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| Video of settlers seems to show an incident where a Palestinian was killed (TOI) |
Some of the worst perpetrators of evil against the Jewish people are the religious fanatic settlers who insist on living in areas of the West Bank that are densely populated by Palestinians.
Please do not misunderstand. Compared to the savage animals of Hamas, they are saints. But with respect to the rest of Jewish people, they are evil. Even as they believe they are being righteous. (Oh… how extreme righteousness is responsible for so much pain in the world. But I digress.)
The Times of Israel reports that a few days ago a Palestinian was shot to death by one such settler. That settler claims it was self defense. Which seems to be backed up by a video of that Palestinian hurling rocks at him and fellow settlers taking a Shabbos walk together.
One can debate whether shooting a rock thrower is justifiable homicide. Rocks thrown with great force at someone’s head can surely kill them. But even if that’s true, shooting an unarmed Palestinian at the very least looks bad.
In my view the very fact that extremist settlers are there in the first place makes them evil. Doing so makes them a clear and present danger to all of Klal Yisroel. They exacerbate the hatred that is already there. Palestinians that have lived in those areas for generations fear being expelled. A legitimate fear considering that is precisely the goal of those settlers.
These settlers have taken it upon themselves to settle all he land of Israel given to the Jewish people as the Torah tells us. They believe they are fulfilling a commandment worth of dying for - and certainly killing Arabs for – if that is the price they must pay for that ‘Mitzvah’.
To be absolutely clear (and as I must have said a million times by now) any bible believing individual knows that we, the Jewish people, have a God given right to settle all the land of Israel. But that right is not absolute. Especially when it endangers their own lives as well of the lives of the rest of world Jewry.
What these extremist settlers fail to understand is that until Moshiach comes this Mitzvah is canceled when it puts one’s life at risk. Which in this case puts the entirety of Israel at risk – if not the entirety of the Jewish people.
It gives our enemies cover to say that we are all terrorists out to expel indigenous Palestinian Arabs from their ancestral homes. Which then justifies their resistance - including that of Hamas. It also adds to the world’s perception that the most religious looking Jews among us (i.e. those wearing their Tzitzis out; wearing large Kipas; and having the longest Peyos) are ethnically cleansing the holy land of its indigenous peoples.
The last thing we need do right now is give the rising tide of antisemitism any justification. Nor does it help when the world – including Israel’s biggest supporter, the US - considers those settlements to be illegal. If nothing else, the optics of settlers walking around with rifles hanging over their shoulders among unarmed Palestinians makes us look like the terrorist that Palestinians accuse us all of being.
Images like that at a time when Israel is at war with evil and the massive collateral damage that results gives additional ammunition to our enemies to call Israel’s fight for existence - genocide. That is the knee-jerk reaction when Israel drops bombs on highly populated areas and thousands of Palestinians are maimed and/or killed. Regardless of the fact that their legitimate targets were Hamas and the civilian casualties are the direct responsibility of Hamas embedding themselves in densely populated civilian areas.
Israel has no choice. But the optics are not in Israel’s favor as the world looks on and sees the sheer numbers of Palestinians being killed.
What Israel is doing is of course NOT genocide. If anyone is guilty of genocide it is Hamas for putting masses of their own people in harm’s way. And if God forbid, Hamas were to win this war, the world will soon be reminded of what genocide really is.
Nonetheless, the Jew hatred that has surfaced because of the war is huge and widespread. True - it has always been there under the surface. But the war has given these antisemites cover to come out into the open. In some cases, expressing it maliciously and with deadly violence.
I still firmly believe that by far, the majority of the American people are not antisemitic and are in fact philosemitic. On the other hand those that are antisemitic are a very sizable minority. Much bigger than I had ever imagined. Both from the right and from the left. The one thing extremists on the right and the left have in common is their hatred of the Jewish people. They both applaud Hamas’s goal to exterminate us.
So when settlers live in heavily populated Palestinian areas on the West Bank, they are exacerbating the hated that is already there. They are in effect pouring gasoline on to a raging fire.
Condemning them, therefore is not enough.
The last thing Israel should do is arm those settlers as they have now done. I realize that they are in greater danger than ever now because of the war with Hamas and need to have the means to defend themselves. But that is not a solution. It will only increase the likelihood of more incidents like the abovementioned one.
In my view the Israeli government should tear down those settlements and from now on, forbid any civilian from living there. They should be replaced by the military with strict instructions not to harass local Palestinians in any way. And that only if they are attacked with deadly force should they respond in kind. Furthermore, there ought to be cameras everywhere to make sure that any Palestinian killed by an IDF solider was done in self defense.
If those settlers resist with any sort of violence, they should be considered insurrectionists or traitors. And if convicted placed in jail for a very long time.
If I were in charge, that’s what I would do. But as things stand now, I do not see the government of Israel doing that right now even if they wanted to. They are busy doing something else that needs their full attention.
So those terrible optics of gun toting religious Jewish fanatics whose open goal is to settle all of the land of Israel will continue attempting to do that. Which will only increase the bloodshed of our own people. Both in Israel and around the world. And cause our friends – including the US - to become more critical of us than ever – when we need their support the most.