For decades, Israeli/Zionist propaganda has been based on the claim that Palestinians are terrorists out to destroy Israel.

However, “terrorists,” as the propaganda uses this term, has a blanket definition. It does not differentiate between Palestinians who exercise their internationally sanctioned right to resist foreign occupation with courage and resolve, despite their rudimentary capacities which pale next to the sophisticated war machine of the state they face, and Palestinians who have tried to work with the Israeli occupying power to end the occupation, even if in stages in accordance with negotiated agreements.

This is despite the fact, empirically proven, that Tel Aviv never respects the agreements it signs or seriously commits itself to implementing their provisions.

To Israelis, all Palestinians and their supporters are terrorists and must be driven from their land or eliminated. This reasoning is based on the prevailing political and religious convictions and attitudes that the majority of Israelis share. Whatever diversity exists at this level in Israel lies only in how far these convictions and attitudes are publicly expressed and in the extremes to which those who have them would be willing to go to translate them into realities that serve the ultimate goal of taking over the whole of historic Palestine and ridding it of its indigenous inhabitants.

The conventional Israeli/Zionist propaganda described above has been thoroughly debunked. The reality is the very antithesis. The terrorism that the world sees unfolding in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) is Jewish terrorism. This is the terrorism that threatens the Zionist entity, and it threatens it from within.

It is delegitimising it and isolating it from its regional environment and from the rest of the world, including parts of the world that have long been its staunchest supporters. This is the terrorism that is forming the image of the Israeli state and of institutions that have long boasted of being the product of democratic processes. Needless to say, it is not a positive image.

The foregoing assessment of the Zionist entity and the warning about its very survival are not mine, and nor are they fabrications by those who believe in the Palestinian right to self-determination and to an independent state.

The assessment originates with a high-ranking Israeli official who described himself in a letter addressed to senior members of the Israeli government, Knesset, and judiciary as an Israeli Jew and an officer. He said that he had felt compelled to write the letter out of his deep belief in Jewish values and his security expertise and responsibilities. He warned of the consequences of Jewish terrorism as manifested in the brutal violence perpetrated by Jewish settlers against Palestinians with the full political and material support of extremist Jewish Orthodox groups and senior government officials.    

The letter, as reported by the Israeli Channel 12, was written by Ronen Bar, the head of the Israel Security Agency, or Shin Bet, and warns that extremist settler violence, which he refers to as the “hilltop youth trend,” is jeopardising Israel’s national security and damaging the reputation of the state. He also fears that the aim of the Jewish terrorist leaders is to cause the state to lose control.

 “The ‘hilltop youth’ trend has long since become a bed of violent activity against Palestinians,” he wrote. Police incompetence and “hidden support” for such acts have contributed to the “significant expansion” in the numbers of settlers perpetrating them. The settlers no longer fear administrative detention “due to the conditions they find in prison and the funds they receive after their release from Knesset members as well as legitimacy and praise.”

Due to such encouragement, the nature of Jewish terrorism has changed “from focused covert activity to broad and open activity and from using a lighter to using weapons of war,” he said. “Sometimes they are using weapons that were distributed by the state lawfully. From evading the security forces to attacking the security forces [and] from cutting themselves off from the establishment to receiving legitimacy from certain officials in the establishment.”

In Bar’s opinion, the answer cannot be provided by Shin Bet, which is only designed to deal with “a small group of extremists. It cannot deal with the root of the problem.” Nor is the Israeli army equipped for such a mission, especially at a time when it is “finding it difficult to carry out all its tasks.” Rather, what is needed to rein in this dangerous phenomenon is “a coalition including ministers, government departments, rabbis, and regional leaders.”  

The letter, particularly important as it comes from the Shin Bet chief, offers compelling testimony to the perils of Jewish settler terrorism, which invites “revenge attacks” that could spiral into a fully-fledged intifada. This is the “slippery slope” that has brought Israel to the “threshold of a significant, reality-changing process.”

The hilltop youth are not alone in perpetrating terrorist acts against Palestinians. Four other groups are involved, and they are using the violence to seize more Palestinian land and establish settler outposts. These are proliferating rapidly thanks to the generous funds they receive upon the instructions of Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the tactical support of the police, who are under the command of far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and the additional donations they receive from Knesset members.

The result is a terrorist ecosystem embedded in state institutions and driven by religio-ideological notions that deny Palestinians their human and civil rights and claim that the whole of Palestine belongs exclusively to Jews.

According to the Jewish settlement strategy, to be implemented by violence and fait accompli, the aim is to increase the settler population in the Occupied West Bank from the current 525,000 to three million settlers, or from a ratio of one settler to six Palestinians to one to one.

The thinking is that this will alter the status of the West Bank from an Occupied Territory to a disputed territory, which would be a step towards legitimising the permanent Zionist occupation of the whole of Palestine. This, in turn, would render the demand for a two-state solution meaningless.

This should come as no surprise. The Jewish terrorism that is on full display today is the outgrowth of the historically documented terrorism that led to the establishment of the Zionist state. The hilltop youth, the Smotriches and Ben-Gvirs, and the terrorist ecosystem in which they flourish are the direct descendants of the Haganah, Irgun, and Stern Gang which committed multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity in 1948, and the leaders of which went on to become the leaders of the artificial entity that was implanted on the land of Palestine.

The writer is senior adviser to Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 5 September, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly