The Double Standard Destroying Israel’s Land Policy

Naomi Linder Kahn of Regavim sits down with Chanale to break down one of the most ignored battles in Israel: who controls the land, who gets blamed, and who gets away with building.

From illegal construction and foreign-funded pressure to the “settler violence” narrative, this episode exposes the double standard shaping Israel’s future on the ground.

Watch more powerful conversations at http://moraledge.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I'm Hanala, and this is the weekly squeeze on Moral Edge. I want you to meet a young woman from New York. She's in her mid-twenties. She's studying political science and Near Eastern languages at NYU. She's serious and idealistic, and she has made the decision that most people in her life probably thought was ambitious to the point of reckless. She is moving to Israel, to Judea specifically, to a small community called Givadzaev, which sits in the hills of Northwest Jerusalem in territory that the whole world has been arguing about since before we were born. That was in 1984, and she is still here. She raised five children here. She has grandchildren growing up on this land now. She has watched the hills around her change for over 40 years, watched what gets built and what gets demolished and what gets ignored. And she turned that watching into a life's work. Her name is Naomi Linder Khan, and I think she might be one of the most important people in the Jewish world that most Jewish people have never heard of. There is a question that sits underneath almost every conversation about Israel's future, about the two-state solution, about settlements, about security, about what this country is going to look like in 20 years. The question is: what is actually happening on the ground right now, on the actual physical land, away from the speeches and the frameworks and the position papers published in Washington and Brussels? Naomi knows because she's been watching it here from her window for the last four decades. And for the last several years, she's been the person at an organization called Regavim, who takes that ground level knowledge and carries it into European parliaments and American Jewish communities, and anywhere else people are willing to sit still long enough to understand what's actually happening in the land of Israel. Naomi recently published two reports through Regavim that I went to dig into, um as easy as ABC, which documents the systematic takeover of Area C and the writing on the wall of Jericho, which should be keeping every Israeli up at night. And this is what makes Naomi different from every analyst or policy expert who publishes on this topic. Naomi has been trying to get people to pay attention to this for years. She walks into rooms, she presents the data, she hands over the documents, and she goes home to Gifadzaev, to the hills she's been watching since 1984, to the grandchildren who are growing up in the middle of everything she's been documenting. This is not an abstraction for her. This is her actual life. And I think that's exactly why you should listen to her, because the people who understand this most viscerally are the ones who are living inside of it. And Naomi has been living inside of it longer than most. So she's here today, and we're going to get into it. Naomi, welcome to the show. So glad you made it. How is your day so far running around this role? Um, typical. Typical. Tell us more. What is typical for Naomi?

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Typical is starting the day before my first coffee, I was working on two separate position papers. One of them we hope will uh impact decision makers in Europe, uh, and the other specifically focusing on the United States government's um probably unknown complicity in some very, very serious problems that Israel is facing, has faced, and will face, unfortunately, even more uh in the future. So before I even have my first cup of coffee, those two things are percolating. From there.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Light stuff.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Light light stuff, you know, a little bit of light. Sure. Uh from there, uh in between, of course, uh trying to coordinate with my uh daughter-in-law about babysitting for my grandchildren in the evening, and then running off to a conversation to try to uh form a coalition with two very important uh new organizations that are trying to get the story of Judea and Samaria out to decision makers abroad. Uh and Kira. Such important work.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Thank you for making time for us. I want people to know who you are, what motivated you to come here. That's very much a part of our messaging. We believe that anyone can and everyone should make aliyah. So tell us, bring us back. A couple decades. What was that decision? Did you know what you were building? Did you have any idea what the next 40 years of your life was going to look like, what you were going to be fighting for?

