THE HILLTOP YOUTH: A monster “Golem” turning on its creator?

I24 NEWS – There is something romantic in the term “Hilltop Youth”. It connotes nature and youthful energy. But there is nothing romantic in that group of far-right violent youngsters. They pose an imminent threat to their neighbors in the Palestinian villages near the West Bank hilltops where they reside, and to Israeli democracy. They are the main suspects in the killing of an 18-month-old Palestinian and his father, whose home they set on fire ten days ago. They’re also the main suspects in the arson of one of the world’s most sacred churches, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. International outrage at both brutal acts have turned them from a local menace to a major Middle East threat.

It’s not the first time these youths have set fire to churches and Palestinian houses; they’ve done it before, leaving behind their trademark graffiti “”price tag”. It’s not the first time they undermine Israeli democracy, either, having already attacked and harassed Israeli soldiers trying to impose order in the West Bank. Yet the establishment has been lenient in its dealings with those they refer to as “rotten apples.” Not anymore. The system has launched all-out war against the monster they allowed to grow in its midst.

The outrage on the left was expected. That of the right indicates fright. Its representatives sound horrified, as if seeing the “Golem” – the monster – turning on its creator, terrified of being identified with its acts. “I have to admit we share some responsibility in the creation of the slippery road that led to this,” concedes Yehuda Etzion, a prominent member of a 1980s Jewish terrorist organization that blew up Palestinian officials and planned to blow up the Dome of the Rock, one of Islam’s holiest sites. Their jail sentences were relatively short and all were granted presidential pardons. “I still believe those Palestinian officials we acted against were the ‘head of the snake,’” Etzion tells i24news; “but random attacks on Palestinians is a different story. I do recognize my own part in the story, but they are different. We would never think of acting against Israeli soldiers or against the symbols of statehood. They do, they are anarchists… But yes, I have to agree – it’s quite probable they use us as a role model. We may be contributing to this by proxy.”

These few dozen youngsters are a strange mix, often associated with Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza and its uprooting of thousands of Jewish settlers. The older group members actively opposed the evacuation 10 years ago, the younger ones – now teenagers – grew up on the myth of resistance and the loss of faith in the state by which they felt betrayed. The state, its army, its government – all became the enemy, legitimate targets to topple and undermine in order to build a etter state – the Biblicaly named Kingdom of Judea.

Some of the so-called hilltop youngsters are school dropouts, estranged from their families, suspicious of even those closest to them. They don’t mingle with residents of recognized settlements, accept no authority, not even of the most radical far-right rabbis. They are so cut off from any establishment that it’s impossible to reach out to them. “They all have big kippas and long sideburns, but no God in their heart,” says Pinchas Wallerstein, one the founders of Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful), the right-wing movement with a fundamentalist streak, founded in 1975, committed to establishing Jewish settlements in the West Bank. In a lengthy conversation with i24news, Wallerstein rejects the notion that hilltop youth are the 2015 version of 1975 Gush Emunim. “I see no link,” claims Wallerstein; “I can quote my wife who said about them – ‘now we have our own La Familia’. But we certainly have to abolish this dangerous phenomenon. We fought against the evacuation of Gaza settlements within the limits of legitimacy. Suggestions that we act against the law were rejected. We acted as a collective. They act as individuals, anarchists, with no God and no rabbinical authority. From their point of view, we, the leaders of the settlement movement, failed them. We are the enemy as well.”

One thing is certain: these youths are clever. They move from location to location without leaving a trace, exchange smartphones, do not answer interrogators when they are detained.

“People their age tend to test the limits; unfortunately, they tend to test their limits on the weakest and most helpless people (the Palestinians),” says Yaron Ezrahi, a professor of political science and one of the most prominent thinkers of the Israeli left. Ezrahi believes the right wing is horrified by this phenomenon that threatens the legitimacy of the whole settlement enterprise. “If the youth are the future – that future is anarchist and violent. Part of the success of the settlement movement is based on cohesive solidarity of a minority; hilltop youth might cause a split in that solidarity and even tear it apart. The fact that they are a small group is irrelevant. It’s not about size; it’s about lack of boundaries. This tiny minority could change reality in Israel and all over the world. They romanticize violence and subversion.”

Indeed they do. Nurtured by the far right and frustrated by it, disappointed with the state and their own rabbinical system, tending to delinquency – according to academics who study them, they are set to change the reality they detest. If the initial plan was to settle illegally in the West Bank, the new plan goes way beyond this. They don’t want a bigger Land of Israel; they want a different one. And they have a plan.