Northern Shomron – Finally, After 60 Years!

by Haggai Huberman, Israeli journalist and author, translated by Hillel Fendel.

There has been much excitement around the rebuilding and resettling of the communities Sa-Nur and Homesh in recent weeks – two of the four Shomron sites that were evacuated and destroyed during the Disengagement withdrawal/expulsion from Gush Katif in 1995. But in truth, the governmental decision to renew the other two communities as well – Ganim and Kadim – is actually even more meaningful in many ways.

This is because their rebuilding is not only an erasure of the disgrace of the expulsion and destruction, but also marks a genuine and unprecedented revolution in the Yesha settlement enterprise.

The reason is that over Ganim and Kadim always hovered a large question mark regarding their viability as full-fledged communities. This was mainly because of the relative isolation from other Jewish areas. This is in stark contrast to Homesh and Sa-Nur, which were located on a route connecting Shavei Shomron and Kedumim to Mevo Dotan and other Jewish towns. The nearest city to Ganim and Kadim was Afula - not a quality municipality on which to base peripheral settlement. Compare this to the settlements in Binyamin and Gush Etzion, whose base city is Jerusalem, and those in western Shomron, which relied on cities such as Petah Tikva and Kfar Saba.

Overall, the assumption even before the Disengagement, given the above as well as their weak social fabric, was that there was little or no chance that Ganim and Kadim could survive.

Lost History?
In general, until just recently, the relatively sparse Jewish presence in northern Shomron belied its glorious history as the launching point for significant Jewish settlement in modern-day Yesha. For instance, the entire liberation of Judea and Samaria in the Six Day War began precisely in the Jenin area, near the Dotan Valley battle, and then moved southward. In addition, the historic agreement between the Israeli government and the Gush Emunim movement for the establishment of Elon Moreh took place in Sebastia, near today's Shavei Shomron.

Yet, throughout recent decades, the Shomron has proven to be a particularly “hard nut to crack” in terms of Jewish presence and control. Barely ten settlements were established there, and they were widely spaced from one another, and struggled to establish themselves.

In 1979, when Ariel Sharon, serving as chairman of the Ministerial Committee for Settlement Affairs, prepared his “Annual Plan for Settlement in Yesha and the Golan Heights” (the first, and last, time a government body prepared a comprehensive settlement plan for the liberated areas), he planned two small settlement blocs in northern Samaria: the Shavei Shomron bloc, which ended up with three communities, and the Shaked bloc, including some six settlements, as well as the city of Harish in recent years.

Ganim and Kadim were planned much later, in the framework of another Sharon plan, this time when he was Defense Minister. (This was all before he instigated the Disengagement, of course.) Still, while the Menachem Begin governments did good work in building massively in Binyamin, southern and central Shomron, and the Har Hevron area, the northern Shomron still waited in the shadows.

Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir, even more unabashedly nationalistic in the top job than his former mentor and predecessor Begin, committed to establish more Yesha settlements and expand the existing ones. However, he did only the latter, because of American intervention and other political pressures following the Madrid Conference in late 1991 – and the northern Shomron once again remained desolate of major Jewish presence.

The Prophetic Warning of Avraham Shvut

Years before the Disengagement, in October 1991, Mr. Avraham Shvut, serving as head of the Planning and Construction Department in the Shomron Regional Council, prepared a comprehensive settlement plan for the northern Shomron. In his accompanying letter to the plan, Shvut wrote words that were truly prophetic:

"Northern Shomron takes up approximately a quarter of all of Judea and Samaria. Its topography is very advantageous, and it is a connecting link both between the Galilee and southern Israel and between the Coastal Plane and the Jordan Valley. Yet, despite its great settlement potential, its Jewish presence, especially in north-eastern Shomron, is most sparse. If there is any place left where an Arab political entity could possibly arise without Jewish presence, it is the northern Shomron, centered around Sh'chem [Nablus]."

"It is clear," concluded Shvut, "that this situation cannot be allowed to continue, and we must rectify it immediately."

This warning was ultimately very much realized, in that the Oslo Agreements of the early 1990's placed most of northern Shomron - the triangle between the cities of Tulkarm, Nablus, and Jenin - under Palestinian Authority control, except for thin transportation corridors between the isolated settlements.

Over a decade later, when Sharon decided to include four Jewish communities from the Shomron in his Disengagement/destruction plan, he chose the most isolated settlements he could find, in order to enable exactly the PA continuity that Shvut had warned about.