SPEAKER_00 4:41

So I'll tell you, I don't think I could have even imagined uh what my life would would look like. It's better than I could have ever imagined. It's more fulfilling, more meaningful, more rewarding, um, more, just more than I could even have imagined. But I knew, uh, and this was a joint decision, people often ask me and my husband, uh, so what was the conversation? What made you decide to come on Aliyah? And we both look at one another and we say, well, did we actually have a convers? We didn't have a conversation because it was clear to both of us. From our last Sheba Brachot, exactly one week after we were married, uh, from the celebration, we went straight to the airport, got on a plane, and never looked back. Um we were both determined to be part of Jewish history and not observers from the side. That meant to us that the place where Jewish history is made, and not some footnote in Jewish history, uh, but the place of Jewish history, the place where it's built every day and has been since the Jewish people came into existence, is right here. And we wanted to be part of that and not just read about it misreported most of the time in the New York Times or anywhere else. So we got on that plane and um we came with no expectations. We came only with the with the hope that we could build a life. And thank God we have uh succeeded beyond our wildest dreams in so many ways. Uh we have a, thank God, uh a beautiful family, um, growing family, uh vibrant, healthy, varied family. We actually were part of a clan already because uh all of my husband's siblings are here. My I have my sister here as well. Uh, and we're a growing, um, I would say typical Israeli family, in that we are now um really an ingathering of the exiles in a lot of ways. I have uh we have children and grandchildren whose other influences come from every single imaginable Jewish diaspora, and they're all here um creating this beautiful mosaic of uh modern Jewish Israeli life.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Wow, if that's not a pitch for Aliyah, I don't know what is. Well, okay, so there's a distance between someone who lives in Judea and someone who writes uh uh reports that land up on European parliamentarians' desks. So how did you get from one to another? And like how did watching what's going on in Israel turn into actually documenting it?

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Well, I uh for for many years it didn't. I was uh very heavily in involved in academia. That was really my direction.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Um describe to people though where you live so people understand the sort of your lifestyle.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

I live um in a community that was established in only about a uh six months before I got there, actually. In the early 1980s, uh the effects of the revolution, essentially, in Israeli politics were beginning to be felt on the ground. When in 1977, the Likud, or headed by Menachem Begin, finally uh broke through the years and years of labor uh rule, um, labor domination of the political scene, um, a more nationalist right-wing, um, I would say Jabotinsky-leaning government came into control and began to actually uh increase a lot uh to increase the amount of uh Jewish settlement in uh areas that were taken back in 1967. Although it is important for me to stress the the labor governments that preceded 1977 also, from 1967 onwards, understood, fully understood the importance of Judea and Samaria, Yudan Shamron, for the security of Israel, and understood Israel's rights to that territory just as just as the right-wing governments did. But they the right-wing governments were more willing to um, I would say, ignore international pressure. And declare sovereignty. Actually, not declare sovereignty. Unfortunately, that still hasn't happened, but to actually act uh upon their understanding of the Jewish people's rights and uh obligations in these areas. So Givatze Ev is one of the communities that was established in the early 1980s. Uh, it was named actually for Jabotinsky. The original name, this is a curiosity that most people don't know, even people who live there, the original name was Givon, because it is located in Biblical Giv'on. In when you read the Bible and the battle at Givon happened right outside my front door. And all of the um geographic markers that are mentioned in the books of the prophets are right outside my window. I look down into the Ayalon Valley that begins right at my doorstep, and that is where the sun stood still. And the Gibbonites who made a treaty uh with Joshua are the village is uh just walking distance from my house. And all of these places are part and parcel of who I am and uh and what our life is about.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Wow, what a merit to live on the biblical heartland of Israel where all these stories from our ancestors took place, really living the history and reminded of it with every sunset and every sunrise. Correct. Wow, that's beautiful. Well, most people who follow the conflict from abroad, including me before I made Aliyah, Gaza, the West Bank, settlements, checkpoints, area C, area B, most people don't have a clue. For someone who drives through it regularly, what is area C? What was it supposed to be according to the Oslo Accords, and what's it actually becoming? That's the important part.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Okay. So um, in another attempt to make to achieve peaceful coexistence with the Arab world, the state of Israel entered what was called the Oslo framework. The Oslo Accords began, were signed, the first installment was signed uh in the late in the mid-1990s, 1995, and moving forward. So the Oslo framework essentially uh stipulated areas of Palestinian Arab self-rule, giving them autonomous zones where they could control their own lives, have a bit less and less contact with Israeli authorities, thinking that that would resolve the conflict to a very, very great uh extent. So the division that was created, it's the easy way to remember it is it's ABC, uh it's supposed to be simple. A for Arab or Arafat, as you choose, B for Bayachad together, uh, which means that the Palestinian Authority was given officially um all control over all civilian matters, and the state of Israel maintained peripheral security responsibility. Uh and area C, we like to call that Celanu, which uh is kind of a play on words for the Hebrew word for ours. It belongs to us. So area C was the area of Judea and Samaria, the areas beyond the green line that were re uh that were liberated by the Israeli. Where does Hevronakerian Arba fall from? So the very, very different places. It can be a difference of inches, right? Uh the big cities were all established as area A. Those are Chevron and Jericho and uh Ramallah, uh Bethlehem. Yes, all of those are area A. They're completely under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction, and the pol and there the polestinian police force is uh supposed to fight terrorism there. Is that why there's a fight crime?

