essential essay that was published in Tablet (https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/settler-violence-myth). Here is a closer look at the "data": Of the 8,332 incidents of settler violence in that period, 2,047 of those incidents involve settlers as VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE. More gems:
'OCHA counts any Jewish pilgrimage to the Temple Mount, no matter how peaceful, as “settler violence.” It also classifies as settler violence clashes between Israeli security forces and rioting Muslims on the Mount, even when no Israeli civilians are involved. Also listed as violence are “tourists visiting archaeological sites, infrastructure work carried out legally by the State of Israel itself, traffic accidents,” and other common activities that in no way can be categorized as “settler” related or “violent.” ... “After filtering out thousands of irrelevant cases,” the report says, “only 833 incidents remain over a seven-and-a-half-year period—a mere 10 percent of the original list.”
There are no illegal Jewish communities. Enough with that language.
Frankly I'm sick of Zionist Jews feeling the constant need to explain Israel's case as if we owe the world an explanation for our existence and every action of every Israeli. Is any other country placed under such a microscope? Let the rest of the nations of the world clean up their own filthy houses and mind their own damn business about every aspect of Israeli society. They should stop channeling their own citizens attentions and anger away from their own internal problems, disfunctions and truly evil behavior onto Israelis who they lie about so they can feel morally superior when in reality they are morally bankrupt. The muslim countries and Europe have an inferiority complex and for good reason.
A couple of years ago there was a legal dispute over who had legitimate title to a plot of land in Yehuda (aka the West Bank). Both the Jewish side and the Arab side claimed the other was using forged documents. Both sides tried to put “facts on the ground” to sway the court’s decision. So the army declared it a “closed military area” to keep things quiet until the court ruled on the case. My son’s reserve unit was sent to enforce the closure. He described their job as “keeping our crazies away from their crazies”.
My point is that both sides have too many “crazies” and that trying to deny that the problem exists isn’t going to solve it.
The article in the FP was written by the incredible Israeli journalist, history teacher, podcast host, and free press ME analyst, Haviv Rettig Gur. Listen to any of Haviv’s podcast episodes (ask Haviv anything), his interviews with Hugh Hewitt and all his articles in the fp to see what an outstanding thinker and protector of his country and the Jewish people he is. These violent fringe are extremists, what they’re doing is terrorism. They’re also extremely violent against IDF soldiers. I think Haviv is right on here, the government isn’t stopping the violence, that reflects on Israel as a whole. You can’t condemn and fight against Islamist terrorism, while turning a blind eye to Israeli terrorism, even if it’s coming from the extreme fringe in low numbers. Regardless of the history or who the land should belong to, violence is morally unacceptable in this case. Israel is better than this.
Everyone can make a mistake from time to time. Haviv, for all his fine qualities, is not immune. If you care about reality, it has been skillfully presented by Gadi Taub in his Tablet article. Read it and you can stop shadow boxing:
The entire narrative of the "wild hilltop youth" has been grotesquely exaggerated and dishonestly framed to make a mountain out of a mole hill.
The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) maintains an online database of incidents involving settler violence. The NGO Regavim managed to obtain the spreadsheet that feeds into the UN database. The data was carefully analyzed by Gadi Taub in an essential essay that was published in Tablet (https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/settler-violence-myth). Here is a closer look at the "data": Of the 8,332 incidents of settler violence in that period, 2,047 of those incidents involve settlers as VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE. More gems:
'OCHA counts any Jewish pilgrimage to the Temple Mount, no matter how peaceful, as “settler violence.” It also classifies as settler violence clashes between Israeli security forces and rioting Muslims on the Mount, even when no Israeli civilians are involved. Also listed as violence are “tourists visiting archaeological sites, infrastructure work carried out legally by the State of Israel itself, traffic accidents,” and other common activities that in no way can be categorized as “settler” related or “violent.” ... “After filtering out thousands of irrelevant cases,” the report says, “only 833 incidents remain over a seven-and-a-half-year period—a mere 10 percent of the original list.”
Did you actually read that article, or know anything about the author, Haviv Rettig Gur? I understand the impulse to defend against the usually lazy and unjust narrative, but his career and writing isn't at all what I'd call leaning into that narrative.
