In a well-timed move, the United States, Britain, and France separately imposed economic sanctions on four Israeli citizens living beyond the Green Line. The sanctions were imposed as part of the “settler violence” campaign. This campaign might be ramped up a notch sometime soon, once the 60 days that the Israeli government was given to respond to allegations of soldier brutality in Judea and Samaria expires.
Kalman Liebeskindi, writing in Maariv, and Ariel Kahane in Israel Hayom, exposed the lie underpinning the campaign and refuted the claims. It’s not that there is never any anti-Arab violence perpetrated by Jewish settlers. It’s just that the facts fall far short of what is being reported.
We must, therefore, ask: If the campaign is based on distortions and lies, how is it that it continues to be parroted by media reports along with “expressions of concern” on the part of American and European officials?
How the “settler violence campaign” came to be
The roots of the “settler violence campaign” are described succinctly in the book Ally: My Journey Across The American-Israeli Divide by the former Israeli ambassador to the United States, Dr. Michael Oren, which focuses on Oren’s tenure as ambassador under Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Barack Obama.
Oren describes how the murder of the Fogel family was received with shock and fear among Americans. The White House sharply condemned the murder. But, as in the case of the October 7 events, this shock wore off soon enough. The Itamar community, being right-wing religious, writes Oren, had been identified with the “settler violence campaign.”
The settlements, which were regarded as “illegitimate” by the Obama administration, and which are considered illegal by the United Nations, were perceived by broad swathes of international organizations to be fair game for attack.
Oren expressed his concerns to his advisers in the embassy that the entire settlement population had undergone a “Fogelization,” and had been stigmatized as “occupiers who deserve what they get.” Oren feared that Israel’s entire population might gradually undergo “Fogelization” and would eventually be perceived as “deserving the rockets being fired at it.”
This fear might have sounded far-fetched back in 2011, but merely 13 years later every Israeli citizen found out that this fear was far from being unfounded.
Responses following October 7
Obama’s belated response for the massacre, three whole days after October 7, already included a reference for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He wrote: “We must keep striving for a just and lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians alike.” A month later, he summed up the concept quite lucidly on a podcast: “What Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it. What is also true is that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable.”
There are those who hear, in this statement, the precursors of the Hamas-progressive propaganda strategy to the tune that “Gaza is an open-air prison.” Some would draw a straight line between this and the concept that “Palestinian resistance is left with no other option.”
It also seems that, to the former president’s chagrin, Israel and the Jewish people are too preoccupied with perpetuating the lessons of the Holocaust and with viewing the videos of the October 7 horrors. What was it Mohammed Darawsha told Channel 14’s newsman Yishai Friedman? “Religious Zionism… is dripping an ideological drug throughout the country.”
Except that now it’s not just the religious Zionists. Just as Oren foresaw, it’s anyone remembering the October 7 events and drawing actionable conclusions from them.
If anyone concludes that this is merely a cognitive war, they’re wrong. This is deliberate propaganda with a very tangible goal: to legitimize a Palestinian state throughout the territories of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, which will involve the evacuation of Jews from their homes. Once again.
The strategies behind such thinking
In order to realize such a hallucinatory scenario, extensive cognitive priming is required, and this is taking place through two strategies. One is the strategy of incrimination, a tried and true strategy. It’s been working for years already.
There are two target audiences for this strategy: The first is incriminating the settler population through a “settler violence campaign,” intended to make the Israeli public forget that these settlers are the first line of defense for Kfar Saba, the Sharon plain, and the entire center of the country.
The expected cognitive illusion is agreement to “sacrifice” the “problem settlers” while deluding ourselves that with this all our problems will be solved.
The second strategy involves the international community, which is expected to support ever-increasing measures against Israel and its citizens. This is the strategy of “silencing,” and for this we are seeing the sanctions being applied.
As former ambassador David Friedman wrote, the terms of the American sanctions apply to any Israeli who is opposed to a Palestinian state. At the moment, this accounts for 80% of Israel’s population, says Friedman. In other words, by writing this column I might be falling into the sanctions trap, as might every dinner table conversation and every newsroom utterance.
This affects not only free speech, it also means individual control over the actions of every Israeli, obviating Israel sovereignty and its judicial system.
Did you assemble outside Arab student dormitories in Netanya, in a manner they construed to be threatening? Did you demonstrate against your neighbors in Nof Hagalil, and did they contemplate moving away? Have you hung an Israel flag from your balcony in Tel Aviv’s Bavli neighborhood and hurt someone’s feelings?
There’s no way to be sure you haven’t crossed the line, or as Friedman put it: “Anyone who the State Department feels is hostile to the creation of a Palestinian terror state, could wake up morning and find his funds frozen at his local bank!”
What is most outrageous is that there are those inside Israel who, by design or ignorance, go along with this campaign. Never mind if these are ignorant, private individuals writing things like, “Let the Americans do our work for us,” not realizing that the joke is entirely on them.
But when the IDF spokesman anonymously briefs against “settler violence,” thereby stimulating the media reports disproportionately, this amounts to moral bankruptcy. It’s part of a misguided, distorted concept. It leads us all down the path to “Fogelization,” whether this be in Judea and Samaria, the Gaza border communities, the Galilee, Golan, Jerusalem, or Tel Aviv.
The roles of leaders and moving forward
Our decision-makers have got to come to their senses immediately. They must understand that the “settler violence campaign,” which has been waged for over a decade against Israel, sometimes with insider help, has got to be stopped immediately.
We have to direct all our outreach resources to undermining the “inner logic” of this campaign. Politicians, military men, and the Israeli media should under no circumstances entertain it. If we fail to make a steadfast stand, we are going to find that (once again) our blood is fair game, and that (once again) this has come to pass with active support from our very selves.
One final anecdote. In his book, Oren tells how he was shocked when president Obama refused to make a comparison between Hamas and al-Qaeda. I wonder if he accepts the parallel between Hamas and the Nazis.
The writer is a member of the Israel Defense and Security Forum, a Zionist activist, social entrepreneur, and media personality.
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