SPEAKER_01 12:54

No.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

The tall wall is there because they were constantly throwing missiles and rocks. So we put up the wall. So we put up the wall.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Because they were jerking their responsibilities.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Okay. But the the underlying concept of the of the uh Oslo framework was first of all, over 95% of the Arab population of Yhudan Thermon was placed under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction. So people wouldn't have to deal with the Israelis if they didn't want to. Uh and second of all, the Palestinian Authority was supposed to be the ones who did self-policing, who fought terrorism and prevented uh that conflict with Israel from the inside that would free up Israel from having to be in confrontation with the Arab population, would free the the the innocent civilian population from having anything to do with the state of Israel in a general sense, uh, and would uh benefit us and benefit them. But instead. But instead. Well before but instead, it's very important to dispel one myth. Most people uh assume that the or they're told, which is untrue, that the Oslo framework stipulates that a Palestinian state would be created, that somehow or other the state of Israel agreed to create this Palestinian state as the end result of this Oslo process. That is false. In nowhere, nowhere, in no way, at no time did any government of Israel ever agree to the creation of a Palestinian state.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

Because it was never an option.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Correct, because it's uh suicidal. Um people like to say, uh people at Rigofim like to say, give me fifty give me fifty years of no terrorism, and then we can talk about coexistence. And I like to say, give me not 50 days, give me 50 hours in which not one single Arab resident of Judea and Samaria tries to kill Jews, and then maybe we can talk. We have not had that ever. Not since the state of Israel was created, not before then, not since then. So it's very, very difficult for us to talk about peaceful coexistence. Um, and we have tried all sorts of models to uh create a space for peaceful coexistence by handing over territory. We saw how that worked out in Gaza, for example, um, by giving uh autonomy, by uh preparing them for statehood in man in many ways, by allowing them to hold arms to do self-policing. Those arms have been turned against us. Hundreds of Israelis have lost their lives at the hands of uniformed Palestinian Authority police officers. So it hasn't worked. It's a failure.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Wow. So your day-to-day work involves making these areas safer places for Israelis, or is that are we not even there yet? No, we're not we're not there yet.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Um the day-to-day work of Rigovim is to try to first of all um compel the government of Israel to take responsibility and do its job. Uh again, I want to stress that we we operate everywhere in Israel, not only in Hudan Shamron, which is what we're talking about today, but we're just uh probably better known for our work in the Negev. Uh we're very, very active in the north of the country. We've had uh 20 years of very, very important policy successes there. Uh and we are over the past two years, we've become very involved in Jerusalem. But our day-to-day work, we we aren't police and we aren't the army. What we try to do is to focus a spotlight on the places where the government of Israel is uh has left a void, a void of governance, a void of responsibility, a void of sometimes of legislation or policy. Those voids have allowed the Zionist vision to seep out of Israel's public policy in a lot of ways. And twenty years ago, the three people who came together to form Rigovine all understood that the question of land use policy, the most basic resource a country has, is essentially the most basic expression of national sovereignty. The land is what a country is made out of, aside from the people, but without land, and boundaries you can't be a state. Yes. So you can be a a a religion, you can be a nation, you can be a people, which is what we've been for thousands of years, but you can't actually be a country, a national entity without land. So the people who decide who's using the land, how they're using it, who's protecting it, who's building, who's developing. All of those questions, that's the essence. That's sovereignty in a nutshell. So we address those issues and we try to spotlight where there are problems, where there are failures, where there is um something lacking in Israel's public policy. We do that by first of all collecting data, mapping it out, going out into the field every day, seeing what's happening to that land resource, um, and then putting it on a map, and then taking a step back and looking at the dots, connecting them and saying, what picture emerges? What's the policy? What's the guiding principle behind what we're seeing on the on the ground? And then how do we address it? How do we correct? So I'll tell you what I'm seeing.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