Pretty good article. As an American the line " Look at the Democratic Party, which has many politicians openly committed to America’s destruction" says it all for me regarding this party and I agree that hyping a small minority in Israel as reflecting Israelis in general is journalistic malpractice. Also, no other country that I know of has endless external attacks as does Éretz Yisra'él.
Stop referring to Judea and Samaria as the West Bank — that is Jordan's name for the territory, imposed during its occupation of the land, a period during which Palestinians were barred from owning any of it. The people living there are not settlers — they are Chalutzim, pioneers. And these are not settlements — they are Yishuvim, communities where families live, work, and build their lives.
Diaspora Jews who fly to Israel and spend their time eating and drinking in Tel Aviv are tourists. They are not experiencing Israel — they are experiencing a Mediterranean city. The soul of Israel, the Israel being built with the same love of land and people that drove the Chalutzim after 1948, is in Judea and Samaria. That is where Jewish history lives and breathes. That is where families are planting roots in the same hills their ancestors walked. Every Jew who cares about the future of the Jewish people owes it to themselves to see it with their own eyes — not through the lens of media that can't even bring itself to use the right words for the land.
When the extremists hold effective control of the government - and they do in Israel - the country has an extremism problem. The minister in charge of the police is on the side of people committing crimes and preventing any enforcement of laws against them. I can easily imagine a future government (במהרה בימינו) reversing the situation, and then the country would at least have much less of an extremism problem.
“When the extremists hold effective control of the government - and they do in Israel”.
Sorry just because you make a claim doesn’t make it true.
Perhaps unlike some others, I absolutely concede the framing that (relative) extremists indeed hold some power in the ruling government coalition, no question.
But to claim that they have effective control is simply ludicrous and contrary to reality.
Gur seemed to break away from any fair reporting in his article. I wrote my comment in the Free Press, so I won't repeat what I said. However, it was obvious Gur's bias only naming two of Netanyahu's people as if the Left is free of sin and misguided decisions. And his description of the "Hilltop Youth as coming from broken homes alluded to why they were a renegade, violent group. Was there any ownership on the PA, on the homes illegally built by the Palestinians, inching their way into Israel controlled Judea and Samaria? No. They always get a pass. Israel doesn't pay Jewish residents to kill and maim Palestinians, but the PA is well known for doing so. It becomes tiresome when all the ownership for anything is on Israel and Israelis, and one side is full of sin, while the other is untouched. Gur needs to do better next time.
I find this perspective refreshing. Since Israel is the world's substitutionary scapegoat its "crimes" are examined by its supporters as well as its foes. Yes, we decry settler violence to demonstrate that we are reasonable people capable of criticizing Israel.
Imagine that the world's press - or even the Canadian press - focused as much on First Nations communities in Canada that lack potable water as they do on the "West Bank". Would that define Canada in the eyes of the world?
Did we not forget the Oslo agreement which divided up Judaea and Samaria. According to the world Area C is occupied/disputed territory. I would take a look at the organization Regavim to understand how much of the mislabeling of Jewish terrorism and how it is reported.
Israel currently controls less than 1% of the land mass controlled by its 32 neighboring Arab countries. God forbid that Jews increase their colonial empire to 2%!
If its only a few hundred individuals as you say then the IDF or Shin Bet should be able to easily take them down. The Shin Bet pretty much neutralized a far more dangerous and numerous Islamic Jihad. Is Netanyahu afraid to do it because of votes? These few hundred are apparently pretty good fighters. Why aren't they in the military? Are they Haredi draft dodgers?
Here, this is copied from the article that you clearly skimmed over.
But states fail to enforce laws perfectly all the time, especially in contested or semi-governed territories. That failure can stem from political constraints, bureaucratic friction, competing priorities, or operational complexity. None of that amounts to endorsement.
Also:
Israel is not managing this phenomenon in peacetime. It is doing so in the midst of a prolonged, multi-front conflict, where civilian populations are under threat and national attention is constantly pulled toward immediate security concerns. This does not justify lawlessness, but it does explain prioritization.
