The Religious Settlers: Instrument of Israeli Domination
Israel Shahak
Dr. Shahak, Holocaust survivor, and retired professor of chemistry at Hebrew
University in Jerusalem, is chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights.
The Rabin government's support of the Jewish settlements in general and of the religious
settlers in particular can be defined as two crucial issues of both current Israeli politics and the
peace process. Only via a formal inquiry is it possible to find out what the Israeli government
does to support settling and to protect the settlers even when on a rampage. The more
perceptive Hebrew press commentators realized long ago that Rabin is no less zealous than
Shamir in safeguarding the interests of all Jewish settlers in the territories, but with more
circumspection.
Also clearly noticed have been the contradictions between Rabin's policies and his support for
the Oslo Agreement with the PLO. Both points were elaborated by Meron Benvenisti
(Haaretz, November 11, 1993). After Rabin's amicable meeting with leaders of the religious
settlers on November 10, which occurred right after strident demonstrations under the slogan
"Rabin is a traitor," Benvenisti observed that "for all the differences in the ideology the chasm
between the two positions is not as deep as some would like to depict it," yet in practice they
"cannot be easily reconciled, especially during the present stage of negotiations with the PLO."
In substantiation of his thesis, Benvenisti points to "the extraordinary generosity with which the
government keeps disbursing money to the settlers for all their daily activities, which include
their anti-Arab demonstrations and acts of vandalism against Arab property. The gasoline
fueling their cars is used for burning the tyres blocking the highways" (and, as other sources
describe, Arab property as well.) "The settlers also use their radio equipment, paid for by the
government, to coordinate their blockades." They receive salaries [too many to describe here],
all of them "defrayed by lavish supplies of money from the very same government which they
detest so fiercely." More curiosities of the same kind will be described later, in the context of
discussing the U.S. support for Rabin's policies toward the settlers.
Even earlier than Benvenisti, the military correspondent of Hadashot, Alex Fishman (October
20), described
a pattern of cooperation which has evolved in the territories between the [Israeli]
army and the Jewish settlers. The Defense Ministry and the regional commands
[of the Israeli army] have established full partnership with the settlers in seeking
solutions to the latter's survival and security problems in the interim period. In
every settlement the Security Coordinators were asked to prepare documentation
concerning their security problems.. . . Senior officers from the Commands are
visiting every settlement. Every documentary file is checked with the settlers. . . .
All settlements are cooperating with the [Israeli] government after coming to the
conclusion that the two sides now have common interests. After all, the settler
files provide Israel with data to be used in the Taba negotiations. Even more
important, the settlers and the government are united in their resolve to tolerate in
the interim five-year period no precedent that might hurt the [Jewish] settlement
cause.
Fishman concludes, rightly in my view, that "the status quo with regard to Jewish settlement has
become an iron wall surrounding them." The concept of an "iron wall" has been borrowed from
a historic article by Zeev Jabotinsky, the ideological founding father of Likud, published as long
ago as 1925. For whole decades it was regarded by the entire Zionist Labor movement with
genuine or faked revulsion. The iron wall means that the Zionist state should behave like a
feudal lord dominating his realm by means of his heavily armored knights intervening from
behind the walls of an impregnable castle in order to maintain a status quo or a "custom" even
when the behavior is incompatible with medieval notions of "justice."
The case of the settlement Netzarim is particularly instructive. It was described in detail by
Nahum Barnea (Yediot Ahronot) as early as October 1, 1993. Netzarim is a decaying kibbutz
now inhabited mostly by Gush Emunim extremists, who are not doing any work. They just
study the Talmud, for which they have all their expenses covered by the government. The few
"farmers" among them are really overseers of workers brought from Thailand. As Barnea
explains it, the "original intention" of founding Netzarim
was to wedge a Jewish settlement between Gaza and the huge refugee camps
located south of it, which in the Israeli army's lingo are called "the camps of the
center." Like an isolated fortress, the kibbutz is surrounded from all sides by huge
chunks of Arab-populated land. It is separated from the Jewish-populated areas
both in Israel and in the Katif Bloc.
As gleefully explained by "a senior in the [Israeli] Security System charged with overseeing
arrangements for the Israeli army withdrawal from the concentrations of Palestinian
population," the Oslo Agreement promotes this scheme, because it
stipulates that all settlements are to stay on, so that every single settlement turns into a
fortress of military value. Had Netzarim been merely an Israeli army base, the
Palestinians could demand its abandonment, along with other bases located in the midst
of densely inhabited chunks of the Gaza Strip that the army is going to abandon. But
since Netzarim is plainly defined on the map as a kibbutz, the Israeli presence is assured
there. The Israeli army can use it for effectively establishing its presence between the
city of Gaza and "the camps of the center."