I'm seeing more than 80,000 illegal structures, I'm seeing uh 150,000 dun dunums of it. Um, construction up is by is up by 80% in a single year. So when you see all that data compiled, what do you do with that? So, first of all, it it's worse than you think. I'm talking about the construction that's the Palestinian settlements, which nobody talks about. Everybody's talking about the the five illegal Jewish settlers who threw a tire down the road after 40 years of of you know, I always say that our relationship with the world is completely narcissistic. They gaslight us, they make us think we're the crazy ones, we're the violent ones. Every single thing you accuse me of, they're doing to us. That's it. And they're learning all the tricks and on and all on on based on how we argue that they they they're trying to flip the script. Correct. But I mean, if you're here, you see it with your own eyes.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

So when before Rigovim was was established, anytime you read the words in any newspaper anywhere in the world, including in Israel, it if you read the words illegal construction, it was automatically assumed Jews are at it again, they're building illegally. What we began, um, what Rigovim began to do was to show that the exact same thing, um, but hundreds of times worse, is actually being done on the other side and no one's looking at it. So at the moment It's even being funded. It's being funded massively, but there's a there's a guiding hand behind all of it. At the moment, just to give you an idea of the scope of things, there are a hundred and three thousand illegal Arab structures in area C, the area under full Israeli jurisdiction. There's also illegal Jewish construction. In area C, uh Jewish structures, right? So we're talking about a hundred and three thousand versus four thousand three hundred and eleven. That's only part of the problem. The bigger part of the problem is exactly what you raised. We map it out, we find every single one of those illegal structures, we put it on a map, and then we take a step back and we say, okay, why are those structures where they are? Why are they there and not somewhere else? So there are several answers to this. First of all, those 103,000 structures, although the the number is phenomenal, it's mind-boggling, the strategic value of those structures is even worse than the sheer quantity of them because they're built. It's construction terrorism. Yes, absolutely. It's it's construction annexation and it's building the launch pad for terrorism.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Yeah, we saw that.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

That's exactly what we saw along the Gaza border. The Gaza border, I remind you, is minuscule compared to the seam line with the green line that goes all the way from the north of the country to the south.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

That's why the irony when they say that they care about the land, and we know they're sending helium balloons with explosives and starting fires and burning down villages, and that this is not about a true love, passion for the land. This territory, it's war, it's jihadism.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

Twenty wells were poisoned in Binyamin this week. That affects our livestock.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

I saw a cow suffocating to death from drinking poison water out of a well, and PETA is not talking about it. And if God forbid, if it was the other way, that a cow was being abused in in uh Jewish territory. Sorry, in Palestinian, in Jewish territory, it would be all over the news. Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

So there are hundreds of um full flocks of uh livestock are dying from it. Uh it's poisoning the wells themselves, and that seeps into this soil and it goes down into the groundwater. We have tracked massive eco-terrorism by the Palestinian Authority that is destroying the entire Ecosystem, where the Dead Sea is dying because of all the pollution that's running off, all the illegal quarrying that's happening out on the ground. Um, all of these things are what we see as the void of governance. When the government of Israel doesn't behave like a sovereign, doesn't take control and responsibility, we feel that we have no choice.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

There's two elements here. There's the security for the Jews and there's the deterrence for the Arabs. So you we need more of both.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

Correct. Um once you actually start enforcing the law, automatically you get deterrence. Because people, no matter what you say, will not invest their money. And European governments that fund all of this madness will stop investing if they know that their money is just going to be going down the drain.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

Yeah, but they know that you're easy prey. I hate to say it. They know that you're easy prey because you don't have the support of your own government.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

However, however, we do now have the support of our own government. Uh quite a lot more. Over the past since this government came into power, the uh this this 2025 was the first year in which more illegal Arab structures were demolished than were built. And that's the first time. We get a Mazaltov. Ever. We get a Mazaltov, but you know, we've got to ha hold the line. It's not something that once it starts, it can't be reversed. It certainly can. Uh, we saw that after the election of the quote-unquote government of change, Benad and LaPide's government. Um, the the rise, the spike in illegal construction under that government was unprecedented. Even though in the government before that it had come down, all of a sudden, when that government was built, was uh sworn in, the statistics went off the charts. And that includes also all sorts of illegal construction and squatting and uh things down the room.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

