I have watched the sunrise over Samaria’s olive-tree-filled hills for half of my life. Later, I moved south to Judea, where my children now argue about homework, where we complain about traffic, where a neighbor insists that Arsenal will finally win the league.
In other words, daily life in the settlements is mostly unremarkable, ordinary people raising large, often loud families, pouring themselves into classrooms, start-ups, synagogues, and soccer games.
Yet these perfectly normal rhythms have been drowned out this week by the crack of gunfire and the smell of burning tires.
On Thursday, masked Jewish rioters drove into the Palestinian village of Kafr Malik, set homes and cars ablaze, and, according to local officials, left three Palestinians dead and eight wounded before the army forced them out.
Two nights later, a similar mob turned on the very soldiers protecting them, pelting an IDF patrol and trying to torch a police outpost when six suspects were arrested.
No statistic can excuse that savagery, but some perspective is essential.
Settlers comprise roughly five percent of Israel’s population, yet, since October 7, have accounted for about 16% of fallen soldiers, a threefold over-representation on the front lines.
Reserve units from our towns have been depleted for months, leaving spouses to juggle toddlers and trauma drills alone.
Our teenagers still volunteer for Magen David Adom; our retirees still plant vineyards rather than uproot olive groves. That reality does not fit the lurid headlines of foreign news, but it remains the truth.
The violence, however, is also actual, and may be accelerating.
United Nations monitors counted more than 220 Palestinians injured by settlers so far this year, the highest monthly rate in two decades. Though as a journalist, I can never just look at one source of information to access reality, definitely not the UN when it comes to Israel.
According to a recent conservative Regavim organization study, which audited the UN’s OCHA database, the vast majority of the 8,332 supposed “settler-violence” incidents since 2016 were misclassified traffic accidents, IDF raids, or Palestinians hurt while attacking Israelis.
After cross-checking police files, the NGO said only two percent involved Jewish perpetrators, while Palestinian assaults and Israeli casualties were under-reported.
Regavim argued that these inflated figures, amplified by NGOs such as Yesh Din and uncritically reprinted by the media, fueled international sanctions, including recent travel bans on individuals and the prohibition of products from these areas in Ireland.
Hope after right-wing political leaders denounce far Right violence
What gives me hope is that the loudest condemnations now come from inside the right-wing ideological camp.
The first is that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called the latest riot “acts of lawlessness” and reminded the country that the perpetrators “do not represent the vast majority of settlers, who respect the law and serve in the IDF.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, hardly a shrinking dove, wrote that “anyone who raises a hand against IDF soldiers is fighting against the settlement movement, not for it.”
Defense Minister Israel Katz demanded swift arrests, declaring that violence against troops is a “red line” that must never be crossed.
Those words matter because they come from the identical podiums that young radicals claim to honor. When the most hawkish ministers brand such attackers as enemies of Zionism, no teenager can pretend he is defending the Land of Israel by torching another family’s tractor.
So why does the fringe fester? Some culprits are lost boys, kids expelled from one yeshiva after another, who find the belonging they crave in Telegram chatrooms and night-time convoys.
Others are adults drunk on messianic politics and idle time. Their numbers are tiny, but their cameras stream every flaming field to a cheering virtual gallery, transforming vandalism into viral theater. Just like any extreme group, they are over-represented in the media.
Policing alone will not cure the sickness, though it is non-negotiable; every suspect must face the same courts that the rest of us respect (and sometimes grumble about).
More decisive, though, is social surgery from within. Regional rabbis, youth-movement leaders, and Yesha Council officials must bar violent agitators from our synagogues, our schools, and our communal budget lines.
The message has to ring in young ears long before the next rumor of “revenge” spreads across encrypted phones: desecrating Jewish law, endangering soldiers, and humiliating the State is not heroism, rather hillul Hashem, a profanation of God’s name.
The Torah I learned in the hilltop yeshivot teaches a sterner love: “Hochei’ach tochiach et amitecha, v’lo tisa alav chet” - “Surely rebuke your fellow, so you do not share in his sin” (Leviticus 19:17).
That verse finds flesh and blood in the prophet Nathan, who dared to confront King David after the Bathsheba affair. Nathan walked into the palace, told a parable about a rich man stealing a poor man’s lone ewe, waited for David’s outrage, and then uttered the chilling words, “You are the man.”
His courage to rebuke power, not to appease it, forced the king to face his own transgression and restore justice. He was clear: “This is sin, and it must stop.”
Most families in Judea and Samaria will keep doing what they have always done: tending orchards, writing code, going to the park with their children, rushing to reserve duty, and praying for quieter nights. But if we do not isolate the arsonists who claim to act in our name, if we do not do it, not Brussels, not Washington, we will wake one morning to find the land we love scorched from the inside out.