In fact, Shvut’s warning about enabling the formation of the “core of a Palestinian state” in northern Shomron was fulfilled almost entirely.

Better Late Than Never

Now, however, the government of Israel is working to rectify this critical mistake. This month, a day after the official ceremony marking the rebuilding of Sa-Nur, a high-level meeting took place not far from there, in the Shavei Shomron home of Shomron head Yossi Dagan.

In attendance were Defense Minister Yisrael Katz, Minister Betzalel Smotrich, Housing Minister Chaim Katz, and Amanah Settlement Organization head Ze'ev Hever. We can sum up the meeting by saying that if everything they discussed comes to fruition, much of the northern Shomron will come to life, with new communities, infrastructures, roads and more.

The historic northern Shomron news we heard this week - that 21 years after they were uprooted in the Disengagement, Ganim and Kadim are expected to be rebuilt this coming summer - is an important stage in the overall plan. When it happens, it will thwart the danger of the establishment of a Palestinian state in its largest potential area: northern Samaria. This will happen because of the creation, for the first time in history, a substantial Jewish presence there – beginning in and around the nearly-forsaken communities of Kadim and Ganim.

New Hamas Atrocities—Against Gazan Women

by Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, and the author of more than 20 books about Jewish history, Zionism, and the Holocaust.

Women pressured by government officials to have sex in exchange for food rations. Widows molested and intimidated. Young girls sold off into forced marriages.

     If it was happening in Texas or Indiana, or Paris or Rome, women’s rights groups, media pundits, and human rights advocates would be shouting from the rooftops.

     The reason you haven’t heard about it is because it’s happening in the parts of Gaza that are still ruled by Hamas.

     The London Daily Mail has published an extraordinary account, based on video testimony from Jusoor News, of systemic abuse of Gazan women by Hamas. So far, other major international news media outlets are ignoring the story.

     A Gazan man described to Jusoor News (a Middle Eastern NGO) how “he found a widow displaced in the war being molested inside a tent in the Gharabli area by a bunch of Hamas members.” Concerned citizens who alerted Hamas leaders about it “were told we had to keep silent about it.”

     Another Gazan man recounted that one of his neighbors “was blackmailed by one of Hamas’s charity organisations… they wanted her to whore herself in exchange for a food parcel, or an aid voucher…”

     A Jusoor correspondent explained to the Daily Mail that “widows and divorced women” are in particular danger, “because they have no support and no income—their vulnerability is taken advantage of, and the situation is getting worse day by day.”

     A Gazan mother of four described asking for food rations from an official at a charity organization “who looked religious, like a sheikh.” He demanded sexual favors in exchange for the food.

     “I asked him how he could talk to me like that,” she recalled. “I told him I would expose him. He said: ‘You cannot expose me, I am the government here’.”

     Meanwhile, at least 400 Gazan girls aged 14 to 16 registered as married during just four months in 2025, but “this likely represents only a fraction of the true scale,” the article noted.

     The Daily Mail contacted the “UN Women” organization. It declined to comment.

     The silence of UN Women is consistent with the silence of the rest of the international community.

     There are no tent encampments on college campuses to protest the mass sexual abuse of women in Gaza by Hamas. No swarming of Grand Central Station or the Golden Gate Bridge. No heckling of public officials. No waving of hands drenched in red paint.

    Why the silence?

     Perhaps for the same reason that all the people who have been yelling “Free Gaza” recently were mysteriously silent when Gazans suffered under the fascist rule of Hamas from 2007 to 2023.

     Some of the protesters never really cared about Gaza—they were uninformed students who just wanted to do “what the cool kids are doing.”

     Some of the “Free Gaza” crowd are just cause-of-the-month extremists who drift from protest to protest. They did all they can to smear Israel, and now they’ve moved on.

     Some of them are even more cynical—they’re worried that telling the truth about Hamas will undermine their agenda of trying to get Israel to leave Gaza entirely.

     And for some, well, it may be impolite to say it, but it seems that they only yell about Gaza when they can yell at Israel because they just don’t like Jews.

History is Calling – Let's Respond!

by Prof. Yoel Elitzur, Lecturer in Bible Studies and Semitic Languages, translated by Hillel Fendel.

Bemoaning the silence in face of the miracles, and calling for resolute action to answer the Divine historic charge.