No, they are not charedi, and many not even religious although they claim to be , since they often attack Arabs on Shabbat which violates Jewish law.
It’s a small group of several hundred disaffected youth who in other countries would be part of inner city gangs running drugs and shooting each other.
Vanessa, excellent article. The tendency to take a tiny fringe and turn it into a defining feature of Israeli society is clearly unfair. No country of nearly ten million people should be judged by the actions of a few hundred radicals, especially when the state itself confronts and arrests them. If anything worries me more about Israel’s internal balance, it’s the growing political influence of the ultra-Orthodox parties, not a fringe handful of extremists. That debate, at least, is a real and open issue inside Israeli society — unlike the distorted narrative so often pushed from the outside.
You're murdering children and blowing up entire cities. You are all guilty. You are all worse than Stalin
and if we are blanketing everyone with accusations- You are a vile antisemite who has purposely crawled onto a site dedicated to Jewish life to spread your racism and hatred. You attack Jewish people for their religion and for their right to defend themselves against terrorism — terrorism carried out by those who deliberately embed themselves among their own civilian population (their own children!), knowing full well the response it will bring, and then shamelessly use that suffering as a shield. You have no place here. Your bigotry is transparent, your arguments are as worthless as you are. GFY
Lol. I am a Jew, Bangladeshi AI clown
Oh good. An asaJew comes in to tell real Jews how it is. How bout you go fuck yourself.
bullshit
Sad little fake
Sad little fake
Lol. 💯. Where you live, brah?
ok, Yahya
Dude, replying to someone who invokes “worse than Stalin” is a fool’s errand.
👋 hello, government bot
Yes I am bot. Bot am I.
Apparently because I had the nerve to suggest your words would be wasted on someone else.
Got it.
Didn’t you know?
Only losers blame the Jews, projecting their own sins and deepest desires onto history’s most convenient scapegoat.
Lol, where would we Jews be if we couldn't blame ourselves
Gee, I dunno…. In the gas chambers? Or pushed into the sea, as the Arabs have promised to do for 100 years?
Sadly, the phenomenon of the self hating “court Jew” is not uncommon throughout Jewish history. Whether through profound ignorance or some deep seated psychological need (ie Stockholm Syndrome) such individuals turn their backs on their own people, land, culture and history. What they never understand until it is too late is that there is no great success in being on the last train to Auschwitz.
Your comments are soooo anti-Semitic. It's truly revealing as to what you really are
Israel is not my land. Most Israelis are not even Jews, they are purchased Roma and tent dwelling tribesmen scraped from the desert. They mostly couldn't read until 30 years ago, and they behave like rabid hyenas.
Grow up, bigot.
Blanket accusations like that aren’t arguments. Exactly which “entire cities” are being blown up? And by whom? Israel is responding to organizations that openly call for its destruction and have fired thousands of rockets at civilian areas for years. When regimes and groups backed by Iran call Israel the “Little Satan” and the United States the “Great Satan,” and openly vow annihilation, pretending this conflict started in a vacuum isn’t serious analysis. It’s just rhetoric from a troll.
Clearly either a troll or a particularly vile anti-Semite.
Either way imo he is not worth wasting words on. Certainly not multiple sentences with facts and logic.
Respectfully.
Andy, you’re right. Writing to him is a waste of time. But I don’t write for him. I write for the many decent people who might be reading the thread and are open to facts.
I'm curious..when you say "backed by Iran"...is that some sort of judgement? American colonial militias took assistance from whomever offered without reservation in their fight for a country free of occupiers. The US is a failing country with a 100+ years long history of racist white colonial human rights abuses. Including creating the current government of Iran by trying to regime change the Iranian monarch. US middle east policy and Israeli religous extremism are the "great satan" here..not Iran, which is a product of failed US policy.
Adolf, I thought you were dead.
Joe, almost everything in your comment is historically backwards. The current Iranian regime was not “created” by the United States — it came from the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which overthrew the Shah and established an Islamist theocracy under Khomeini. Since then, that regime has openly called for the destruction of Israel and “Death to America,” while funding and arming proxy groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis that have carried out attacks and fired thousands of rockets at civilian populations.