Hence, concluded the officer, "had Netzarim not existed, it should have been invented,"
because it makes it legal "to turn this settlement into a roadpost concealing the fortress
containing sizable Israeli army forces." Barnea is right when he concluded that Netzarim, "may
yet become a pattern of things to come." His predictions were fulfilled during the ensuing
negotiations up to the Cairo Agreement, in all of which Israel had firmly insisted on retaining
Netzarim. Rabin-government support for settlements has the effect of encouraging the Gush
Emunim settlers, who are ready to settle in places like Netzarim, where their less zealous
brethren are unwilling to go.
The best overview of Rabin's settling policies can be found in an article by Yair Fidel
(Hadashot, October 29):
The settlers, whose numbers amount to no more than 2.4 percent of the Israeli
population, received in 1993 12 percent of municipal budgets. This largesse for
the local councils in the territories has a consequence: almost half of all the
settlers are civil servants, receiving salaries from the government either directly or
via the local councils. According to a rough estimate prepared by government
ministries [but not published], about 45 percent of Jews residing in the territories
are employed in the public sector. For comparison, according to the data of the
Central Bureau of Statistics, the percentage of public-sector employees in Israel
amounts to 25 percent. True, in some populous settlements located near
Jerusalem or along the Green Line, the percentage of civil servants is close to the
latter figure. Most residents of such towns and settlements hold ordinary jobs
inside Israel, and their social profile does not differ much from other Israeli Jews.
But this means that in hard-core ideological settlements of Gush Emunim, the
percentage of civil servants on the state's payroll is much higher.
There exist quasi-official estimates which appraise the proportion of the religious settlers who
really are state employees at about 70 percent. In my view, if all employees of all kinds of
religious institutions (which are also financed by the state of Israel) were added to this figure,
the estimate might be as high as 90-95 percent. The figure becomes credible through the simple
expedient of taking a walk in Kiryat Arba in order to roughly compare the number and the size
of local businesses with the size of the town and the number of its inhabitants.
Here is my own personal testimony on how the Israeli government winks at fictitious
occupations for the religious settlers (letter-to-the-editor, Davar, November 15).
I happen to live near the residence of the Prime Minister, and I use this as an
opportunity for regular talks with the religious settlers from the territories who
keep demonstrating in front of that residence. Customarily, I ask them a question:
"Since you will get back home in the territories long after midnight, how will you
be able to work tomorrow?" Their answers do not leave doubt that their
"occupations" are one big fiction. They may be nominally defined as a job in a
local, regional or any other council, in a yeshiva, in an association for studying the
Talmud, or some other fiction may be invented: but the fact remains that no one
could care less whether such an "employee" reports to work in the morning or
doesn't. The masses of Gush Emunim militants are on the state payroll for just
being what they are. Rabin is supplying his worst enemies with money extracted
from our pockets.
Last summer the religious settlers demonstrated for an entire week on the "Hill of
Roses" opposite the Knesset. I went to meet them there. I passed by a religious
settler talking to one of the handful of secular settlers from the Golan Heights. The
former asked the latter: "Why are hardly any from the Heights here?" "Because
we are busy harvesting cotton," he answered. The Gush Emunim militant then
commented: "Harvesting money in government ministries is more profitable than
harvesting cotton."
My conclusion was,
Rabin has done nothing to halt the torrent of money to the religious settlers, nor
the torrent of lies about their supposed jobs. Rabin's generosity still makes it
possible for the religious settlers to live their parasitic lives, and it provides them
with enough free time and resources to organize their demonstrations against him.
For these reasons, the political power of the religious settlers should be regarded as much
greater than their numbers. I anticipate their influence on actual Israeli policies as remaining high
under the Rabin government. Let me give an example. The most important single freedom
which the Palestinians won as a result of the Israel-PLO agreement was the right to display
their flag and other national emblems. Yet on November 12, 1993, Hillel Cohen could report
(Kol Hair) that "in the entire city of Hebron one cannot see a single Palestinian flag on display."
Why? Because the religious settlers of Kiryat Arba and Hebron itself, immediately assault any
house or even a whole neighborhood where this flag can be seen, smash the windows and
other property, beat the people indiscriminately, often right in front of the Israeli soldiers.
Violent assaults upon the Palestinians in the territories are in the overwhelming majority
perpetrated by Jewish religious settlers, and they have two peculiarities. In the first place, these
assaults are overtly and avowedly aimed at innocent, randomly chosen individuals or groups of
people. Their avowed "purpose" is either "to relieve the feelings of distress of the assaulters," or
"to teach the Arabs a lesson," or somehow to "influence" the Palestinian population to prevent
future violence. (The first of these rationalizations is recognized by the Israeli government as
valid.) Regardless of whether the assaults cause injury to persons or "only" to property, they
imply the recourse to violence against innocent bystanders for the sake of a political purpose.
