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THESE GENERALS FOUGHT FOR ISRAEL. NOW THEY SEE ‘JEWISH TERRORISM’
AS THE THREAT.  
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Azam AhmedNatan Odenheimer and Ronen Bergman; Photographs by Ivor
Prickett
August 31, 2026
The New York Times

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_ A growing number of former Israeli generals, intelligence officials
and prime ministers are accusing settlers in the West Bank of
committing ethnic cleansing with government support. “Once a society
behaves this way that society is doomed,” one said _

Israeli flags lined the roadside next to Palestinian farms in an area
of the Jordan Valley in the Israeli-occupied West Bank., Photograph by
Ivor Prickett / New York Times

 

Maj. Gen. Eyal Ben-Reuven spent his life fighting for Israel. He
survived the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, when his platoon was nearly
wiped out, then went on to command a division in the West Bank and
lead Israel’s ground forces in the 2006 war against Hezbollah.

But in recent months, he has returned to the Israeli-occupied West
Bank, touring the territory with retired generals and former Israeli
officials like himself. He has walked through the remains of a
Palestinian school looted by Israeli settlers, and listened to
Palestinian shepherds and farmers describe being tortured by settlers
who seize their livestock and land.

Now, General Ben-Reuven says he has an entirely different
understanding of the risks facing Israel today.

“This, what the settlers are doing here, is the real threat to
Israel,” he said, his eyes welling with emotion. “This is more
concerning to me than Iran, Gaza or Lebanon.”

Other former high-ranking Israeli officials touring the West Bank with
him shared the same indignation.

“This is ethnic cleansing, to put it simply,” Ephraim Sneh, a
retired brigadier general and former minister of health, said of
Israeli settlers’ attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.

Asaf Agmon, a retired Air Force general, went even further, comparing
it to what some Israelis’ forebears endured in the Holocaust — not
in the scale of the violence, he explained, but in the effort to erase
the Palestinian presence from much of the West Bank.

“Once a society behaves this way,” he said, “that society is
doomed.” 

 
A retired Israeli army general, Yaakov Or, center, speaking to people
next to an abandoned Israeli military outpost in the West Bank, in
June.  (Photograph by Ivor Prickett / New York Times)
 
An Israeli settler herding sheep in the West Bank and recording
Palestinian villagers as they filmed him.  (Photograph by Ivor
Prickett / New York Times)
Since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, when as many as
1,200 Israelis were killed, war has consumed Israel: first with Hamas,
leaving Gaza in ruins and tens of thousands dead. Two rounds of
fighting with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Two campaigns against Iran.

But in the shadows of those conflicts, a quieter front has emerged in
the West Bank. Armed Israeli settlers, emboldened by the most
right-wing government in the nation’s history, raid and torch
Palestinian homes, mosques and villages with seeming impunity, openly
trying to drive them out of the territory.

Israel’s top military commander in the West Bank has warned
[[link removed]] that the violence
risked setting the territory ablaze. Settlers have waged thousands of
attacks in the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023, injuring thousands of
Palestinians, according to the United Nations
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More than 3,200 Palestinians have been displaced by settler attacks
this year alone — double the rate of last year.

As the pace of violence climbs, the U.N. says, the number of
Palestinians injured in settler attacks has risen from an average of
one every three days in 2020 to more than three per day in 2026.

The retired generals condemning this violence are part of a small but
rapidly expanding array of influential Israelis, including many from
the upper echelons of the military and intelligence apparatus, who are
publicly declaring the lawlessness in the West Bank a threat to
Israel’s existence as a democracy.

More than 200 prominent Israelis signed a letter in June demanding
that the government stop the attacks against Palestinian civilians in
the West Bank. The signatories included two former prime ministers,
more than three dozen retired Army and Air Force generals, the former
heads of the nation’s foreign and domestic intelligence services, as
well as rabbis, a Nobel laureate and one of Israel’s most revered
novelists.

The retired officials come from across the political landscape,
including from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own party, and
many were considered security hawks.

In their letter, they called for an end to “Jewish terrorism” and
the “ethnic cleansing” underway in the West Bank. And they accused
Mr. Netanyahu’s government not just of being negligent in failing to
stop it, but of pursuing “a deliberate government policy in which
the entire security establishment — including the military, Shin Bet
and the police — is knowingly complicit.”