The pain wakes me up at night – pain at the detachment, at the ungratefulness, at the missed opportunity.

I feel and know: There is a Living G-d in our midst, Who speaks to us with a roar, Who struck us most painfully and unnaturally on Simchat Torah (Oct. 7^th, 2023), and Who immediately afterwards sprouted within us might and heroism that we didn't even know we had. These strengths have brought us wonders and miracles, taking place even during these very days – miracles that have likely never been seen ever since our Exodus from Egypt.

Every Passover, during the Seder, we sing the Dayenu song recounting chronologically 15 historic miracles, beginning with the Exodus and culminating with the construction of the First Holy Temple. It is my personal custom each year to add to this list our own modern-day national miracles that we have experienced over the past 200 years or so. Every year, the list grows longer.

"How much more so, doubly and multiplied, must we thank G-d," as the Passover Haggadah states, for having transformed us from a scattered, divided, and fearful people during centuries of Exile, into a united nation upon its land, speaking once again in the language of the Torah, turning a desolate land into a paradise, developing into a strong military force that soundly defeats its enemies. As the Prophet Michah foretold, we are "like dew from the Lord, like showers upon the grass… like a lion among the beasts of the forest, like a young lion among flocks of sheep, [from which] none can rescue” (5,6-7).

Our #1 Job

In my view, the recognition of the above is our primary obligation, just as the Prophet exhorts us regarding how we are to view the salvation that is to befall us: "Behold, days are coming when they shall no longer [speak of G-d] 'Who brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt,' but rather, 'Who brought up the house of Israel from the northland and from all the lands where I have driven them' -  and they shall dwell on their land" (Yirmiyahu 23,7-8).

Our Sages explained this to mean not that the Exodus will be forgotten, but rather that it will be secondary to the great miracles of our future liberation from the yoke of the nations.

Over the past two years, my Dayenu has been exploding from the many salvations we have experienced one after the other at a dizzying pace.

Every year, on the 7^th day of Passover, the general custom is to sing the Song of the Sea all together to commemorate our national salvation that happened on that day at the Sea of Reeds precisely 3,338 years ago. This year we merited in our community of Ofrah [in southern Samaria, north of Jerusalem] to add to our song a series of contemporary and personally-experienced thanks and praise to G-d for the miracles of our recent wars with Hamas, Hizbullah and Iran, known here as the "War of Revival," "A People Like a Lion” and “The Lion’s Roar.”

Our guest at the Seder table was a senior Israeli Air Force pilot, who shared with us his amazing experiences of being part of Israel's repeated escape from existential dangers, wherein little Israel smote the 80-times-larger, nearly-nuclear Iran with thousands of sorties and attacks without even one casualty or technical or operational failure. This was based on precise intelligence information stemming from the Mossad, whose members also did not suffer a single casualty, and in total sync and cooperation with the greatest superpower in the world.

How can we not remember these words from the Torah's song of Haazinu (Deut. 32,39-43):

"See now that I am the One, and there is no god with Me! I cause death and grant life, I strike but I heal, and no one can rescue from My Hand!" …

"Sing out praise, O nations, for His people! For He will avenge the blood of His servants, inflict revenge upon His adversaries, and appease His land [and] His people."

The soldiers in the field feel G-d's hand; they wear tzitzit, sound shofars, and proclaim G-d's name as they set out for battle. This spiritual awakening, echoed in many parts of the country, is itself a wonder that we must appreciate and give thanks for – but where is the corresponding recognition of all these miracles from the heads of our country? We do hear some "with G-d's help"s once in a while from them (though not from the Chief of Staff, unfortunately), but the main tune seems to be much more "by our own strength and force of our hand."

Even some of our official leading rabbis are silent, although Chief Rabbinate Council member Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu strives to make up for their silence. In this context, G-d is placing a mirror before us, in the form of Donald Trump and many of his close Administration officials, who prolifically and full-throatedly mention G-d. Chief among them is the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who famously told hostile interviewer Tucker Carlson, "I'm not worried about Israel, G-d is with them… Their beeper operation is beyond all imagination; if it would have been presented as a script for Hollywood, it would have been rejected out of hand for being too kitchy and unbelievable. And every new guy who's appointed to lead Iran gets killed by the Israelis within 24 hours…"

But perhaps the main problem in not recognizing G-d's hand in directing the events is that we then don't ask what He expects of us. And then we flub up the historic opportunity of freeing ourselves from the strange "commandment" of Thou shalt not conquer! This is a commandment that was dreamed up by our brothers the left-wingers, and limits us to artificial borders that have nothing to do with what the Torah says about it.