As such they can be regarded as acts of terror. The organizations responsible for these assaults
are in my view terroristic organizations, even though they are perfectly legal and generously
assisted financially and otherwise by the Israeli government.
Accordingly, the Israeli government, which not only tolerates the violence in question but also,
as will be shown below, abets it, can only be defined as a terror-supporting government.
(When Israel accuses the governments of Syria or Iran of "supporting terror" it uses exactly the
same argument.) Let me refer here to the criteria by which terror is defined by Benjamin
Netanyahu, the Likud leader, as quoted by Amnon Abramovitz (Maariv, August 6, 1993).
Abramovitz borrowed the definition from the book bearing the title How the West Can Win
, which Netanyahu edited in the late 1970s. In a preface he
himself wrote, Netanyahu defined terror as "violence aimed at people who have no connection
with the aims of the terrorists." He also claims that "the terrorists consciously and deliberately
choose the civilians as their targets," that they "threaten and intimidate the civilians in order to
thus achieve a political aim," and that "for a terrorist the civilians are the key concept." As will
be shown below, these definitions fit settler terrorism to perfection.
Let me begin the description and analysis of typical incidents of settler terrorism with an article
by Haolam Haze correspondent Amit Gurevitz (November 17), which deserves extensive
coverage. Gurevitz happened to do his reserve service in a paratrooper unit stationed in
Hebron shortly before he wrote his article, which draws much from the author's personal
experience, including his conversations with fellow soldiers, most of whom proudly defined
themselves as voters for the right-wing Likud and Tzomet parties, and who yet professed their
loathing of religious settlers of the Hebron area. Some of them confided to him,
They terminated their service with hard feelings, not about the Arabs but about
the settlers. The unit's officers circulated among the soldiers a petition, intended to
be submitted to the Defense Ministry. The petition deplored the hostile attitude
toward them by the very settlers they were ordered to protect.
The article appeared shortly after a Hamas guerrilla assault resulted in the killing of a religious
settler, Ephraim Ayubi, who worked as the driver of Rabbi Druckman, one of the most
extreme Gush Emunim leaders. This is why Gurevitz is careful to point out at the beginning of
his article that
according to the unanimous view of the unit's officers, duly reported to the area's
commanders, the murder of Ephraim Ayubi was a retaliation for the settlers'
rampages, in the course of which the settlers burned fifteen Arab-owned cars in a
single day. That arson, not reported in the Israeli media at all [except for a very
short and hard-to-find note in Haaretz], took place one day before the murder.
Right after this arson, the soldiers were told by their higher-ups to "expect an
Arab retaliation."
Although the most publicized (especially by the U.S. press) exploits of settler terrorism do
follow acts of violence by Palestinian guerrilla units, their retaliatory character is in doubt. As in
Ayubi's case, they may provoke the Palestinians to retaliate. This is acknowledged by the
internal communications of the Israeli army, which often admit that a given action of Palestinian
guerrillas was "a retaliation." But in Israeli (let alone U.S.) propaganda, Palestinian violence is
invariably described as "unprovoked" by anything which the settlers or the Israeli government
may have done.
Gurevitz quotes a unit officer:
"When we had to intervene in a skirmish between the Arabs and the settlers, I felt
more secure when my back was turned to the Arabs than to the settlers. The
unit's officers and soldiers have serious grievances, both about the nature of their
assignments and about the attitudes of the Jews toward them. . . . About the Jews
living in Hebron they say: 'Their behavior towards the Arabs is intentionally
provocative.' They consciously sabotaged our work. For example, they always
knew in advance which Hamas members we sought to arrest, but they obstructed
our searches so that we would fail to capture the hard-core terrorists. They are
interested in keeping tension in the area, so as to prevent the emergence of any
reconciliatory mood. The settlers have a vested interest in perpetuating unrest, in
order to thus prove that despite the peace process, in Hebron there is no order.
We got the impression that they were ready to die for that purpose. In their eyes,
their own death would be a martyrdom for the cause of sabotaging the political
process."
The soldiers testify that the settlers often harass Hebron Arabs in front of the
Israeli army troops. They overturn the crates in the market, kick the elderly Arabs
carrying the baskets, spit at people, spray insecticides on fruits and vegetables,
overturn the carts loaded with tomatoes so as to crush them underfoot.