It's really like a game of whack-a-mole almost.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Um, yes and no. We try to, we don't run after each individual structure. What we try to do is change government policy and where necessary, work towards legislation. We we take um cases that exemplify a larger phenomenon. We go to court, we sue the government of Israel every day. We're in court suing the government of Israel.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

If you want to sue the government of Israel, where can they help fund? We'll put a link in the show notes.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Rigavim is your place. That is what we do. Uh, rigavim.org is our website and all of our reports, all of our mapping, all of our position papers, successes and failures. Um, everything is there and donations.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

I gotta ask you. I gotta ask you. Because I work in Middle East news, I uh I report on what goes on in the Middle East and North Africa every single day, all day. We we come across the stories of the settlers, sometimes they make international news. Uh there was a I think there was a cover, a magazine cover of one of our soldiers looking particularly, you know, demonic exactly. Anyone, whatever. Anyone could look like that. Um what is the fact, what is the reality on the ground when it comes to what is actually happening in our settler communities? Because I always say midnachal means to, it's more than settler, it's to inherit. We the land is it, you know, like from the it sounds like in the movie Avatar, where you see the way everything is interconnected and pulsing. The land is pulsing with the thing is the Palestinians will say the same thing, but we've just discussed about the way they treat the land, like they treat, you know, you do you love your wife if you're abusing her? Not so much, you know, as much as you don't want her to leave the house. That's not the way it's not the way it works. So they definitely have an abusive relationship with Israel. But what let's just put it out there once and for all. When people come across these articles and these videos of settlers, Israeli settlers with curly hair and big kippas, and they're being violent and they're throwing things and they're rocks and they're burning villages. What is actually happening? What are the youth top hill actually expressing? And how do we support them, not support them?

SPEAKER_00 26:07

What do you say? So we asked ourselves the same question. Um I began to see a very from a very, very specific area a couple of years ago an explosion of reports of what they call settler violence. And it it raised red flags for me because the reports were all coming from a very, very specific area. An area known in international parlance as Masafar Yata. As a matter of fact, uh a documentary that was created in that area, one in Oscar in the United States last year. Um, so I began to see all these reports, and I started to scratch my head because the reports that were coming out, always focusing on the same places, started actually getting traction after these very same quote-unquote villages of Massafariata lost in the Israeli Supreme Court over and over again. And the Supreme Court finally shut the lid on all of the Arab lawfare to try to take over this area. So they shifted tactics from the legal to the moral claim. And it goes back to something you mentioned before. The Palestinian Authority, the Palest the Palestinian leadership, they learned the playbook very carefully and thoroughly. What they did was they said, okay, why did the countries of the world um recognize the state of Israel? Why did they create a Jewish state here? Why did they allow a Jewish state to be here? Because the Jews were victims of tremendous uh terrible violence, i.e. the Holocaust, even though they tried to deny that the Holocaust happened. At the time, the world said, yes, the Jewish people are an ancient uh people, they are a distinct people with a tradition, language, culture, etc., religion, and they should be protected. And so we will allow them to reconstitute a sovereign national entity in their ancient homeland. And so what did the Arabs say? We need to be victims of the violence so that we can claim we need protection, and therefore we will get a state.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

Well, they've always, it's the victim mentality.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

The victim mentality has been since since 1948, but it's not getting them what they want at the rate they want. So they now stepped up the situation.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Also, because it's inauthentic when you use your women and children as as human shields. No one's really buying your story that you're mourning these laws.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

But that's the thing with Masafariata. What is Masafariata? There are quote unquote 16 villages of Masafariata. These are illegal outposts inside a live IDF military training zone, an area that was used for Air Force drills for years, live fire training from the IDF, tanks are in there, shooting practice, navigation practice. Inside a live firing zone, they created villages. They moved in women and children and livestock. And for them, it's considered a win-win. If someone gets hurt, then Israel looks bad. And if no one gets hurt, and Israel says, Well, we can't actually train here because there are civilians, so we'll pull back, which is what Israel did for years, they win again because they've just taken over very important strategic area.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

But they're speaking of the two sides of their mouth.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

