Don’t tell me it’s a small fringe. It’s all of you

By: Avraham Burg

A system built on denial, violence, and indifference—from the attackers themselves to the public that prefers not to know—enables a corrupt settlement enterprise and the stripping of basic freedoms from Palestinians. It is a project of supremacy and dispossession, a testament to the rot consuming the Israeli soul.

In the margins of the news it was reported: “The police and Shin Bet arrested a settler who was documented beating a 53-year-old Palestinian woman with a baton, on suspicion of assault and causing injury.”No one paid attention, and the world moved on to one of the city’s big events: Noa Kirel’s wedding or Netanyahu’s pardon. After all, who cares about one Arab woman, when the collective is responsible for—and indifferent to—the deaths of tens of thousands?So sad, so symbolic, so significant. This is the proof of the terrible rot consuming the entire Israeli soul; yes, the entire settlement enterprise and its metastases.

It is doubtful whether any other society in the world suffers from such a complex syndrome of denials: denial of reality and its facts, sweeping moral denial, emotional denial, and practical denial. Examples are abundant: “There is no settler violence,” “There is no occupation,” “The occupation is essential for security,” “They started,” “There’s no one to talk to,” “I don’t want to know what’s happening there,” and “It’s not us, it’s the fringe.”

Given this, it’s no wonder that the most denial-driven state in the world believes falsehoods—such as the myth of “the most moral army in the world,” when in fact it is one of the three least moral armies in the world (competing for that dubious title with the Russian and Ethiopian armies).Or that “we are the only democracy in the Middle East.”Therefore it is essential to lift the curtain and say the truth:You are living in a lie.You elect liars so that they will continue deceiving you.So here is the honest truth, for your service.

Public discourse in Israel around the settlements and settler violence in the West Bank is steeped in deep denial: denial of the scale of the phenomenon, of the moral corruption it embodies, of the involvement of the military and police, of the support of elected officials and generous public funding, and of our collective responsibility as a society for what is happening.The debate often gets stuck on the question of historical attachment: “ours or theirs,” like two children in a playground—“I was here first,” “No, I was here before you.”

There is no denying the deep connection of the Jewish people to the areas of Judea and Samaria: biblical cities, historical sites, and a Jewish cultural memory thousands of years old.But somehow it is easy to deny and conceal the other histories that unfolded here over millennia—including the Palestinian one.

Historical attachment, however deep, does not automatically justify sovereignty, and certainly not prolonged military rule whose entire purpose is to perpetuate Jewish supremacy and criminally strip Palestinians of their basic freedoms.The attempt to convert historical attachment into oppressive sovereignty is a dangerous injustice—morally, politically, and internationally.

It is easy to point to a gang of Jewish hill-top thugs as the problem. Indeed, they are violent hooligans—burning mosques and orchards, uprooting groves, attacking Palestinian shepherds, and spreading terror.But they—disgusting and vile as they are—are only the hilltops.They stand atop enormous piles of support, cooperation, and state and civilian blindness that enable their existence.

At the top of the pyramid are the attackers themselves.Beneath them are the rabbis who grant them ideological legitimacy.Around them are the conscienceless politicians who supply them with a public and budgetary shield.Beside them are the army and police collaborators, who usually betray their mission—standing idly by or actively assisting.And surrounding all of them is a large, indifferent public that prefers not to know, to look away, and to enjoy the fruits of the wrongdoing.

Don’t tell me it’s a fringe. It is all of them.From the first attacker to the last settler.This is the same corrupt system: an entire apparatus that builds infrastructure, education, housing, security, transportation, and local governance for Jews only.Separate legal systems, built-in discrimination, deliberate harassment, and racial segregation at the heart of an area densely populated by Palestinians deprived of basic rights.This is not a project of security or historical rights—this is the machinery of dispossession at its worst.

You don’t need to be anti-Israeli to grasp the absurdity and the injustice. It is enough to be human.We cannot remain indifferent when hundreds of closed, exploitative settlements are built for Jews only, in a space where millions of Palestinians live under violent military rule, with a separate legal system, without the right to vote, freedom of movement, or basic equality.It is impossible to remain unmoved when settler violence becomes a daily routine—not a marginal deviation but part of the system.And when the IDF often serves not to protect civilians but to enforce de facto racial segregation, we must call it what it is.

Hypocrisy is an inseparable part of public discourse.There are many who say: “I’m not racist,” “I have Arab friends,” “I support peace.”And in the same breath they live in settlements, support their budgets, or benefit from systematic discrimination.Some simply want a house with a nice view and a nearby kindergarten.Others buy into the security narrative.Together, they all participate in the vast criminal project whose goal is to push Palestinians until they despair and leave—and every means along the way becomes sanctified.

The settlement enterprise has already corrupted state institutions, damaged public trust in the army and police, poisoned public discourse, and destroyed hope and any possibility of a future agreement.Because of them—yes, all of them—Israel is neither Jewish nor democratic.The real Israel is nothing more than minority Jewish rule over a rightless majority between the river and the sea.This is a moral problem and an existential one.There is no sustainable future for such a state.And there is no justification for its existence.

Anyone who has not yet despaired of Israel’s future cannot remain silent.It is time to look reality in the eye and choose:between rule and justice,between occupation and freedom,between stagnation and hope,between the settlers and the Israelis.

And there is one consolation—the more violently they behave, the closer the day when all of them, down to the last one, will be removed.Not by the will of the Israeli government, but by the compulsion of the international community.And the fate of the West Bank will be like the fate of Gaza.And between the monstrous settler with the club and his entire environment — and the 53-year-old Palestinian woman?

I stand with her — and against them.