The hilttop youth, those wacky young settlers, have been in the news quite a bit of late – the number of price tag actions is on a constant rise. Yet, we rarely get to see who these “kids” really are.
Last week, Channel 2 gave us a rare glimpse into the minds of some of the hilltop youth leaders. I just couldn’t miss the opportunity to bring it to you.
This translation goes out to my homies in AIPAC, and to the national religious rabbis of the world. Without you, these racists would not be possible.
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Henry Weinstein
Better to watch this now than tomorrow, I thought. I was right, Best Wishes from Hilltop Youth, it would have been far too much.
So I watched it.
First it looks like an American horror movie from the 70s – Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) came to my mind immediately. Then it seems the Family, I mean the Manson Family has finally settled in Migron. Helter Kosher, here they are. “Coming soon: Charles Manson”, I was thinking watching the girls, and I wasn’t disappointed, there male counterparts would be first choice for a casting of The Silence of the Lambs’remake.
Ok Israeli TV has over-dramatized this, American-like TV sensationalism. It’s another topic: the way Israeli media work. But if it’s not fake, then these young extremist are clearly lost immature derelict kids. It would be too easy to reject them. I’m not angry at them, but at their parents, their educators.
Ami is right to point this. That’s the point.
What education they have received, I would be curious.
What a waste.
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For what it’s worth I had written something on Ultra-Zionist settlers (Sunday, December 25, 2011 2:10 pm, on Aziz’s “Anti-normalization shuts down Israeli-Palestinian event”), a comment. By the way, I’m still waiting for Ben Israel’s answer on this.
So I say it again, digested version:
“The trouble with Ultra-Zionist American settlers is that they believe they are more Israeli than the Sabras BECAUSE THEY ARE ULTRA-ZIONISTS. By the way they are also Ultra-Anti-Normalization, Sinjim and others.
For them, Israel is first and last their Ultra-Zionist ideology; they don’t get Israel the country with its multi-ethnical roots and they don’t know what to do with the Israeli people, i.e the unrecognized Israeli melting pot.
They are stuck in their Jewish cowboys vs Arab indians ideological delirium, and their Hilltop Youth fights boredom dressing and acting like Ultra-Orthodox Hooligan Punks.
Unfortunately for Palestinians, they have something to do to prove they are Israelis”.
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Shalom Shabbat quand même, et bonne année 2012 à tous, Inch’ Allah!
Carl
I was going to write something intelligent like Henry did, but I’ve decided the only response I can muster is to go away and invent some new swear words. All offers of help gratefully received.
Henry Weinstein
Carl,
Too bad we don’t speak Arabic!!!
Danny
These kids are like the KKK on steroids – same racial hatred, while enjoying widespread appeal (especially among Israel’s politicians). Kahana has succeeded where David Duke failed.
sarah grant
i guess you are not very well. you really should go back to your bible you will find the truth learn what MOSES said to his people untill the end of time you will never have a state this is why you are all setting yourself up for a big fall.Why if the country is your are you changing the name there was no state called israeHELL untill you took it by force if you had asked nicely they might of satdown to talk with you but you went in killing people ,if you have to do this at least say it as it is it is evil evil and dont for your sake say it is on the bible or on GOD i really hope for your sake it all falls soon i dont hate you but i hate what you are doing i really beleive you must be protected from yourself
Sinjim
@Sarah Grant: Who do you think you’re helping with that comment?
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@Henry: It’s a shame you don’t speak Arabic. If you did, you’d recognize some truly delicious irony. As those girls sitting on the ratty couch were pontificating on the need to eradicate the Arab dogs, they used several Arabic words, which have been adopted into Hebrew. Do they realize that even as they call Palestinians foreigners, they are proving our indigenousness?
Lightbringer
I suggest that author go out in Bat Yam and ask locals the very same questions, after which he could proceed – by foot – to Jaffa and ask same questions there again.
directrob
If only a few hundred glazed eyed kids talked like this there would be no problem. Just tell them they are not allowed in the West Bank, arrest them, bring them back to Israel proper and give them a hefty fine. I fear however these thoughts are epidemic, it even reached Dutch parlement.
Lightbringer
“… proving our indigenousness?”
The fact that you’ve been born here does not automatically grants you all rights over this land.
Lightbringer
“I fear however these thoughts are epidemic, it even reached Dutch parliament.”
Yeah, more and more people around the world realize that peaceful coexistence with Muslims is not possible.
Know why?
Henry Weinstein
Because of racist people like you, Darkbringer.
