Featured Post |
In recent weeks, a surge in settler violence in the West Bank has begun to capture the attention of an Israeli public that has largely remained indifferent to the devastating civilian toll in Gaza. Since January, Jewish extremists have killed seven Palestinians — most of them impoverished shepherds living on land long targeted by hilltop youth. These killings are only the most visible expression of a broader pattern of harassment and dispossession that has already driven thousands of Palestinians from land they have lived on, farmed, and grazed for decades.
One of the most shocking incidents occurred just last week. According to multiple witnesses, men, women, and children were handcuffed, beaten, stripped, and sexually assaulted. Reports of this attack have reverberated across parts of the religious Zionist community, prompting rare and urgent responses.
Yehuda Gilad, head of Yeshivat Ma’ale Gilboa, visited one of the affected villages alongside Rabbi Avidan Freedman, who has long warned of escalating settler violence. In a public letter, Rabbi Gilad described a “deeply unsettling experience,” comparing what he heard to the pogroms endured by Jews in exile, and asking: “Have we become like the worst of the nations?”
His words are deliberately piercing — an attempt to break through a thickening wall of indifference among both Israeli and American religious........