Comparing that to the American Revolution makes no sense. The American colonists were not a theocratic regime exporting militancy across the region. Whatever criticisms one may have of U.S. policy, they do not erase the fact that Iran’s leadership openly declares genocidal intentions toward Israel. I guess you never let the facts interfere with your agenda of hate.
The American colonists were not a theocratic regime? Um last time I checked religion was the #1 reason for colonists to emigrate to the colonies. You just have an anti-Muslim bias using words like "regime" and "proxy" vs as if the US doesnt have 300 year history of colonialism, forced theocratic conversion of NA and using proxies like Israel and Egypt. Israel doenst belong there and was taken iin a genocide called the Nakba by antisemitic western leaders after WW2 so they wouldnt have to resettle Jews in Europe. Jews need to move back to Europe or New Jersey. Its much safer there and they dont have to steal land and genocide the inhabitants.
Joe, what you’re writing isn’t history — it’s ideology. Religious freedom may have motivated some early settlers, but the United States was founded as a secular republic with a clear separation of church and state. That is the opposite of a theocracy.
Jews also did not suddenly appear in Israel in 1948. Jews have had a continuous presence in that land for thousands of years, and the modern state of Israel was established through international recognition and a UN partition plan that Jewish leaders accepted and Arab leaders rejected when they chose war instead.
And by the way, I’m not answering this because of you. Your comments are nonsense to me. I’m answering for the people who might be reading this thread — decent people who actually care about facts and want to hear the truth.
I don't like Hamas either.
You aren't even a Jew. I am. Israel is abomination
You are an ignorant Jew hating troll.
Lol. I am a Jew. I had family, (most of it, in fact), that died in the Holocaust. You're just a bot. Paid or an AI, making blind comments from Bangladesh for money
This is a pile of bullshit, Fuck you.
More likely that you yourself are the bot, but if one accepts this is true, your family would be writhing in their graves in shame over you.
Lol. My family is in official records. Most young Jews in the US don't support Israel at all
Prove it. The records part. The rest is just standard antisemitic tropes, regardless of the truth of your claim.
Why is my family dying in the Holocaust dumb? I thought you were against anti-Semitism?!
And now I'm a ‘dumb Jew’ - that's anti-Semitism.
You just revealed yourself.
And your comments reflect only ignorance and venality. If I didn't loathe ad hominem attacks masquerading as factual debate and analysis, I might be tempted to say, "And you are worse than Goebbels."
Blah, blah AI response
Lol. Why are there so many bots who clearly aren't Jewish here?
Lol. I have eyes. I see every day, the vile and despicable acts of the goblins of Israel
The craziest thing about Zionists is that they are usually skinny, small men with beards who aren't Jews at all, but are, rich child molesters
Vanessa, I very much appreciate your writing and analyses, but I found the present essay to be somewhat below par. It's tainted by your partial acceptance of some of the propaganda that has defined the issues in terms that handicap Israel from the starting gate.
Your arguments about the practice of selecting fringe social phenomena to represent Israeli society as a whole are entirely valid. But you missed the opportunity to inform readers of the extent to which the entire narrative of the "wild hilltop youth" has been grotesquely exaggerated and dishonestly framed to make a mountain out of a mole hill.
The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) maintains an online database of incidents involving settler violence. The NGO Regavim managed to obtain the spreadsheet that feeds into the UN database. The data was carefully analyzed by Gadi Taub in an essential essay that was published in Tablet (https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/settler-violence-myth). Here is a closer look at the "data": Of the 8,332 incidents of settler violence in that period, 2,047 of those incidents involve settlers as VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE. More gems:
'OCHA counts any Jewish pilgrimage to the Temple Mount, no matter how peaceful, as “settler violence.” It also classifies as settler violence clashes between Israeli security forces and rioting Muslims on the Mount, even when no Israeli civilians are involved. Also listed as violence are “tourists visiting archaeological sites, infrastructure work carried out legally by the State of Israel itself, traffic accidents,” and other common activities that in no way can be categorized as “settler” related or “violent.” ... “After filtering out thousands of irrelevant cases,” the report says, “only 833 incidents remain over a seven-and-a-half-year period—a mere 10 percent of the original list.”