Particularly shocking for the soldiers was an incident in which the settlers
screamed "Mazal Toy!" [Good Luck! in Hebrew] at an Arab family burying their
child in front of an army equipment camp near Beit Hadassah.
But as the unit's officers and soldiers testify, the attitude of the settlers toward the
Israeli army soldiers was no less scandalous. Even those soldiers who had had
feelings of sympathy for the Jewish settlers when they began to serve, were
saying, "This is what bothers us most." I know that this view is shared by the
commanders of a reserve unit which preceded our paratrooper unit in serving on
the spot. It is also shared by many soldiers with whom I spoke, including the
steadfast voters for [the right-wing] Likud and Tsomet parties. All of them
stressed how shocked they were by the settlers' attitude toward both the Arabs
and the Israeli army, and by their attempts to disrupt the army's routines. No
wonder the soldiers began to ask themselves whose side the settlers were on, and
whom the army was protecting. All the events desribed here have been reported
to the area's permanent military commanders, including the commander of the
"Hebron brigade" of the Israeli army, Colonel K.
One of the unit's major assignments in Hebron was the guarding of the Patriarchs' Cave, a
prayer site for both the religious settlers and the Muslims:
B. R., a unit soldier who in the last elections voted for Tzomet recounts: "Most of
us served in this area for the first time. We came without prejudice. . . . In the
Patriarchs' Cave, administered by the Islamic Waqf, the settlers keep trying hard
to disrupt the officially imposed status quo between the Jews and the Arabs. For
example, they enter Jacob's Hall before the 40 minutes of [officially imposed]
break between the Jewish and Muslim prayers are up. They bring food there,
which is against the regulations. Some of those who guard the Patriarchs' Cave
are religious 'Hesder Yeshiva' soldiers. But even they report how the settler
children keep spraying acid and scattering thumb-tacks on the carpets of that
Hall. The Muslims now have no choice but to collect the thumb-tacks with a
magnet before beginning to pray."
Let me omit other disturbing facts in Gurevitz's description in order to concentrate on what is
crucial in his article: namely on the reasons for which the soldiers cannot call the religious
settlers to order. These reasons are not often discussed by Hebrew papers now supporting
Rabin. But Gurevitz was told by a unit officer that "the soldiers are forbidden to arrest a Jew,
except if he hits a soldier or injures an Arab by shooting in the presence of an Israeli army
soldier." Beating the Arabs, or humiliating them otherwise, or vandalizing their property before
the very eyes of the army soldiers is not regarded as "a sufficient reason" for arresting a settler.
Let me add that no Jew can be arrested if he does the same. A rule to this effect has remained
in force for many years, but has never been announced in public. It is explicitly communicated
only to high-ranking officers. Gurevitz quotes
another officer, T., who complained that he had never received adequate
explanations from the permanent commanders of the area what the standard
procedure is by which the Jews are never arrested. . . . An Arab is sent to jail the
minute he is seen to throw a stone. But the settlers throw stones with impunity, or
else they send girls or women to throw stones or to overturn peddlers' carts in the
market, because they know that according to army regulations we are forbidden
to have physical contact with Jewish women, so we can do nothing against them.
. . . Another of the settlers' tricks is to pretend to play football, the real purpose
of the supposed game being to smash street lamps or windows in Arab houses.
That story by Gurevitz, which happened to be published in the Hebrew press, is by no means
an isolated instance. Hanna Kim (Hadashot, November 9) inspected a roadblock set up by
religious settlers from the settlement of Yaqir, where
a local hero, Yehuda, nicknamed by his neighbors "Crazy Yehuda" revelled in all
his glory. "Do you want to watch how an Arab gets burned alive? Just point your
camera at me," he boasted to the reporters. . . . A bus of Arab workers arrived
and Crazy Yehuda yelled that he would not let it pass through. He screamed at
the (Jewish) driver: "You little parasite, take your Arabs back. Get me some fire,
so that I can burn you all," and got on the bus. The stunned Arab passengers
stared at him in silence. Two chums of Yehuda took him away from the bus, one
of them telling him to "shut up." Two conscript soldiers, one of them a lieutenant,
and two reservists without indication of rank, were watching it unruffled.
"Because of them, I was wakened up at 2:00 a.m.," one of the reservists
explained. "Isn't it enough that I have 23 days more to serve in the West Bank, in
Tulkarm? Do I need to do this as well?" The term "to do" was inappropriate as
the reservist remained seated throughout. At a moment of quiet, the religious
settlers talked to Kim. Crazy Yehuda told her that "they should be exterminated
just as we [the Israelites] had exterminated the Amalekites. [see Samuel I,
Chapter 15.] Not only the males, but entire families, and their descendants no
matter how remote. You just have to seek out all the descendants."
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