As of now, large swathes of the Holy Land have been falling into our hands, such as in Syria and Lebanon, and the wicked enemies run in fear of us – and yet, so sadly, there is no real arousal even amongst our own camp to break out of the fences, to return to Gush Katif, to settle the Gaza region or the northern Galilee and Lebanon. We see no interest in breaking through to the winding borders that were set by the French and English conquerors when they divvied up the area over a century ago. And we certainly see no anticipation of reaching the Bashan (where Jordan meets Syria), which awaits us empty of inhabitants.

We must not let all the tremendous events we have gone through become just another “round.” We may not leave G-d's works on our behalf meaningless. It is incumbent upon us to act vigorously, as we knew how to do after the War of Independence wherever we were privileged to conquer; and as we did in the Golan Heights and in much of Judea and Samaria after the 1967 Six Day War; and as today's pioneers of the hilltops and farms know how to do with great dedication.

Yisrael Eldad said that the main lesson of the Exodus is that in matters of redemption, one must never delay; we must do everything possible to fully realize it. History is calling to us and pleading with us to recognize the acts of G-d and thank Him openly, to strengthen our faith, and to run and settle the expanses of our land.

Building Jewish Samaria Once Again – but Without Banging on Tables

by Shalom Ber (Bereleh) Krumbi, journalist and political activist, translated by Hillel Fendel.

I was a youth of 15 years of age during one of the forcible dismantlings of the Gilad Farm, near Karnei Shomron. This was an experience I will never forget, though not for any positive reasons. There were thousands of policemen and soldiers, with bulldozers, burning tires, and dozens of IDF jeeps and police vans. They all arrived for one reason: to destroy a few wretched shacks on a Samarian hilltop.

This particular evacuation was followed by several more from the Tor Hilltop, and then from the Yitzhar Lookout and other hilltops (five in number). Every time it was the same ritual. It was largely forbidden to build in the Shomron, and every shack that was put up faced the sword of uprooting and destruction. Photos of burning tires and burning structures in Yesha filled the front pages of the nationalist newspapers every week.

The Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria (Yesha), still under the traumatic effects of the expulsion of 9,000 Jews from Gush Katif and the northern Shomron in 2005, then kicked off a campaign against the destruction of the outposts, which had been built to serve as a defense line for the nearby settlement communities. But meanwhile the army and police simply pursued every new Jewish shack they could find and bulldozed them down. I remember one Friday afternoon when the Tapuah Junction, east of Ariel, was closed for two hours by large army and police forces, because a truck was suspected of transporting a caravan home to a Jewish community in the Shomron. In the end, the caravan was found to be headed to a nearby army base…

In any event, the hilltop pioneers didn't give up. Mitzpeh Yitzhar was rebuilt time and again until it finally took root. The same with the Gilad Farm, only more so; it was demolished and rebuilt lots of times, and now, not long ago, it was recognized as a full-fledged official community.

In general, every hill that was destroyed was rebuilt, and every house demolished was later reconstructed. The struggle continued constantly – even when [former PM Ariel] Sharon commissioned a special “Outposts Report” by Attorney Talia Sasson, seeking to turn every construction in Judea and Samaria into a criminal matter, and even under the painful freeze during the Obama period. Through it all, the pioneers of the hills kept on building with unlimited self-sacrifice, continuing to settle and cultivate this land.

And then came the farms. No longer were there just individual couples or families living alone on a barren hill, but real farms, with flocks of sheep controlling acres and acres of land. Thus was born the new modern Zionist project that reawakened the values on which Zionism was founded: the Land of Israel for the Jewish Nation. The new farmers lived the Zionist credo "another dunam [quarter-acre] and another sheep" to the hilt. These Jewish shepherds are the Trumpledors and JNF pioneers of the Tik-tok generation. The second Zionist revolution is underway!

But nothing could prepare us in Judea and Samaria for what has begun taking shape during the course of this Netanyahu government, and particularly over the past year.

