WhatsappI have been speaking out against the manipulated campaign of “settler violence” for years. With it returning to the headlines due to what happened over Shabbat, I want to provide a comprehensive overview of the issue for people to better understand.
I know the hilltop youth, that include guys and girls, not just teenage boys. Not from afar, but up close, while serving in uniform in this war patrolling the Judean Hills.
Yes, many are young teenagers. Some come from broken homes. Some push boundaries. Many are not even from Judea and Samaria. But they do not hate the IDF. They proudly serve in the IDF when they reach draft age. Sometimes their actions go to far, and anyone who does so must be punished for doing so, but the rare mistakes of a few do not justify branding an entire movement of modern-day Maccabees, literally on the frontline of Israel and the Jewish people, as violent extremists or terrorists.
I’ve met them, spoken with them, spent Shabbatot alongside them, and even experienced tense encounters with them during my IDF service.
Why tense? Because there’s a built-in friction between a structured army operating under strict orders and constraints, and fearless, idealistic teenagers who have chosen to live unarmed on isolated hilltops, surrounded by hostile Arab Muslim villages, where the IDF often has limited operational freedom. The army, armed and reactive, arrives after the threats.
These youth, without weapons, live proactively — herding sheep, planting crops, and establishing Jewish presence where no one else dares, creating deterrence and saving land the state has abandoned. They do the very things the army cannot, and too often, will not do.
Many of these teenagers have a level of responsibility and discipline that most parents would dream for their teenagers to have. All while they are still teenagers.
But especially in this war, while patrolling and defending Judea and Samaria, I’ve witnessed firsthand who they are: fearless, principled, and proud Jews, risking their lives every day not for fame, not for pay, but for Am Yisrael and Eretz Yisrael.
These young pioneers are not violent criminals. They are the front line of Jewish resilience.
They live in caravans or self-built homes, on remote hills surrounded by Arab villages, cultivating the land with agriculture, herding sheep and goats, patrolling in the middle of the night without weapons, and planting Jewish presence in the empty lands of Judea & Samaria to stop the dangerous land grab of the Palestinian Authority Fayad plan that has encroached around many Jewish towns in Judea & Samaria, endangering our lives, over the years.
Many of these hilltop youth go where the IDF hardly goes. They protect lands to act as a deterrent force where Jews are murdered, where Arab Muslim enemies plan ambushes, and where every day, terror attempts are thwarted—not by drones or intelligence—but by Jewish youth watching the hills, and yes, every once in a while acting like Middle Easterners and making an Arab Muslim village pay a price for the terror that emanates from their residents.
That may unsettle Western sensibilities, but in reality, when terror attacks from certain villages threaten Jewish lives day after day, and the IDF does not stop it as Jews are routinely stoned, wounded, or even murdered just for driving home or driving to a hospital to give birth, it is the vigilante response of the hilltop youth that creates the only real deterrence. Because like it or not, in the Middle East, deterrence is not built on restraint, it’s built on fear of consequences, something the IDF is held back from doing properly day after day in Judea & Samaria to truly protect us.
With no weapons, these youth cultivate the land, herd sheep and goats, and establish a Jewish presence in the vacant stretches of Judea and Samaria, areas the Palestinian Authority has been aggressively stealing for years through the Fayad Plan. The presence of these hilltop youth on these farms and outposts is critical, especially in regions where the IDF barely operates.
These hilltop youth patrol the hills, sometimes in coordination with the IDF and sometimes uncoordinated, serving as human deterrents in places where Jews are routinely ambushed, stoned, and even murdered. The IDF does not do enough to stop the daily terror in Judea & Samaria, to deter our enemies properly. Every day there are unreported terror attacks against us.
On the other hand, these youth provide a deterrence by their presence, and pushing potential terrorists away from the established cities and towns.
We live in a reality with daily terror attacks that go unreported in the media, daily attacks that the IDF operations today are not always able to stop. Hence, on rare occasions, these hilltop youth respond like Middle Easterners, delivering a price tag to villages that terror emanates from. It may make Western sensibilities uncomfortable, but this is the Middle East. And when a known village constantly has terrorists who continuously commit terror attacks that kill or injure innocent Israelis just driving home or to a hospital to deliver a baby, these youth, and not just youth, make the headlines when sending that village a message, a message that today’s IDF is not able to make.
