There is a war taking place in Israel today. It is not the war most people are watching. It is not being fought by two armies facing each other across a battlefield. It is a one-sided war, waged openly by right-wing extremists and their violent settler agents against Palestinians in the West Bank.
The Palestinians are the immediate victims. Their homes, fields, cars, olive trees, livestock, villages, and daily lives are under attack. Families are being frightened off their land. Shepherds are being driven from grazing areas. Farmers are prevented from reaching their fields. Water supplies are being cut off. Entire communities are forced to live under constant threat.
But we Israelis must understand something deeper and more frightening: The Palestinians are the victims, but the target is liberal democratic Israel.
This is a war against the rule of law, against equality, against human dignity, against the authority of the courts, against the army as a state institution, and against the idea that the state must serve all of its citizens rather than one messianic cause – creating the kingdom of God.
The political right-wing extremists and their violent settler agents and soldiers do not want the Israel promised in our Declaration of Independence. They do not want a state based on freedom, justice, peace, and equality. They want a messianic, religious, halachic kingdom of God. They want sovereignty without democracy, Judaism without morality, power without restraint, and land without Palestinians.
For them, even the current reality is only a stage on the way to their largest religious project: changing the status quo on the Temple Mount by destroying the mosques and rebuilding the Temple.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and those who share his ideology are not merely expanding settlements and building new facts on the ground. They are advancing a revolutionary project. There are no secrets. The plan was written and published years ago by Smotrich himself.
Their goal is to replace democratic Israel with a religious-nationalist regime in which Jewish supremacy becomes law, Palestinian existence is treated as a problem to be removed, and liberal Israelis are dismissed as traitors, anarchists, or obstacles to be defeated.
The true extent of the danger of settler violence
This is why settler violence is not a side issue. It is not “hilltop youth” misbehavior. It is not the work of a few wild boys or a handful of rogue ranchers. It is not marginal. It is the street-level expression of an ideology that now sits inside the government of Israel, the Israeli army, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), and soon deep inside our judicial system.
It is strategic, systematic, and advancing according to plan. Its representatives control key levers of state power: the Finance Ministry, the Civil Administration, large parts of the policing system in the West Bank, and growing influence inside the army and the security establishment. They do not need to overthrow the state from the outside. They are hollowing it out from within.
They are moving forward all the time, and they are succeeding. Tens of Palestinian communities have already been displaced. Hundreds of new settlements have been established. Settler control has expanded over vast areas of the West Bank through outposts, farms, roads, security zones, infrastructure, intimidation, and direct violence. More and more land is being brought violently under their control while the Israeli public barely notices.
This is how they are defeating us.
When Palestinians are attacked and the state does not protect them, Israel is being changed. When soldiers protect settlers while settlers rampage, Israel is being changed. When ministers justify, excuse, or encourage this violence, Israel is being changed.
When the state connects settlements and outposts – even those illegal under Israeli law – to water, electricity, roads, and security, Israel is being changed. When the law is applied differently to Jews and Palestinians, democracy is being hollowed out from within.
Israel cannot remain democratic while tolerating violence carried out in the name of Judaism and Jewish land. A Jewish state cannot remain morally Jewish while allowing Jews to terrorize another people. A free society cannot survive when violent extremists are permitted to rule by fear because their violence serves a larger ideological goal.
We must be clear: Opposing violent settlers is not anti-Israel. It is an act of loyalty to Israel. Defending Palestinians from settler terror is not only a Palestinian cause. It is an Israeli democratic necessity. It is also a Jewish necessity, because Judaism that becomes a tool of domination, revenge, and supremacy is not the Judaism that can sustain a moral national home for the Jewish people.
The struggle today is not only between Israelis and Palestinians. It is also between two visions of Israel. One vision is democratic, Jewish, liberal, pluralistic, humane, and committed to the rule of law. The other is messianic, supremacist, authoritarian, and violent. One vision understands that Jewish self-determination must be joined to moral responsibility. The other believes that Jewish power cancels the rights of others.
The right-wing extremist politicians and their violent settler agents know what they are fighting for. They are organized, determined, and protected. They have an ideology, a strategy, political leadership, rabbis who give religious language to their actions, ministers who open doors for them inside the state, and an army that too often protects them rather than restrains them. They are not waiting for permission from the Israeli majority. They are moving forward.
What about us? The majority of Israelis want quiet. We want to live our lives, raise our children, recover from trauma, and avoid another internal battle. Many of us speak of a desire for unity. Many of us do not see what is happening in the hills and valleys of the West Bank. Many of us prefer not to see it. Some of us tell ourselves that it is far away, that it concerns only Palestinians, or that the army and police know what they are doing.
But silence is not neutrality. Silence is surrender.
While the majority of us look away, a determined minority is reshaping our country. While we Israelis argue about politics as usual, this war is being fought with almost no resistance from those who claim to care about Israel’s democratic future.
The question is whether we understand what we are losing.
We are losing the rule of law. We are losing the moral authority of the army. We are losing the possibility of future peace. We are losing our standing in the world. We are losing the Judaism of human dignity. We are losing the Israel that promised equality to all its citizens and sought peace with its neighbors.
If we do not stop them, the Palestinians will continue to suffer first. But Israel – democratic Israel, liberal Israel, decent Israel, the Israel that still has a chance to live in peace with its neighbors – may be the final casualty.
This is a war. It is time for democratic Israelis to understand that we are already in it.