So much for the myth of settler violence. As for the "disputed territories," I would argue that it's also time to discard that terminology and stop shooting ourselves in the foot. The meticulous legal arguments and analyses that have been provided by Eugene Kontorovich and Natasha Hausdorff should convince everyone apart from the ICC judges that no one has a more valid right to live in Judea and Samaria than the Jews. We need to get off our back foot in this discussion as well. Our enemies have invested their resources in framing the conversation to be about "occupation" and "illegal settlements" and "stolen land." We will never persuade them to abandon their narrative, but we do have the freedom to begin treating their propaganda with the contempt it deserves.
Too many Jews in the US are totally ignorant of the facts on the ground in Israel. Outside of the US, many more Jews know the situation as they have strong personnel connections to Israel. Many American Jews depend on the grotesque propaganda churned out by TV channels, print media, and social media.
The article in the Free Press that she’s responding to is written by Haviv Retig Gur, an Israeli. He lost a lot of credibility and respect with me and I will not look at him the same way again.
You have to give the bad guys credit for figuring out the best places to invest their efforts. Once they wormed their way into teaching positions at the most prestigious journalism schools and took over, they were able to seed the next generation of activist "journalists" on TV, print, and social media. The project of creating a false narrative about Israel and the Jews took decades to push through, but, today, young Jewish graduates of our Ivy League schools have learned to appreciate the noble goals of Hamas and Mamdani.
Excellent comment! I too have read Gadi Taub’s analysis and those of Kontorovich and Hausdorff all of which is excellent and in my own writing have started referring to Judea and Samaria by their real name. And when someone takes exception to that use my rejoinder is “ You have no problem with aboriginal Canadians calling Canada Turtle Island so why do you object to my calling Judea and Samaria by their original namr?”
Excellent comeback! It's odd, isn't it, how only the Jews are reviled for claiming that portions of their land are sacred. If Native Americans claim sanctity for a mountain or a valley, everyone drops whatever they are doing and fights to avoid the desecration of holy lands.
Excellent clarification. And why are Jewish inhabitants of Judea and Samaria called “ settlers “?
Unfortunately, this has been more of a self-inflicted wound than a leftist stratagem. From my conversations with "settler" friends, I learned that they quite like the name. It fulfills an emotional need to relive the glory days of the original settlers who drained the swamps, planted the forests, and renewed agriculture on barren lands. They see themselves as following in the footsteps of heroic pioneers, and they see no need to stop talking about settlers and settlements. Meanwhile, the Left grins all the way to the newsroom.
The first time you actually visit a "settlement," like Ma'ale Adumim for example, you find that it has much more in common with Boca Raton or Rohnert Park than with Davy Crockett's frontier settlements. But no one in TV land knows this, and this helps immensely with the Left's project to vilify the inhabitants of Judea and Samaria as "illegal trespassers."
Absolutely right Vanessa, many journalists seem to opt for the path of least resistance and consequently reinforce a pre-existing narrative. Omitting essential historical context simplifies the situation but conceals a hidden agenda.
The many journalists , many who are now Muslim or who have worked for Al Jazeera, like the six of so journalists writing about the ME in the Washington Post, know that if they do not blame Israel for everything, they will be fired by their bosses. In the West, Jews are to blame for anything within their countries, and Israel for everything in the world. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of Christian bSudanese have been slaughtered by Muslim Sudanese, and there is total silence in the media.
Reprint of my comment on the disgusting article on TFP-
Today is Yom HaShoah — Holocaust Remembrance Day. The day the Jewish people pause to mourn six million murdered simply for existing. The day the world is supposed to reflect on where hatred of Jews, left unchecked and fed by useful propaganda, ultimately leads
The Free Press chose today to publish a sensationalized piece framing Israel — a nation currently fighting for its survival on multiple fronts while still counting its October 7 dead — as a society defined by extremism and predatory violence against Palestinians. Whatever Haviv Rettig Gur's intentions, the editorial decision to run this today is indefensible. It is not brave contrarianism. It is not "complexity." It is reckless.