It is also imperative for people to understand that the libel of “settler violence” is not based on reality. It is a deliberate, strategic smear campaign.
It’s been pushed for years by left-wing NGOs funded by foreign European governments, designed to delegitimize Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria and to push the failed two-state solution. This is all documented meticulously in Regavim’s latest report, False Flags and Real Agendas. Just google it or click on the link in the comments below.
Now, let’s deal with the incident that made the news from this past Shabbat.
The irony is overwhelming. Follow this…
When the IDF is accused of killing Arab civilians, wether in Judea, Samaria, or even in Gaza during this war, the IDF almost always either immediately issues apologies and/or promises thorough investigations to then update the world. But, on Friday night, when a 14-year-old unarmed Jewish boy was shot by live IDF fire, without warning, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit rushed out a press statement at 1:30AM blaming the hilltop youth within minutes, and driving a whole media campaign calling these youth “terrorists”.
Then, over the next 24 hours, the IDF spokesperson unit had to continuously retract statements, make new statements, all while a thorough investigation still has not been finished, as I write this on Thursday!
There have been plenty of various pieces of information, but the IDF still does not know exactly what happened, and who is responsible for a 14 year old Jewish kid getting shot at by live fire, something that should never happen. Yet, the media campaign against “settler violence” was fierce from the moment we woke up on Sunday morning, and continues to be fierce.
And then, just as public outrage began to spread over the unjustifiable use of live fire against a 14-year-old Jewish boy, suddenly, headlines shifted. Reports surfaced claiming that “hilltop youth” had torched and destroyed an IDF security building. Overnight, the narrative flipped: instead of focusing on the fact that a security force opened fire on an unarmed Jewish teen, the media and political establishment redirected public anger at these young Jews, accusing them of vigilantism and attacking the very institutions meant to protect us.
Now, if some youth are truly responsible, they should be arrested and held accountable. But here we are, it’s already Thursday, and not a single arrest has been made. So do I believe these youth actually did it? No. I don’t. And here’s why.
I’ve been exposing the manipulative tactics of the Shabak’s Jewish Division since the 1990s. This isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s a documented pattern. For decades, they have manufactured provocations and events to demonize the right-wing, religious, settler community. They’ve embedded undercover agents, some of whom went so far as to marry women and raise families in Judea and Samaria, all to infiltrate and undermine our communities from within, as if we were an enemy population.
The most infamous example? Avishai Raviv, code name “Champagne.” A Shabak agent who orchestrated violent scenes with Jewish “settler” youth, only to film them and spread them through national news outlets, painting settler youth as extremists intent on killing former Prime Minister Rabin. At a right-wing protest, he personally held up Nazi-themed posters of Rabin in a SS uniform , that to this day the mainstream media blames Netanyahu for, that the media claimed this proved settlers were inciting murder. Raviv was the handler of Yigal Amir. And despite his central role in so many events surrounding the incitement and eventual assasination of former Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, the Justice system made sure that he walked away untouched. No accountability. No punishment.
This is all public record.
Then there’s the infamous case of the Jewish teenager imprisoned for allegedly murdering an Arab Muslim baby by setting fire to a home in the Arab village of Duma. From the beginning, there was no concrete evidence proving that this young Jewish boy infiltrated the heart of an Arab village in the dead of night to commit arson. What is well-documented, however, is a long history of internal Arab clan violence within Duma, violent feuds that included torching each other’s property.
Yet despite the lack of proof against the Jewish youth, and despite the broader context being completely ignored, that Jewish teen was convicted and remains in prison to this day, broken, physically and emotionally. A scapegoat for a deep state within our security and legal establishment, determined to delegitimize the right-wing, religious, settler population as “violent”, yet not to seek truth.
And it’s exactly because of instances like these why I question the story being pushed today about this past Shabbat. The manipulation hasn’t stopped, it’s just gotten more sophisticated in order to push the horrible “settler violence” campaign.
So, I do not believe every news item that delegitimizes the right-wing, religious, settler population.
As one security coordinator from a nearby settlement said about the hilltop youth after the incident this past Shabbat:
“They cause chaos sometimes, yes. But nothing comes close to their effectiveness against Arab terrorism. The Arabs in Al-Mughayyir aren’t scared of the army, but they’re terrified of these guys.”