Of course. But I I want to stress one thing. Unfortunately, really unfortunately, I cannot say there is no violence. That's not a claim that I can make. I don't either say that, but at some point it's correct. However, we wanted to know how much violence, and we wanted to know um, is it really what they say it is? So we started digging. We dug down into the data set that fuels this entire narrative. So anyone who is familiar with, for example, the sanctions that the Biden administration imposed on Israeli settlers and some organizations in Judea and Samaria because of this supposed violence, or the sanctions uh in Europe, or all of the mass um condemnations by the all the European Union um authorities and all of that. It's all based on one data set, and that is provided by the United Nations Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs, otherwise known as OCA. They have a wonderful uh dashboard on the internet. You can just click on it and you can see all these lovely colorful graphs by location, by age of the victim, da-da-da-da. Um, and on that dashboard, it says on the right-hand side, click here for the full data set. We wanted to know what all of their graphs were based on, because they tell you percentages and things, but you don't see the real reports. So we clicked on the on the, I did, I clicked on the right and I said, I'd like to see that data. And the answer I got was we only share that data with uh organizations with whom we partner. So I said, okay, we'd like to partner with you. We are Rigavim, we are a recognized Israeli nonprofit that deals with these issues and these areas. And they said, Well, I said, how do you become a partner? And they said, we decide who we partner with, and we'll never partner with you, and you're not getting the data. So we did a kind of backdoor. We worked with a European criminologist who applied to the to OCA and actually received the data. And we began to analyze this full data set. That means 6,833 incident reports of settler violence. 6,000. And how many years? We covered a seven-year period. Okay. That included the period after the outbreak of the 2023 war. The Swords of Iron. Uh and we examined every single one. Now, before we even examine the data, what the OCHA website itself says is all of their incident reports are uh included in the data set if they are um cross-checked between two verifiable uh impartial sources. So all every single one of these, 6,833 and were the sources, Al Jazeera and BBC? That's a very good question. We wanted to know that too, which is of course part of the data that we received. So the first thing that we found was without even diving into or making a cross ref cross-check, what they reported, we found that 95% of all the incidents they reported either didn't involve settlers, meaning civilians, didn't involve violence, or didn't happen in Judea and Samaria. So they include things, for example, like Jews going up to the Temple Mount. They classify that as storming Al-Aqsa, settler violence, traffic accidents that involve Palestinian Arabs and Jews, settler violence. Anytime the state of Israel COVID numbers. It's even crazier than that. Anytime the state of Israel paves a road in Area C on Israeli state land, fully, it's a government road improvement project that improves the lives of Arabs and Jews alike, settler violence, they call that, trespass and expropriation of Palestine. So all of this is included in their settler violence. Words don't mean anything anymore. When a class trip from Herzalia goes to visit a site of historical religious import importance in Yehudan Shamron, and I'll remind you, all the stories of the Bible happened in what is now called Judea and Samaria. That's biblical heartland. Biblical heartland, right? So if you take a class from Herzalia and you go and visit the site of the ancient tabernacle in Shiloh, that's settler violence. All 30 of those kids who happen to live not in a settlement, but in Israel, sovereign Israel, go to visit a there's no confrontation, there's no violence, there's no settlers. But they don't want to 30 members of the rampaging violent settler movement, right? So all of these things we discounted right off the bat. We found an overwhelming majority of the of the cases that there were victims, there were people who were either injured or killed. Those were confrontations between Arab rioters or attempted terrorists and the IDF had nothing to do with Israeli civilians. Also, we noted that on the OCHA website dashboard on the internet, they actually say that they include in the casualties and fatalities terrorists who are uh harmed in the act of trying to kill Jews. So if a if you know of course if if an Arab invades an Israeli home and tries to slaughter everyone living in it and gets shot in the process, that's settler case. So I could take the numbers, slash them and slash them down to almost nothing. We also investigated, for example, things that we could not uh we we cross-referenced with Israel police reports, uh Shabbak material, uh IDF reports, newspaper accounts of the same incidents that were left after we took out the 95%, and found an overwhelming majority of the ones that were left were acts of self-defense. There were some incidents of violence, but I'll ask you, um, how many Arabs have been killed in the past 10 years by violent Israeli civilians?