Here is what actually happens when pieces like this get published. The author and editors picture a thoughtful reader weighing nuance. What they get instead is the full ecosystem of people who blame Israel — and Jews broadly — for every conflict, every death, and every grievance in the Middle East, now armed with a new citation from a publication that is supposed to be serious. Every antisemite with a Twitter account, every campus agitator, every Iran-funded propaganda outlet will clip this article and use it. The author just became a useful idiot for movements that don't share his nuance, don't read his caveats, and don't care about his qualifications. They just needed the headline.
This piece reveals its bias before the argument even begins — starting with the name. The author, like much of the Western press, uncritically uses "the West Bank" — a term that did not exist before 1948. It was coined by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan after its army invaded the territory during Israel's War of Independence. Jordan occupied and subsequently annexed the area in 1950, naming it "West Bank" to distinguish it from its own "East Bank" — an annexation widely considered illegal even by the Arab League. The proper name — Judea and Samaria — predates Jordan by millennia and was even used by the United Nations in its own 1947 Partition Plan. Calling it the "West Bank" doesn't make the author neutral. It makes him a passive adopter of Jordanian colonial nomenclature.
He identifies the "Hilltop Youth" — the violent fringe responsible for settler attacks — as young people, many from troubled homes, numbering in the several hundred. He even acknowledges the IDF took down six outposts by force in response to their violence, demonstrating that the Israeli state actively opposes these actors. So by the author's own account, we are talking about a few hundred disaffected youth, not a systemic national policy of terror.
Apply that logic consistently. When a few hundred gang members commit crimes in New York City, we do not write essays titled "New York Has a Crime Problem" implying the entire city is morally compromised. We identify the criminals, note law enforcement's response, and move on. The author refuses to extend Israel that same basic analytical courtesy — and then uses it to construct an inflamed national indictment. The double standard becomes even more glaring when you consider what is entirely absent from this article. There is no equivalent piece titled "Palestinian Society Has an Extremism Problem" — despite the Palestinian Authority's Pay-to-Slay program, which is not a fringe phenomenon but official, budgeted government policy.
In Judea and Samaria right now, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are actively rebuilding the same terror infrastructure that made October 7 possible. The IDF's ongoing operations in Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams exist precisely because these areas are being used to plan and launch attacks. Dismissing this to write a profile of a few hundred troubled Israeli teenagers is not nuance — it is a deliberate inversion of proportionality.
Congratulations, Haviv. This piece will certainly earn you more appearances on the BBCs, CNNs, and Al Jazeeras of the media world — the same outlets that have spent years sanitizing Palestinian terror while holding Israel to standards applied to no other nation on earth. You've written exactly what they need. I've read your work for years, but after this — published on Yom HaShoah of all days — I no longer pay attention to you.
Everyone can make a mistake from time to time. Haviv, for all his fine qualities, is not immune. For those who care about reality, it has been skillfully presented by Gadi Taub in his recent Tablet article. Hopefully, Haviv will read it at some point and stop making a fool of himself:
'The entire narrative of the "wild hilltop youth" has been grotesquely exaggerated and dishonestly framed to make a mountain out of a mole hill.
'The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) maintains an online database of incidents involving settler violence. The NGO Regavim managed to obtain the spreadsheet that feeds into the UN database. The data was carefully analyzed by Gadi Taub in an essential essay that was published in Tablet (https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/settler-violence-myth). Here is a closer look at the "data": Of the 8,332 incidents of settler violence in that period, 2,047 of those incidents involve settlers as VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE. More gems:
'OCHA counts any Jewish pilgrimage to the Temple Mount, no matter how peaceful, as “settler violence.” It also classifies as settler violence clashes between Israeli security forces and rioting Muslims on the Mount, even when no Israeli civilians are involved. Also listed as violence are “tourists visiting archaeological sites, infrastructure work carried out legally by the State of Israel itself, traffic accidents,” and other common activities that in no way can be categorized as “settler” related or “violent.” ... “After filtering out thousands of irrelevant cases,” the report says, “only 833 incidents remain over a seven-and-a-half-year period—a mere 10 percent of the original list.”
So much for the myth of settler violence.
It was shockingly tone deaf.
There are no illegal Jewish communities. Enough with that language.
Frankly I'm sick of Zionist Jews feeling the constant need to explain Israel's case as if we owe the world an explanation for our existence and every action of every Israeli. Is any other country placed under such a microscope? Let the rest of the nations of the world clean up their own filthy houses and mind their own damn business about every aspect of Israeli society. They should stop channeling their own citizens attentions and anger away from their own internal problems, disfunctions and truly evil behavior onto Israelis who they lie about so they can feel morally superior when in reality they are morally bankrupt. The muslim countries and Europe have an inferiority complex and for good reason.
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"In fact, the reality points in the opposite direction. The Israel Defense Forces has dismantled illegal Israeli outposts".
A couple of years ago there was a legal dispute over who had legitimate title to a plot of land in Yehuda (aka the West Bank). Both the Jewish side and the Arab side claimed the other was using forged documents. Both sides tried to put “facts on the ground” to sway the court’s decision. So the army declared it a “closed military area” to keep things quiet until the court ruled on the case. My son’s reserve unit was sent to enforce the closure. He described their job as “keeping our crazies away from their crazies”.
My point is that both sides have too many “crazies” and that trying to deny that the problem exists isn’t going to solve it.
The article in the FP was written by the incredible Israeli journalist, history teacher, podcast host, and free press ME analyst, Haviv Rettig Gur. Listen to any of Haviv’s podcast episodes (ask Haviv anything), his interviews with Hugh Hewitt and all his articles in the fp to see what an outstanding thinker and protector of his country and the Jewish people he is. These violent fringe are extremists, what they’re doing is terrorism. They’re also extremely violent against IDF soldiers. I think Haviv is right on here, the government isn’t stopping the violence, that reflects on Israel as a whole. You can’t condemn and fight against Islamist terrorism, while turning a blind eye to Israeli terrorism, even if it’s coming from the extreme fringe in low numbers. Regardless of the history or who the land should belong to, violence is morally unacceptable in this case. Israel is better than this.
Am Yisrael Chai🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱
Everyone can make a mistake from time to time. Haviv, for all his fine qualities, is not immune. If you care about reality, it has been skillfully presented by Gadi Taub in his Tablet article. Read it and you can stop shadow boxing:
The entire narrative of the "wild hilltop youth" has been grotesquely exaggerated and dishonestly framed to make a mountain out of a mole hill.
The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) maintains an online database of incidents involving settler violence. The NGO Regavim managed to obtain the spreadsheet that feeds into the UN database. The data was carefully analyzed by Gadi Taub in an essential essay that was published in Tablet (https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/settler-violence-myth). Here is a closer look at the "data": Of the 8,332 incidents of settler violence in that period, 2,047 of those incidents involve settlers as VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE. More gems:
'OCHA counts any Jewish pilgrimage to the Temple Mount, no matter how peaceful, as “settler violence.” It also classifies as settler violence clashes between Israeli security forces and rioting Muslims on the Mount, even when no Israeli civilians are involved. Also listed as violence are “tourists visiting archaeological sites, infrastructure work carried out legally by the State of Israel itself, traffic accidents,” and other common activities that in no way can be categorized as “settler” related or “violent.” ... “After filtering out thousands of irrelevant cases,” the report says, “only 833 incidents remain over a seven-and-a-half-year period—a mere 10 percent of the original list.”
So much for the myth of settler violence.
Did you actually read that article, or know anything about the author, Haviv Rettig Gur? I understand the impulse to defend against the usually lazy and unjust narrative, but his career and writing isn't at all what I'd call leaning into that narrative.
Yes and yes.
It was still shockingly tone deaf.
Pretty good article. As an American the line " Look at the Democratic Party, which has many politicians openly committed to America’s destruction" says it all for me regarding this party and I agree that hyping a small minority in Israel as reflecting Israelis in general is journalistic malpractice. Also, no other country that I know of has endless external attacks as does Éretz Yisra'él.
