July 20, 2022, saw thousands of extremist Israeli settlers flock to seven uninhabited sites in the Occupied West Bank. Families and large numbers of teenagers and young adults, with religious fringes dangling from their waists, blue and white flags in their hands, and M16 rifles slung across their backs, set up tents and makeshift kitchens and yeshivas. One outpost even included a bouncy castle and cotton candy machine.
The action was planned and fundraised for months in advance by the right-wing Nachala settler movement which claims that the Jewish people “were promised the Land of Israel in the Bible.”
Despite then-Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked praising the settlers as “inspired,” “dedicated,” and “wonderful,” then-Defense Minister Benny Gantz ordered Israeli soldiers and police to dismantle the encampments. However, even after evacuation, the Nachala group has pledged to return and rebuild.
Palestinians fear violent retribution for the evacuation of the outposts, and they have good reason to worry. In 2015, following settler outrage at an Israeli Supreme Court decision to demolish two buildings illegally constructed on privately-owned Palestinian land, a Palestinian home in the village of Duma was firebombed. Eighteen-month-old Ali Sa’ad Dawabsheh, his mother and his father were killed. Four-year-old Ahmad Dawabsheh was left orphaned with third-degree burns over 60 percent of his body.
The Hilltop Youth movement, whose members carried out the Duma firebombing, is composed of hard-line ultra-religious Jewish Israeli teens and young adults who pursue a back-to-the-land (which they’re illegally occupying) lifestyle and start families at extremely young ages. In line with their view that the Israeli government and their parents’ generation of settlers are too weak and acquiescent to Palestinian demands, they criticized Nachala for allowing the seven outposts to be so easily dismantled.
Israeli youth-composed groups like the Hilltop Youth and their ilk have become the face and force of the Israeli settler movement. Each spring they turn out in huge numbers for the Jerusalem Flag march where they force their way through the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City chanting such things as “death to Arabs” and engaging in pre-planned mob violence.
Across the globe, we have been witnessing Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians — including Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox traditions — abusing their faiths in the name of exclusivist violence.
Previous Coverage
Honoring the righteous rage, agony and despair of this global uprisingPresident Trump’s military parade from the White House to St. John’s Church (in Lafayette Square) in June 2020 to hold aloft an upside-down Bible might have seemed at the time to be little more than a temper tantrum photo-op stunt, but in hindsight, we can see how it set the stage for the following Jan. 6.
By mid-November, after Trump lost his bid for re-election, right-wing pro-Trump activists were planning a series of “Jericho Marches” to invoke the biblical story of the siege of Jericho as a call for actions to keep Trump in office. As Jan. 6 neared, Proud Boys members could be seen praying near the Washington monument, comparing the “sacrifice” they were preparing to make to the crucifixion of Christ. The next evening, they rampaged through town attacking African- American churches and other houses where Black Lives Matter signs were displayed.
As Jan. 6th approached, the Jericho Marchers traveled with shofars (Jewish ritual instruments, made from rams’ horns evoking freedom, holiness and the call for Jewish people to be in the service of God) and American flags to Washington, DC. Tennessee pastor Greg Locke praised the Proud Boys and lauded America as “the last bastion of Christian freedom.”
The fusing of violence with a blasphemed interpretation of Christianity in the U.S. did not end with the era of lynchings carried out in the name of Christian duty, nor with the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The weapon used in the mass murder of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas was manufactured by the Georgia-based Daniel Defense, whose social media that day included a picture of a toddler with a rifle in his lap and the text of Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Florida’s Spike’s Tactical company manufactures AR-15-style rifles with Psalm 144:1 emblazoned on them.
U.S. extremist groups like the Proud Boys profane religion in ways that are similar to their Israeli counterparts. Unlike in Israel, however, the age of their members trend as old as 34, and most of the people who participated in the Jan.6 Insurrection were in their 40s and 50s . That said, strong efforts to recruit youth are being made by U.S. neo-Nazi groups.
Given the way religion is being twisted to grow violent white and Christian (or in Israel’s case Jewish) supremacy, those of us — Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, and others — who do not see our faiths as tribalist calls to maintain exclusive privileges for our group, should consider ourselves called to action.
We must adhere to our faiths’ commandment to “Love Thy Neighbor” and “feed the hungry and house the poor,” and work for justice, freedom and equality for all; let us proclaim from the mountaintops how the sacredness of God compels us to recognize that the only way to respond to a violent world is through a prophetic and strategic commitment to peace and nonviolence. We should stand together against those who distort our faiths and politically exploit them to justify violence against others.