SPEAKER_01 35:32

Oh, almost none. Unprovoked. Not almost none. Not only that, but not almost none. None.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

Zero.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

Also, I was gonna say the Arabs were protesting their own violence. We had uh they were out on the streets saying that Israelis, Israeli security needs to be hiked in their neighborhoods because they're killing each other in our cities.

SPEAKER_00 35:47

Correct, correct. So you have all of this nonsense, and in addition to which we began to look at the sources of reporting. So we convened, we convened a Knesset um committee hearing on um to discuss this whole problem. The chief of the Judea and Samaria region police force, the Israel police has a separate region for Judea and Samaria, and the chief, the commander of this unit came and he said that over 70% of the of the incidents that the complaints that the police receive about violent incidents in Judea and Samaria turn out to be completely fabricated. Some European activist sitting in a cafe in Tel Aviv picks up the phone and calls the Israel police and says, so-and-so at this place attacked me brutally, um, unprovoked, and whatever. And by the time they finish examining all of this and whatever, the case is dismissed. But that's also a win-win because afterwards you'll get all of the leftist organizations that say, you know, only 5% of the of the cases go to indictment. And so Israel is very lenient with all of these criminals. No, it's because 70% never happened to begin with, and another 25% of what's left were acts of self-defense. And so even the ones that are uh that are examined, people aren't indicted. And what we found also was that the rate of indictment of Jews in Judea and Samaria is actually higher than the rate of indictment against Arabs in Judea and Samaria or Jews in the rest of Israel. And we compared the indictment and conviction rates to those in other countries, Western countries, and were actually much higher.

SPEAKER_01 37:40

So I'm so happy to put this in this these rumors to rest.

unknown 37:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

And for people to have a little insight of what's happening, what's going on, because like I said earlier, words have become meaningless in a world where Hamas are freedom fighters and Israeli soldiers are terrorists. So it's really, really important that you see past the headlines and you do that kind of critical thinking and look up these organizations that are doing the legwork here. And I just want to say that it's incredibly inspiring as to see you're an Anglo, you're an American, somebody who sacrificed so much. I'm sure forget about the fact that where you live, just driving there could be is risky business every day. But you put yourself out there. It's not a, you know, the safest neighborhood. So on behalf of Amish Ral, I want to thank you for your commitment to our land and to promoting our security and doing what you can to make sure that we can grow and expand and our grandchildren should live on this land, our God-inherited land that was given to us and promised to us by the God of the Jewish people to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And that is all very undeniable. For our people watching at home, okay? Let's do uh we'll do a quick four, like a speed round of four questions. Okay. And then I just want to wrap up with one more personal question. Okay. Okay. Naomi, thank you. What is something you wish every Jewish American college student would understand about the situation here in Israel with our Palestinian cousin?

SPEAKER_00 39:10

Um, first of all, that it it's wonderful when people talk about rights. But you have to remember that we have rights too. And I don't think any other nation, any other people, any other certainly in no other country has ever been expected to put the rights of others before their their own rights, except for us. And unfortunately, we've fallen into that for far too long. We have rights. We have rights on every possible front.

SPEAKER_01 39:43

Jewish lives matter.

SPEAKER_00 39:44

Jewish lives matter.

SPEAKER_01 39:45

Jewish lives matter.

SPEAKER_00 39:46

History matters, facts matter, our legal, historical, religious, and moral rights all speak the same truth. We have rights here, and we should exercise them. That doesn't mean that we should not recognize other people's rights. It means that we have to fight for our own.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

And if you don't know what they are, then look at it so that you can argue those points. Find out. Because the information is there. Eugene Kantarovich has been arguing these points for for decades. Tell us about a moment in your work that genuinely gave you hope. Maybe share something really happens every day.

SPEAKER_00 40:22

Every day. Um I received uh well the challenges are every day. Um but we yesterday were informed that one of the founders of Rigavim was just appointed to an incredibly crucial new position. It's a very gray bureaucratic position that no one outside uh of a very small circle understands its importance, but it gives me tremendous hope because this is a person of tremendous ideological commitment and tremendous capability, who has already made a huge difference in land use policy in Judea and Samaria. And now we will have the opportunity to make the same impact on land use policy throughout the land of Israel. And we believe that this is going to make a huge change, certainly in the Galilee, where we are losing the Jewish majority because of bad land use policies that have allowed, been allowed to seep into our public policy. And that's we really believe that that's going to change and quickly.