Lightbringer
“Henry Weinstein
Because of racist people like you, Darkbringer.”
Yeah, interesting phenomena – wherever Muslims go, they become loathed withing one-two generations.
It seems that Muslim presence just make ordinary people hate those followers of religion of deceit…
P.S. Racist…
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination.
You see, I dislike their teachings, full of lies and hatred, not the people themselves, which couldn’t turn me into a racist, but certainly shows your true colors of an uneducated bigot.
directrob
Lightbringer,
Your writings do not seem consistent with your statement that you do not dislike “the people themselves”. Comments like “… peaceful coexistence with Muslims is not possible” feel to me (even if it not yours but that of “people”) as incitement. The statement is also false as, despite the right wing politicians who try to incite, in actual fact for many generations there is peaceful coexistence in Western Europe.
Ami Kaufman
@lightbringer – I hope you have had a great time on +972 so far. I say that, because I don’t feel you’ll be commenting much longer on the site.
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On our About page you can find some guidelines for commenting. I urge you to read them if you want to take part in any discussions in 2012.
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Happy New Year!
Lightbring
@Ami – what are the rules that I have broken and when exactly?
Ami Kaufman
@lightbring – I’ll let you figure it out for yourself.
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Oh, and don’t try and make a fool of me either. That just pisses me off even faster.
Philos
I have a few suggestions for changing the lexicon and vocabulary in reference to these youths.
Instead of “hilltop youth” I think “white-shirts” is more appropriate. This puts them into the historical context of the various fascist movements and their paramilitary organizations that have arisen in various parts of the world since the early 20th century.
Instead of “price tag” I suggest either “pogrom” or “terrorist attack”
It is time to wage the fightback against these fascists. Don’t be under any mistaken belief that “brother’s war” isn’t here. This period is called antebellum.
Lightbringer
Of what you are saying that basically there was no direct violation, you just don’t like what I’m saying.
You are condemning these brainless kids along with their teachers while hissing at me condemning exactly the same teachings of the other book…
Henry Weinstein
Still sneering, Anders Behring Breivik?
Ok I confess I’m not very educated, SupremeLighter: I don’t speak Arabic, the language of the great Islamic civilisation, and it’s a shame I agree with Sinjim.
Bye bye, malignant narcissist.
Warren Metzler
This was a fascinating interview. Because I defy anyone to see any “typical” extremist look to them. This suggests that the Israeli settler movement has been involved in a racist, fascist mindset for a long time; cloaked by “what the Torah instructs us”. This is no different than the significant racism and violence in Caucasians in the South in the US before the civil rights movement; most of whom were also religious, and used the Old Testament scriptures to validate oppression of Blacks.
So this is really a function of limited consciousness; and will only change to the degree Israelis as a whole begin to explicitly describe this as racist fascism, coupled with these young adults growing up and realizing through increased self-awareness how horrible of a way of living is this.
But I challenge all Israelis to perceive, that this is an unavoidable outgrowth of Zionism; and not some insane anomaly. And I am glad the always there, but under the surface, aspect of Zionism eventually desiring to occupy all the land lived in by the 12 tribes of Hebrew Bible times is now in the open. Because only when you realize that part of Zionism can you see that all Zionists, even when they don’t consciously admit it, live in a world that has no consideration for other people.
Ami Kaufman
@lightbringer – cool, that was strike 2.
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Let me explain: in baseball, you get three strikes.
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It’s so fun playing with you!!!
Lightbringer
Whatever, fellas
Again and again your kind ensure me that there is no parter…
Ami Kaufman
@lighbringer – that’s it, you’re out!!!
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oh well, it was fun while it lasted!
Henry Weinstein
Rest In Hell: SupremeLighter.
Freewoman
There is propaganda and there is ante-propaganda – this video falls somewhere in between. The Hilltop kids really are fanatics of the worst kind. The same kind of kids who wait outside abortion clinics and scream obscenities in the name of Christ! Or the youth who joined Hitler – Nazi Youth. The psychopaths of the future.
Written by a Jew who is anti-Israel.
Igor
Much as I hate to admit, there’s one thing the late Lightbringer was right about. This kind of talk, as of lately, can be heard in Bat Yam, Jerusalem and even in Tel Aviv.
Several years ago, people who held racist views were ashamed to express them publicly. Not anymore. These days, being openly racist is getting more and more acceptable, even in educated secular circles.
aristeides
I’d really like to see a study comparing Zionist extremism in American youth with the Israeli version.