MK Betzalel Smotrich, who wears two ministerial hats - Treasury Minister and Minister in the Defense Ministry - is basically, together with his colleague in the Religious Zionism party that he heads, Minister Orit Strook, leading the current charge to certify and recognize increasingly more new Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. Not that he is the first to do this: Arik Sharon, as Housing Minister 25 years ago, also led the charge for more Yesha housing [before he championed the Disengagement/withdrawal from Gush Katif and northern Shomron in 2005]. He liked to do this in a very "audio-visual" manner, arranging for media coverage of himself standing on a wind-blown hilltop surrounded by contractors and builders, banging on a specially-brought table, "Everyone get a move on here!" No wonder Sharon was known as a bulldozer.

Smotrich does things differently. He and his colleagues are barely seen going out to the field, and they don't make sure to be photographed giving dramatic orders. He rather remains in his Finance Ministry office well past midnight almost every night, while Strook, too, works behind the scenes. Together, they are permanently changing the map of Judea and Samaria.

The numbers are barely believable. Over 160 Jewish farms, mostly quite young, now control the open areas in Judea and Samaria, rendering them unquestionably "Jewish." In addition, thousands of new housing units are being approved in Yesha, along with new neighborhoods, roads, and infrastructures.

Just a few years ago, our nationalist camp could not dare to speak about building new communities in Yesha. The establishment of Evyatar between Ariel and the Jordan River was seen as a miraculous, one-time event. And now suddenly, dozens of new communities are being established in all over the expanse. These include the rejuvenation and renewal of Homesh and Sa-Nur, two of the four northern Samaria communities Israel destroyed in the Disengagement.

If until Oct. 7^th of 2023, many decision makers in Israel were held captive by the infamous "conceptziya" – the conception that Hamas won't attack, that our borders were secure, and that the situation was under control – the Government of Israel has now become the leader in waking up from old misconceptions. This is true not only in terms of the rejuvenation of Judea and Samaria, but also in Israel's new take-the-offensive security doctrine. In terms of Yesha, it appears to be now understood that in order to stop the next massacre, we must return to the fundamental principles of early Zionism: another dunam and another goat, and the old, basic rule that wherever the plow passes, the Israeli border will pass there.

RELATED DEVELOPMENTS (ed. note):

April 10 – The Cabinet decided secretly two weeks ago to establish 34 new communities in Yesha. The decision was kept secret by American request. Among the future towns are:

Alonei Shomron, No'a, and Emek Dotan – slated to be established in the northern Shomron. No'a will be in close proximity to Kadim and Ganim, of Disengagement fame, so as to relieve their relative isolation. Tzofnat will be located near Tapuach, and Ta'anakh is to arise in the Jenin region. Yishuv HaDaat already exists unrecognized near Shilo, and Mevo'ot Yehoshua will be located along Route 443 between Jerusalem and Modiin – not far from Maoz Tzur, which already has 11 families.

April 12 - The Interior Ministry has granted official local-government status to eight new Jewish towns and communities in Judea and Samaria. Among them are Ganim and Kadim, which were destroyed over 20 years ago in Israel's unilateral disengagement under Prime Minister Sharon. All four Shomron towns destroyed then have now been officially reinstated.  Twenty-five other Yesha communities have similarly been recognized over the past four months. Among the 25 are Kanfei Shachar in Binyamin, Alon (which until now was a neighborhood of Kfar Adumim), Lechi (Chavot Yair), Brosh HaBik'ah in the Jordan Valley, and Mitzpeh Zif near Hevron.

The Fake "Settler Violence" Campaign: The Case of Kisan in Gush Etzion

Adapted from an article by Atty. Michael Shparber, Gush Etzion, translated by Hillel Fendel.

As many readers of this column well know, the well-orchestrated media campaign crying out against alleged "settler violence" is not at all restricted to the borders of the State of Israel, making its active presence known long ago in America. Under pressure from the Trump Administration, which expressed its “shock” at the violence against Arabs in the West Bank, our government here in Israel puzzlingly committed to establish a special enforcement unit against Jews within the Ministry of Defense, and to fund it with no less than 130,000,000 shekels ($41.27 million).

As an example of the fake phenomenon of "settler violence," let us consider a series of three "minor" events that flew under the radar last week at the Magen Avraham Farm in the Gush Etzion bloc, south of Jerusalem. Magen Avraham is a small pioneer farm that, like all the new farms in Yesha (Judea and Samaria), is strategically located and oversees a large area. It is adjacent to the Arab village of Kisan in the eastern part of Gush Etzion, not far from Tekoa.