SPEAKER_01 41:31

I think you answered my fourth, my third question of what is the one thing the Israeli government should do tomorrow that would be the change we need.

SPEAKER_00 41:40

Um if we're talking about Judea and Samaria, there are many things that need to be done. The first thing that needs to be done, like I said to uh one minute ago, the state of Israel needs to speak about its rights uh and to defend them. Even when that's not popular, even when our allies uh find it offensive. Like Ben Shapiro says, facts don't care about your feelings. Facts don't care about your feelings. Correct. Um, we should not care about anyone else's feelings. Uh, we should care first and foremost about our feelings and our rights. And the government of Israel has for too long declined to declare our rights in Yehudan Shamron clearly. Yeah, making the residence a sacrificial lambs. Correct. Speak up, speak the right. Even if you don't act on them, repeat the rights that we have to Yehudan Shamron. Don't let anyone forget them because as soon as you do, it's a slippery slope and you're halfway down before you start.

SPEAKER_01 42:38

Amazing. A personal question for you. What do your grandchildren think about the work that you do and how do you keep your children inspired, considering how challenging it could be to live here? You know, in the last nine years, I have experienced, I remember hearing Iri Fold was killed. I remember hearing the um those two beautiful boys with the blue eyes, and then the D sisters with their mom, and then October 7th, forget about COVID. COVID's, let's say, a natural disaster, and then the war with Iran. I work in the news. I've seen, I see the the blood that spilled and the tears that are shed and the families that are grieving. So what is it that you continue to relay and convey to your children and grandchildren, and that we can convey across our platform, you know, across the world to people who are not sure where they, you know, what they feel about Israel and why it matters.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

I'm very fortunate because my children are the ones who give me strength and reassurance and not the other way around. Um a very long time ago when my oldest son, who's now, thank God, a a father of four, um when he was in high school at a certain point he uh wanted to go leave school to go to a funeral of someone he knew who had been killed in a terrorist attack. And I was very, very hesitant. I said, you know, he he was a he was a kid. He was maybe fourteen. And I called my husband and I said, Do you think this is a good idea? You know, funerals for four I had never been to a funeral in my life at that age. And um I think about that often because at an much late years later, my daughter actually said to me, Ima, I've been to more funerals than I have weddings this year. All of them have lost close friends, dear friends. Uh all of them have uh my sons serve uh in the army and um and national service and all of these things. They're they're part of the fabric. They want no other life. They need no other life, they seek no other life, um, they find fulfillment in being part of a chain of generations that knows what is right um and and are willing to fight for it. So I get strength from them and not the other way around. My grandchildren think it's kind of cool what every once in a while they see me on television or you carry a gun? No, I do not. Oh, you don't? I do not. Um my husband years ago made a joke actually about how only in Israel it's a legitimate birthday present to buy your son a gun. But my children are armed. Uh I I do not carry a gun.

SPEAKER_01 45:30

That shun protects you. You're doing good things.

SPEAKER_00 45:33

We try. Uh we do we we do. Um yes, and you learn resilience.

SPEAKER_01 45:40

You learn resilience, sure. And you just become part of the story here, and you can never leave.

SPEAKER_00 45:46

You you know that a life of purpose um gives you strength to do things that you never imagined. And um commitment gives you the strength to sacrifice because without it, your sacrifice is meaningless.

SPEAKER_01 46:05

If you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything, but if it's good, yeah, that is crazy. And that's why we're here. That's why we're here at Moral Edge and talking to people like you who make a life out of what matters. And like I said earlier, on behalf of all of Amishral, thank you for continuing the good fight and for making a difference day by day. If you liked this episode, be sure to subscribe. Leave us your thoughts in the show notes, and uh visit our website, moreledge.com. Thank you so much, Naomi. Thank you. Every week I sit across from someone who chose this place, who built something here, fought for something here, or is quietly holding something together that the rest of the world doesn't see. And every week I'm reminded that Israel is not just a headline, it's a collection of people with a story worth knowing. If today's conversation moved you, share it. The people doing this work need an audience and the stories need to travel further than our own circles. This is the weekly squeeze breakdown on Moral Edge. I'm Hanullah.