David James Vickery
Warren & Henry, as someone who lived from April 2001 until the end of June 2003 in the West Bank (Nablus) working at an-Najah University, and living with Palestinians, I just want to express my respect for yourselves, and appreciation for your comments.
David/Daoud
Elisabeth
Lightbringer, you say: “Yeah, interesting phenomena – wherever Muslims go, they become loathed withing one-two generations.
It seems that Muslim presence just make ordinary people hate those followers of religion of deceit…”
Funny, exactly the same racist stuff is said about Jews on Neo-Nazi websites.
Because people hate you, you must deserve it…what dumb reasoning. It really puts you in the Neo-Nazi league.
Piotr Berman
Sarah Grant: can you give the book and verse that support your opinion? It does not strike a bell…
Lightbringer: one can cite a number of cases of Muslim minorities with scant amount of conflict for many generations. I will just give three examples of large communities living with others for hundreds of years.
First, there is a Muslim minority in Sri Lanka and I have never heard about ANY problems there involving Muslim, and there were many other problems in Sri Lanka, with both Buddhist and Hindu behaving less nicely then they should.
Second, the relationship between Han majority and Chinese speaking Muslim seem OK. One Muslim Chinese, Zheng He, is actually a national hero.
Third, even more Tatars pledged allegiance to Russian crown and by all accounts they were loyal subjects (and no citizens) ever since. Here we are talking about many millions.
“I dislike their teachings …”. Well, the teachings of numerous religious leaders may be found objectionable, starting from various directions in Christianity and Judaism. To pick an example with few (living) defenders, people who drank the famous CoolAid were Christian. People who counsel not to speak to women more than necessary and not to look at them are Jewish. People who brand folks living in their communities for generators as “sojourners and trespassers” are also Jewish. Organizers of ethnic cleansing in Arakan were Buddhist. Etc. And Shinto on a bad day was really, really bad.
Henry Weinstein
About education…
Watch Palestine & ‘Arabs’ in Israeli School Books, interview with Nurit Peled-Eihanan, I fell on this YouTube video via Lisa Goldman
A Must-See video
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWKPRC-_oSg&feature=share
aristeides
These positions aren’t taken in American school books. How do young American Jews absorb them? Perhaps school books don’t really play a part in forming teenage opinions.
Henry Weinstein
Aristeides,
First these kids aren’t American kids, but Israeli-born kids from settlers’ familes coming from the USA, Aliyah US Kids so to say.
Second, Ultra-Zionist ideology & propaganda is very active in the USA via lobbies & AIPAC: it’s very close to Born-Again Christian Goons & Tea Party maniacs.
Third, Israeli schoolbooks play a crucial part in education denying Palestinians the right to exist on the land of Israel, simply by omission.
Fourth, I didn’t omitted in my previous comments the fact that these kids were educated first and last by their parents, i.e their familial and cultural environment: it was their world, and Israeli schoolbooks didn’t question this racist pseudo-Zionist world.
It would be far too easy to condemn these lost kids without understanding from where they come: media say Hilltop Youth and put the light on them, but it would be far more accurate to say Settlements Youth and to ask to their ‘educators’: what have you done to your children, what have you told them day after day?
aristeides
Henry Weinstein – I don’t doubt what you say about the Israeli-born kids, but I still wonder about the American kids, the ones who show up on the birthright trips, eager to throw stones at the Arabs. Or, to put it another way, the US-born parents of the settler kids.
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We hear and see a great deal about the settler kids, but there’s a great silence about their American origins.
Mitchell Cohen
@Henry, I don’t expect much thinking from Aristeides, but you seem like a more knowledgeable, open-minded poster. That is why I am a little disappointed to see you generalizing about American Olim (specifically Americans living over the green line). First of all, the percentage of Jews living over the green line who are NOT Sabras (i.e. native born Israelis) is something like 12%. NO small number of that twelve percent are Russian speaking (mostly secular and no less right-wing than Baruch Marzel, even if they drive on Shabbat and eat on Yom Kippur). Second of all, the political views of American Olim, as a whole (including those who live over the green line), vary about as much as the general Israeli population. I venture to say, if you were to take the “average” or “median” of the views of the American Olim, it would be no more to the right of the Russian Olim, French Olim, or Ethiopian Olim. Lastly, do you have any proof that the “hilltop” thugs are children of American Olim?