"Words matter. Definitions matter."
Stop referring to Judea and Samaria as the West Bank — that is Jordan's name for the territory, imposed during its occupation of the land, a period during which Palestinians were barred from owning any of it. The people living there are not settlers — they are Chalutzim, pioneers. And these are not settlements — they are Yishuvim, communities where families live, work, and build their lives.
Diaspora Jews who fly to Israel and spend their time eating and drinking in Tel Aviv are tourists. They are not experiencing Israel — they are experiencing a Mediterranean city. The soul of Israel, the Israel being built with the same love of land and people that drove the Chalutzim after 1948, is in Judea and Samaria. That is where Jewish history lives and breathes. That is where families are planting roots in the same hills their ancestors walked. Every Jew who cares about the future of the Jewish people owes it to themselves to see it with their own eyes — not through the lens of media that can't even bring itself to use the right words for the land.
When the extremists hold effective control of the government - and they do in Israel - the country has an extremism problem. The minister in charge of the police is on the side of people committing crimes and preventing any enforcement of laws against them. I can easily imagine a future government (במהרה בימינו) reversing the situation, and then the country would at least have much less of an extremism problem.
“When the extremists hold effective control of the government - and they do in Israel”.
Sorry just because you make a claim doesn’t make it true.
Perhaps unlike some others, I absolutely concede the framing that (relative) extremists indeed hold some power in the ruling government coalition, no question.
But to claim that they have effective control is simply ludicrous and contrary to reality.
Gur seemed to break away from any fair reporting in his article. I wrote my comment in the Free Press, so I won't repeat what I said. However, it was obvious Gur's bias only naming two of Netanyahu's people as if the Left is free of sin and misguided decisions. And his description of the "Hilltop Youth as coming from broken homes alluded to why they were a renegade, violent group. Was there any ownership on the PA, on the homes illegally built by the Palestinians, inching their way into Israel controlled Judea and Samaria? No. They always get a pass. Israel doesn't pay Jewish residents to kill and maim Palestinians, but the PA is well known for doing so. It becomes tiresome when all the ownership for anything is on Israel and Israelis, and one side is full of sin, while the other is untouched. Gur needs to do better next time.
Yes, 100%.
I find this perspective refreshing. Since Israel is the world's substitutionary scapegoat its "crimes" are examined by its supporters as well as its foes. Yes, we decry settler violence to demonstrate that we are reasonable people capable of criticizing Israel.
Imagine that the world's press - or even the Canadian press - focused as much on First Nations communities in Canada that lack potable water as they do on the "West Bank". Would that define Canada in the eyes of the world?
Excellent calling out of Free Press' mainsteaming false tropes. Shame on the corporate sellout!
Did we not forget the Oslo agreement which divided up Judaea and Samaria. According to the world Area C is occupied/disputed territory. I would take a look at the organization Regavim to understand how much of the mislabeling of Jewish terrorism and how it is reported.
Israel currently controls less than 1% of the land mass controlled by its 32 neighboring Arab countries. God forbid that Jews increase their colonial empire to 2%!
If its only a few hundred individuals as you say then the IDF or Shin Bet should be able to easily take them down. The Shin Bet pretty much neutralized a far more dangerous and numerous Islamic Jihad. Is Netanyahu afraid to do it because of votes? These few hundred are apparently pretty good fighters. Why aren't they in the military? Are they Haredi draft dodgers?
Here, this is copied from the article that you clearly skimmed over.
But states fail to enforce laws perfectly all the time, especially in contested or semi-governed territories. That failure can stem from political constraints, bureaucratic friction, competing priorities, or operational complexity. None of that amounts to endorsement.
Also:
Israel is not managing this phenomenon in peacetime. It is doing so in the midst of a prolonged, multi-front conflict, where civilian populations are under threat and national attention is constantly pulled toward immediate security concerns. This does not justify lawlessness, but it does explain prioritization.
No, they are not charedi, and many not even religious although they claim to be , since they often attack Arabs on Shabbat which violates Jewish law.
It’s a small group of several hundred disaffected youth who in other countries would be part of inner city gangs running drugs and shooting each other.