This security coordinator gets called out on Shabbat, during holidays, and even admits they’ve been reckless at times. But then he said something powerful:
“Donate to them. Because they are securing the land. No brigade has liberated more land since the Yom Kippur War than they have in order to protect us.”
That’s the truth few are willing to say out loud.
These youth are the spiritual heirs of those who built Tel Aviv, Degania, and Hebron.
Even commanders in the army who work with them admit it:
“They patrol more than we do. They alert us to suspicious activity. We coordinate where they place farms to create security buffers. We even send engineering equipment to open roads for them.”
In one sector, the IDF literally gave these youth radios, food, and other equipment. Why? Because many in the IDF know the truth: these youth are doing important work that helps the army.
And yet, this past Shabbat, a battalion commander panicked. Lost control. A 14 year old Jewish youth was shot with live fire. And instead of waiting for the investigation to be completed, we are experiencing a blitz of media activity and statements blaming the very youth who have been protecting our land.
Let me remind you: We are coming up to the 20 year anniversary of the peaceful protest march at Kfar Maimon. I was there. We were on our way marching to Gush Katif, Gaza, in order to stop the disastrous Gaza “disengagement” we warned would turn Gaza into a terror launching pad.
Thousands of us peaceful Jewish protesters, including families and children of all ages, were stopped by the IDF and police in the middle of the night, and corralled like cattle into the fenced in community of Kfar Maimon, stuck there for 3 days, forbidden from continuing our march to Gaza.
The police commander in charge, Niso Shacham, was recorded on camera telling the troops to use violence against us, all peaceful protestors that included mothers, babies, children, grandparents, if we continued to march. (video of this exchange in the comment below – in Hebrew)
Back then they created stories about us and labeled us “enemies of peace”, to create the public support against us. Today, the new label is “settler terrorists.”
During the protest movement against the Gaza Disengagement in 2005, the deep state didn’t even need any cases of physical violence, they weaponized the narrative in the media. They deliberately spread the lie that the religious, right-wing settler community was preparing to use firearms against IDF soldiers to stop the Gaza disengagement.
I was there in Gaza when those headlines dominated the news. It was a deliberate, despicable smear campaign designed to demonize an entire population to manipulate support for the disengagement. It was totally demoralizing understanding that so many Israelis, and Jews worldwide, were falling for that libelous campaign against us.
In response, the Jewish residents of Gaza did something unprecedented: they publicly handed over their legally owned weapons to the IDF, not out of fear, but to send a clear message to the media and the public that the accusations were baseless and despicable. It was a powerful act of moral clarity in the face of a coordinated media campaign to delegitimize and vilify us.
The same playbook time after time. The same lies. And each time, too many people fall for it.
Enough.
Many of us know too much. We’ve seen too many false flags orchestrated by the Jewish Division of the Shabak together with the legal establishment over the years, including the recent leaked recording of the current head of the Jewish division of Shabak ordering the police chief to make arbitrary arrests of hilltop youth without any evidence of wrongdoing.
Until recently, the Shabak and police routinely targeted these hilltop youth—and not just the youth, but adults as well—arresting them without due process, jailing them for months, or issuing draconian administrative orders banning them from Judea and Samaria altogether. Fathers were torn from their families. Husbands barred from their homes for months or even years, without trial or evidence, treated as enemies simply for being proud, ideological Jews living on our ancestral land. Thankfully, this abuse is finally being reined in. Defense Minister Katz has put an end to these administrative detentions, a shameful persecution by the security establishment against Jews with no proof of wrongdoing.
The goal is always the same: Push their deep state agenda against us by demonizing the Jews who dare to build and defend the land.
These hilltop youth are not the problem. They are the raw, beating heart of our national revival. They deserve guidance, support, and yes, accountability when some of them do acts that are too much.
They are heroes. Misunderstood, imperfect, but irreplaceable.
It’s time we stop scapegoating the most devoted teenagers of Israel today, before they become holy IDF soldiers, and start seeing them for what they are:
The front line of Jewish destiny.
Ultimately, this campaign by the deep state is happening, because they know that we, proud Jews are winning. We are never leaving Judea or Samaria. The Jewish identity of the state of Israel is growing day by day. We continue strengthening our presence in our ancestral homeland, and no manipulative, delegitimizing campaigns will stop us.
So, keep things in perspective, don’t believe the lies and hold your head up high!
Am Yisrael Chai.