Mikesailor
Aristeides: If you are around American Jews long enough, and I have a Jewish daughter-in-law with a new grandson, you will hear the underlying racism soon enough. I was actually surprised to hear talk about ‘dirty Arabs’ from older, post-50 year old Jews speaking among each other in what they thought was a ‘friendly’ gathering. Mind you, these are people who never met an Arab, particularly within their social circles. They are second and third generation Americans who only socialize within their own small circle, mainly other Jews. Gentiles for the most part are not really welcome, and the only argument with their group always seems to devolve into an argument about whose family was ‘persecuted’ more before they came to the US, and who supports Israel more, right or wrong. This is the group with the financial wherewithal to donate funds, but they will only donate to ‘Jewish’ charities and love to brag about how much money they have given. Take this group, and multiply it, and you will see the endemic racism passed along through generations which they continue to cultivate in the young. Then, place the young in a position to act on what they have been so carefully taught. And you have the ‘hilltop’ youth.
I once read an article by Eric Alterman NYU professor and founder of the Alternet website, depicting his youth. It seems his father always told him to always ask the question concerning young Eric’s ‘goy’ friends whether or not these friends would protect young Eric if there was a ‘pogrom’ or other persecution. The underlying message was that Eric could only truly trust other Jews. In fact, Eric so internalized this message that he has written that he would support ‘pro-Israeli’ positions even if they were detrimental to the US, under the rationale that the US could somehow ‘afford’ mistakes and their consequences while Israel could not.
This seems to be the heart of the problem. If you take the positions of my son’s Jewish in-laws, and the position of a ‘liberal’ like Alterman, you can only realize that this mindset is not an aberration but a continuum. With the more ‘anti-Arab, anti-gentile’ position on one side and a lesser ‘anti Arab, anti-gentile’ position on the other. Neither ever challenges the basic presumptions underlying their positions lest the social and familial costs prove too great.
Mitchell Cohen
@Mikesailor, your generalization of American Jews just does not hold water on the ground. If American Jews are so allergic to Gentiles then why is the intermarriage rate among them well over 50% today?
AYLA
@Ami–you are opening important doors with translation, all along using your SuperPowers as The Remover for good, not evil
. thank you. This was of course hard to watch, but the closest I’ll ever get to talking to those people myself. Wow. You can learn so much about the mindset from that one girl’s statement (paraphrased): for every olive tree there’s an arab, and, so, we chop them down, you know: temporarily. on how many levels of hatred, disconnection, violence, and ignorance does that statement operate?
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@Aristeides–it’s getting more and more old to hear you, someone who as far as we know has never visited this place–make absurdly wrong assessments (ie about birthright participants). Really, ridiculous.
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@Sinjim–how you can respond with such grace in the face of this video and subsequent comment threads, I don’t know; thank you for your presence, and for your apparent faith in humanity / perspective.
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@Henry and Mitchell–happy new year. I’m trying to spend less time commenting here. Wish me luck.
Henry Weinstein
Mitchell Cohen,
I don’t think I was generalizing when I spoke about Ultra-Zionits settlers, it would have been the case if I just said “settlers”. Same remark concerning Ultra-Zionist American settlers, I didn’t say American settlers or Zionist American settlers. I don’t consider all settlers are ‘bad’, even Zionist settlers.
I didn’t say all American Jews were Ultra-Zionists, I said Ultra-Zionist ideology & propaganda was very active via lobbies & AIPAC.
To answer to your question, I watched this video in Paris and I don’t “have any proof that the “hilltop youth thugs are chidren of American Olim”, so ok here I was probably generalizing.
I would like to know, Mitchell, who educate them. Their familial story. Their teachers. I didn’t say these very troubled kids were “thugs”.
I think it’s too easy to condemn them without analyzing their background.
AYLA
what this is, really, is a very serious religious cult. I don’t think we should be using language like “ultra zionist settlers” even though it’s all true, because it just gets very muddy with all the associations. They are a violent, HIlltop Cult, with Rabbinic leadership, which is terrifying. How to de-program them? Only other rabbis would stand a chance, I’d think, and while plenty have spoken out against this movement, I don’t know of any direct intervention. I also don’t have a sense of their numbers, or how widely they’re recruiting (however loosely). These kids seem really sick; they need help.