One way of looking at Gush Etzion is that it guarantees the Jewish settlement presence between Beit Shemesh and the Dead Sea. It is not a continuous, integral bloc, in that a chain of Bedouin outposts formed over the last few centuries in the Bethlehem and northern Judean Desert area divides between them. Some of these Bedouin localities even have a permanent nature, such as the hostile village Tokua (based on the Biblical city of Tekoa, home to the Prophet Amos), and others.

These Bedouins, of the Taamari tribe [regarding which there is some evidence that it was originally Jewish before converting, either voluntarily or by coercion], basically block off the thriving and expanding Jewish area of northern Gush Etzion (Nokdim, Tekoa, Kfar Eldad) from the settlements to their south along the edge of the desert (Maaleh Amos, Metzad, and Pnei Kedem). Their illegal intrusions into the Jewish areas are both dangerous and demographically threatening to the Jews of the area.

If one would have looked for a locality named Kisan on the maps of several years ago, he would have come up with no results. Rather, Kisan, like many other Bedouin and other Arab villages in the vicinity, grew out of a strategic PA plan to take over the open areas in Judea and Samaria, for the express purpose of preventing Jewish contiguity in the area and paving the way for a Palestinian state, even if only de facto at first.

Arabs from Kisan, with help from accomplices, simply descend southward from the mother village of Tuqua and its satellites, position themselves along the only road leading to the southeastern part of Gush Etzion, and create constant friction with the Jewish population. This they do by stone-throwing, placing explosive devices, ambushing travelers at night, encroaching on Jewish-owned land, agricultural sabotage, and primarily through ongoing takeover of the area.

And here enter the picture the heroic pioneers of our generation, the youths of the Yesha farms. Specifically, those in Magen Avraham – few in number but largely fearless – who live there without running water, without electricity, and without support from the authorities. With their bare hands they work the fields of our homeland, on the banks of the beautiful, flourishing Arugot Stream (leading from eastern Gush Etzion to the Dead Sea). By day they work, plant and thresh; by night they keep the route open and guard the flock from Arab thieves and rioters.

It is important to remember that these pioneers guard not only the plot of land adjacent to them, and not only the continuity of Jewish settlement in the area; rather, they are the ones who, with their very bodies and strength of spirit, are preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state – of which its possible horrifying consequences we all received a taste of on the bitter day of October 7^th.

The Arabs there, including the infiltrators of the illegal adjacent village of Kisan, are not happy with these actions of the few Jews of Magen Avraham. After all, their entire purpose of living there is to prevent contiguous Jewish settlement in the area, which is why they instigate violence against their Jewish neighbors, hoping both to kill and scare them away.

Just imagine how it works: A Jewish shepherd goes out to graze with his sheep, generally armed with nothing more than a stick and backpack, trusting in the Creator and in the strength of his mission. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, dozens of Arabs appear, throwing rocks of all sizes, striking him with their sticks with abandon, stealing or harming sheep, and causing damage to the Jewish fields. This is the type of event that happens time and again, not only in Magen Avraham, but all over Yesha. But will you ever hear of this in the news? Never. For violence and aggression against the Hilltop Youth has been whitewashed and all but kosher-certified in public opinion.  

This is precisely what happened to the pioneers of Magen Avraham no fewer than three times in the past week; I assume that none of those reading this heard of it. On the other hand, "Jewish settler violence" opens the news reports, even during these wartime days. And that's how a narrative is created and developed. It's not the truth or the facts that matter, but rather what is repeated over and over, and eagerly swallowed up by a public that is a combination of apathetic and anxious to hear news that is anti-Jewish – or specifically anti-religious. Demonizing the settlement enterprise has long been the objective, and maligning the vital pioneering enterprise of the Yesha farms (which actually should have been a priority of our government and society) – serves the political interests of those who oppose the State of Israel.

We would be well advised to return to the spirit of previous decades, and encourage and strengthen our beloved emissaries who dedicate their days and nights to preserving our homeland. As the Zionist activist, lawyer and poet Avraham Levinson (1891-1955) wrote:

Let us build our land, our homeland
For it is ours; this land is for us.
To build the land is the charge of our blood, the charge of the generations.
We will build our land despite all who come to destroy us,
We will build our land with the strength of our will.