Returning to the Question of 'Who Told Them to Live There'

Since Friday afternoon of last week, there have been moments when the news reports nothing new. You read a headline, listen to commentators, scroll through posts on social media, and suddenly a strange feeling creeps in: we have been here before. Not in the same place, not at the same event, but in the same story. The same words, the same framing, the same good guys, and above all — the same bad guys.

It starts with a factual description, faithful to logic: an attack, a terrorist, a victim. But within a few hours, the focus of the discussion begins to shift. Less is said about the murderers and more about the question of what the victim was doing there. Less is said about the murderer's motives and more about the behavior of the victims. Why did they arrive? Why did they hike there specifically? Was it a provocation? Friction? Did they receive approval? Is their defiant presence what ignited the violence?

Slowly, the language also changes. The attack becomes an "incident." And not between Jews and Palestinian terrorists, but between "settlers" and "residents of the village" on whose outskirts the hikers were walking. This is not a murderous attack — it is a "confrontation," and then an "escalation." On the stage of Israeli media, a familiar central figure reappears: the settler. Not a specific settler, but "the settlers." An entire public.

And what characterizes this public? "Settler violence," "Jewish terror," "the farms," "the messianic ones." Again and again, the motif repeats: the source of the problem is not in the one who shot, but in the one who chose to live, hike, or travel on a route where an innocent bullet passes. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis are marked as the great problem of the region, as the source of the security danger, as those who might cause an explosion. Quite quickly, the claim returned that because of them, because of their messianism, soldiers are killed. This is not just a choice of words — this is a foolish shifting of the focus of responsibility, and it is low-level incitement against an entire public of citizens, many of whom are fighters, settlers, pioneers, women, men, and children.

The attack in the village of Tel on Friday was supposed to spark a simple and clear discussion: a terrorist murdered a Jew. What needs to be done to restore deterrence, so that Jews, including the "provocative" ones among them, can walk safely everywhere without being murdered? But within hours, we reached such a level of madness that there are entire wings of opinion and quite a few commentators who are sure that the source of the violence in Judea and Samaria is the settlers. That the factor undermining regional stability is the settlement. That if not for them — and if not for their "extremist" senders — the security forces of Israel would continue to graze in harmony alongside the security forces of the Palestinian Authority, thwarting terror and ensuring peace and calm for all. The discussion, therefore, moved to the question: what needs to be done to deter the settlers?

Influence operation

And if this nonsense sounds familiar to you — you are not wrong. This is exactly how the media and political discourse in Israel was conducted in the years preceding the disengagement. We have returned to similar terminology, to parallel expressions, to identical ideas. Remember how the settlers were described then, just after the Second Intifada was suppressed.

Return to the book that most of all marked the settlement enterprise as a criminal colonial project, "Lords of the Land" by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar. Watch the documentary series by Haim Yavin, "The Land of the Settlers," to remember how the settlements and settlers were marked as distant bubbles, disconnected geographically and mentally from the Israeli existence. The land of the crazy. The land of the lepers. Describing the settlers as bloodthirsty, racist, conscience-less, dark and violent fundamentalist freaks — that was the norm. They were marked as those who constitute a severe deviation from the Israeli consensus, the absolute negative of the normative Israeli.

This was also the approach that managed the institutional and media attitude toward the protest against the disengagement plan. The settlers were marked as a danger to public order and the rule of law. In the press, they called for suppressing their protest with an iron fist, and the enforcement system indeed took draconian, anti-democratic, violent measures to suppress a protest against a controversial political move.

The result was clear: in the Israeli public, empathy toward the evacuated settlers was extinguished, and ears were completely closed to the rational, strategic, correct arguments against the evacuation of the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria. Intentionally or not, the demonization of the settlers played a decisive function in preparing public opinion for the implementation of the disengagement plan. An influence operation.

Shortly after the disengagement, the then-all-Israeli journalist, Yair Lapid, wrote under the macabre title "Things that could not be said during the disengagement": "It was never about the Palestinians, about demographics, about the aspiration for a peace settlement... The motive was entirely different: it lies in the violation of the delicate balance that existed between the settler society and the Israeli society... It was decided to teach them a lesson in modesty, and perhaps also in democracy." It was not about the political dilemma — it was about the legitimacy of the settler public.

This is one of the oldest mechanisms in politics. Before asking the public to accept a controversial move, they change its attitude toward the people who might be harmed by it. Before arguing with their positions, they undermine their legitimacy. Before devaluing their arguments, they reduce empathy toward them. And when that is the image, it is much easier not to listen to them. It is much easier to see their protest as a threat, not a protest. It is much easier to justify exceptional measures against them, and it is much easier to carry out a dramatic move without the public feeling deep empathy toward those who pay its price.

The evacuation returns

Therefore, it is hard to ignore the similarity to the discourse heard in recent days against the settlers. I do not know if anyone is already drawing up plans for the day after the elections. I am not claiming that this discourse is indeed intended to prepare public opinion for another political move, but the statements of the heads of the "change bloc" parties — from Yair Lapid to Yair Golan, from Eisenkot to Bennett — indeed hint at the possibility of a radical change in approach. Given the willingness of these figures to obey the security elite and yield to international pressures, the fear spreading among the sober public is not unfounded.

The terrible demonization of the settlers, their systematic removal from the Israeli collective, their marking as the generators of evil in the region, and the building of emotional alienation toward them — contradict every humane norm of humanity, social cohesion, and statehood. But our not-so-distant historical experience teaches that the work of hatred paves the way for action. To the appearance of déjà vu.