AYLA
@Igor–really? When I step outside of my circles/bubbles, I do encounter a lot of shockingly blatant racism, but it never sounds anything like this. I hear a lot of anti-arab and/or anti-Palestinian statements that often go along with the idea that Palestinians are violent, but I do not hear support of offensive, violent actions against them (certainly not hate crimes such as mosque burning), and usually the same people making the racist statements are people who would say these Hilltoppers are crazy. In fact, most of them would denounce the settlement movement in general. If we are going to talk about Israeli racism and the trends therein, lets not do so in connection with these extremists. Lets keep it real, so that we can do the subject justice.
aristeides
Mikesailor – I see all that stuff, but it comes from the people who’d call themselves “liberal zionists” who live in a state of defensive denial. Send our kids to Israel on a Birthright trip to drink milk and honey and maybe meet a nice American Jewish guy but G forbid they’d move there, so far from home. And “of course we’re against the settlements, but” And “why are you always bashing Israel” because we don’t really want to hear about what they’re doing in the settlements, it upsets the grandparents.
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This isn’t the same thing at all as the environment that produces the kids who want to go to Israel so they’ll give them a gun and they can shoot Arabs.
Mikesailor
Aristeides: I am primarily speaking about a generational paradigm with which I am sure you are all too familiar. That older generation has been well indoctrinated. The newer generation spoken of by Mitchell Cohen is different. They, for the most part, are educated in US public schools or at least schools where they constantly contact non-Jews. I have noticed that most of these ‘assimilated’ youth have no wish to go to Israel and view Judaism as a religion rather than a separate ethnicity. If you look at the ‘hilltoppers’, it seems most believe that their ‘ethnicity’ as Jews gives them license. They are, I dare say, the youth who were well indoctrinated since birth and never really ‘fit in’ with those not of their belief system. In other words, they were segregated from Mainstream society. And, if they were not ‘socialized’ to the extent that they learned tolerance for other groups of people unlike themselves, they were crippled to begin with. And the hatred and indoctrination is clear from the video.
The most disturbing aspect is the denial of this endemic racism within the American Jewish community. As was written in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical ‘SOUTH PACIFIC’, you have to be ‘taught to hate’. And the adults, who should know better, never see the ‘dark side’ of the lessons imparted to the young.
aristeides
Mikesailor – yes, I quite agree, but what I’m not sure of is just where this indoctrination is taking place in the US. In exactly what communities, in what yeshivas, under what rabbis.
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If these were Muslims indoctrinating their youth to commit hate crimes, the FBI and other acronyms would be all over it, infiltrating the mosques and schools. They keep watch on the white supremacist, Christian supremacist cults. Are they not watching the Jewish cults as well?
Marlene Newesri
Hilltop Youth? How about Hitler Youth?
Mitchell Cohen
ROTFL….Mikesailor, the expert on American Jewry from having a Jewish daughter in law….
Mike Jacobson
There is a very easy answer … when Palestine becomes a state, and the IDF is no longer there, these lunatics should be allowed to stay in Palestine and see if they can survive with all this hatred in their minds and hearts.
aristeides
I hope this site doesn’t start tolerating posts like Mitchell Cohen’s, which says nothing but puts down another commenter.
Micah
The most disturbing aspect is the denial of this endemic racism within the American Jewish community.
Which American Jewish community? We’re not monolithic, you know. Within Orthodox circles, there is a fair amount of support for the national religious settler movement and even the pricetag terrorists (who are mostly the settlement-born children of American Orthodox Jews who moved to the West Bank to become national religious settlers). But support for anti-Arab ultra-Zionism isn’t even universal in Orthodox circles, and once you move outside the Orthodox world, it falls off considerably.
Yes, the stream of American Jewry represented by AIPAC is very staunchly Zionist. And the AIPAC worldview can lead the weak-minded to resort to racist, Islamophobic and anti-Arab sentiment as a way to avoid confronting Israel’s very real and very complicated challenges.
But the American Jewish community as a whole is largely left-leaning in its general politics, leading younger generations (particularly outside the Orthodox world) to be greatly conflicted between our belief that the continued existence of a safe Jewish homeland in the land of Israel is a just and good thing, and our belief that all human beings have inalienable basic rights and that the Palestinian people deserve much, much better than they currently get. Hence the advent of organizations like J Street to try to advocate for a more nuanced, left-leaning Zionist worldview where being pro-Israel doesn’t necessitate being anti-Arab any more than being pro-choice necessitates being anti-life.
So please take your generalizations and false dichotomies elsewhere.
Mitchell Cohen
“Within Orthodox circles, there is a fair amount of support for the national religious settler movement and even the pricetag terrorists (who are mostly the settlement-born children of American Orthodox Jews who moved to the West Bank to become national religious settlers).” [End of Micah]
Micah, I will ask you the same ? I asked another poster on this very thread. What proof do you have that the “price taggers” are children of American born Olim? Aside from the person being interviewed on the English Arutz 7 always seeming to have a Brooklyn accent, what other “proof” do you have?