US “charity” aids armed Israeli settlers
Michael F. Brown Rights and Accountability 17 July 2024
HaYovel distributes thermal drones to armed and uniformed settlers for proposed use in Ramallah. (via Facebook)
HaYovel, a US tax-deductible organization, is reaching out to “Christian Zionist” volunteers to work in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Unmentioned is the contribution of such efforts in entrenching an Israeli apartheid system in the West Bank. Palestinians live there with inferior rights and increasingly are relegated to bantustans as settlers take more and more land for themselves with Israeli government backing.
It’s a Wild West settler-colonial reality – a variation on the false claim of a land without a people for a people without a land – and conservative Christians from the US, Canada and elsewhere are literally there for it.
Participants are told they will get to “experience and visit places in Israel where most people don’t get to go,” words obscuring the discriminatory legal framework applied to Palestinians in the West Bank.
Israel is described in one HaYovel video as “a small nation of only 7 million Jews,” simply writing out of existence the 2 million Palestinian citizens of Israel.
The language of “doing night watches on farms and in Jewish communities” hints at a paramilitary aspect of the visit. A young HaYovel leader imbues such words with added meaning because he is sporting a t-shirt for “concealed carry” of firearms back in the US.
The back of the t-shirt reads “Freedom isn’t free.” The young Christian activist is doing his best to take freedom from Palestinians.
There is, however, no public discussion of participants bearing arms in any capacity, though talk of “night watches” gives the impression of being in close proximity to settlers who have recently received greater access to firearms courtesy of Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister and a champion of the right-wing anti-Palestinian racist Meir Kahane.
Director of Operations for HaYovel Nate Waller, a son of American founders Tommy and Sherri Waller, is described as “head of security for the Israel base facilities.” HaYovel team members also put together armored vests for “local security teams.”
A different video shows HaYovel contributing helmets and thermal drones to armedand uniformed individuals in a West Bank settlement for use in the illegal settlement of Psagot and elsewhere in the occupied territory.
One of the armed recipients, a settler from Psagot, says “with Ramallah in front of us, with the crowded neighborhoods, this is [a] most important thing, the drones, to see the enemy between the buildings – and huge appreciation, we’ll use it.”
This is an open admission from a former sniper that the equipment is planned for use against Palestinians in Ramallah by snipers targeting “crowded neighborhoods.”
Pushing land theft
Not everyone is accepted for the volunteer program, but those making the cut are told that “participants will be staying and working in one of the most hotly contested places in the world: the area commonly known as the ‘West Bank,’ but what we like to call Israel’s biblical heartland.”
There is no talk of meeting Palestinians, whether Muslim or Christian, probably thankfully when pushing land theft. Living Palestinians are othered from a Bible that is dead to all readings except historical re-creation – or “fighting for the restoration of God’s Kingdom in the land of Israel,” as HaYovel puts it.
It’s a militarized and apartheid existence extolled by HaYovel.
“Dinner is served in the early evening back at our base and on some evenings we will have a guest speaker come to our campus from a nearby Jewish community to share their personal story, inspiring message or insightful teaching. We’ll also be meeting the Jewish people who we are serving on locations throughout Judea and Samaria.”
The organization further notes: “Our volunteer base camp is located within secure perimeters that are protected by the Israeli military day and night. In addition to this, there is Israeli military presence guarding the roads and highways that we travel to get to and from different locations as we volunteer and tour.”
The base camp is located on the edge of the illegal settlement of Har Bracha.
Those helping with the Israeli conquest of the West Bank are told they “will be on the front lines of the battle to restore Israel’s heartland each and every day.” Day by day their farming efforts contribute to the discriminatory water crisis Palestinians face.For these would-be colonizers, mostly Americans and Canadians, the opportunity to advance illegal settlement activity – and, at the very least, indirectly excise Palestinians from their land – is proving irresistible.
They brag of paying for the experience.
Settlements and sanctions
A State Department spokesperson responded to an inquiry from The Electronic Intifada but referred questions about HaYovel’s tax status to the Department of the Treasury.
The spokesperson noted, “The United States opposes the advancement of settlements in the West Bank, and this certainly extends to the retroactive legalization of outposts, previously illegal under Israeli law. Regarding settlements generally, we have been unequivocal: The Israeli government’s settlement program is inconsistent with international law.”
What is not said is what the Biden administration intends to do about it. Israel has recently approved the largest theft of Palestinian land in three decades as settlers intimidate Palestinians out of their homes and villages.
The words of the spokesperson echo a much-repeated State Department talking point: “Settlements weaken, not strengthen, Israel’s security and take us away from the vision of two states for two peoples. And they are detrimental to our vision of equal measures of security, freedom, prosperity, and dignity for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”
Rhetoric of this sort lacks credibility as Israel creates a one-state reality devoid of equal rights in which Palestinians live a second-class existence.
According to the State Department spokesperson, “We urge Israeli officials to refrain from taking actions to fund outposts that have long been illegal under Israeli law. Actions or announcements seeking to expand outposts will only move the goal of peace further away.”
But the US government will do nothing substantive to stop it, such as cutting off military aid to Israel or stopping US vetoes at the United Nations intended to protect Israel from the consequences of its own lawbreaking.
More modest steps are being taken against the most openly violent settlers, but nothing that brings meaningful consequences for the Israeli government pursuing illegal settlement activity.
On 11 July, the State Department imposed sanctions on individuals and entities, including the organization Lehava, “involved in violence or threats of violence targeting civilians, seizure or dispossession of property by private actors, or actions that threaten the peace, stability and security of the West Bank.”
Furthermore, “the entry of designated individuals into the United States is suspended.”
At the same time, however, US-made 500-pound bombs started flowing again to Israel for use in the devastated Gaza Strip where Israel has carried out a genocidewith American weapons.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network of the Treasury Department also noted on 11 July “additional red flags regarding financing of Israeli extremist settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.”
Additionally, “Treasury continues to be concerned by reports of escalating violence in the West Bank, including reported attacks by Israeli settlers on humanitarian aid convoys.”
Again, these actions are needed, but fail to target the heart of the problem: Israeli government complicity. The Biden administration continues not just to look the other way as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing coalition run over the US authorities, but to provide them with weapons and diplomatic backing.
Where it matters most, at the government to government level, the Biden administration is doing the least.
The Department of Treasury did not respond to inquiries from The Electronic Intifada about HaYovel and the distribution of thermal drones for proposed use by settlers against Palestinians in Ramallah.
Luke Hilton, HaYovel’s marketing director, lambasted the decision to “sanction more so-called settlers in the West Bank,” calling it “Jew-hatred” and “false anyways.”
He argued sanctions shouldn’t be pursued because “Israel is a First World democratic nation with First World rule of law.”
In fact, Hilton and HaYovel are giving comfort to an Israeli state practicing apartheidwhile denying the two-tier legal system faced by Palestinians.