The signatories cited tens of millions of dollars in government
spending on illegal Israeli outposts and farms, and demanded a full
accounting of all public money spent on roads, water, electricity,
vehicles and weapons to support them.

They also accused the military of being complicit in the violence,
saying soldiers stand by and watch as Palestinians are attacked, or
sometimes even join settlers to assault Palestinian villages together.

The public denunciation, given whom it is coming from, is staggering.
Activists have often asserted that Israel commits atrocities in the
West Bank. But accusations of ethnic cleansing from such a large group
of former prime ministers, generals and other top Israeli officials
— the same people who once led their nation’s security forces —
are virtually unheard of.

Many of the Israeli critics took part in extreme violence during their
own military careers, ordering targeted killings, deadly airstrikes,
raids and other attacks on Palestinians, including in the West Bank.
But they say they were acting in the interest of Israeli security,
under a chain of command and legal oversight.

The difference now, they say, is that the violence is unchecked,
indiscriminate and targets innocent civilians, with the intent of
clearing large stretches of the West Bank so that Israelis can take it
for themselves and stamp out any prospect of a Palestinian state.

The injustice today, they contend, has crossed a moral red line in
which the state is allowing, and sometimes helping, Israeli civilians
beat, stab and shoot others with almost no consequences. 

 
Muhammad Gawanmeh, left, soon after he and his family were attacked
by Israeli settlers in Al-Awsaj, northeast of Jericho, in the
Israeli-occupied West Bank, in May.  (Photograph by Ivor Prickett /
New York Times)
 

 
A Palestinian school that was looted by settlers in Hamamat al-Maleh,
in the Jordan Valley.  (Photograph by Ivor Prickett / New York Times)

Azriel Nevo, who served as military secretary to four prime ministers,
argued that other prime ministers he worked for “would have never
allowed this to occur.”

“Shocking,” is how he described what he saw on the tour.

Some of the retired officials contend that the campaign against
Palestinians in the West Bank is reminiscent of Nazism — an
extraordinarily contentious assertion, especially in Israel, where
many Jews found sanctuary after their families were eradicated in
Europe.

Moshe Ya’alon, the former army chief of staff who served as defense
minister under Mr. Netanyahu until 2016, recently likened the ideology
of extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank to that of World War II
Germany.

“What is Jewish supremacy?” Mr. Ya’alon, long considered a
security hawk, recently said on Ynet
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site. “Eighty years after the Holocaust, ‘Mein Kampf’ in
reverse. The master race is us.”

The prime minister’s office declined to answer questions about the
growing accusations from former generals and other officials, and the
government did not respond to multiple requests for data on settler
attacks in the West Bank.

In the past, Mr. Netanyahu has dismissed settler violence as the
unlawful acts of “a handful of kids,” while some ministers in his
government have said there is no such thing
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as Jewish terrorism.

But as the condemnation of settler violence grows, including from the
United States
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pressure is building on Mr. Netanyahu to respond more forcefully.
Settlers recently besieged several Palestinian homes, one of which
belonged to an American citizen. In a rare statement
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over the weekend, Mr. Netanyahu said such “criminal acts” cause
“immense harm” to the law-abiding settlers and “damage
Israel’s standing in the world.”

The Israel military rejects any suggestion that it supports “the
actions of violent groups” in the West Bank. It says its mission is
to “protect all residents,” and that any soldier who takes part in
settler attacks or stands by while they occur is “acting in complete
disregard” of their orders.

Religious leaders who support Israeli settlements in the West Bank
have applauded the military and government for backing a record number
of new outposts and farms, which the retired generals say fuel settler
violence in the West Bank.

But Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, who oversees a religious council in the
West Bank, recently cautioned supporters to avoid violence, saying
critics were using it as justification to harm the settler
movement’s “reputation both in Israel, the U.S. and worldwide.”

The settler attacks are unfolding at the same time the Israeli
military is acting much more aggressively in the West Bank.

Since the Oct. 7 attacks almost three years ago, more than 1,100
Palestinians, some of them combatants, have been killed in the
territory, the vast majority of them at the hands of Israeli forces.
That is roughly the same number of Palestinians killed in the West
Bank from 2005 through 2022, according to the United Nations. Since
2023, 67 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians in the West Bank.

As the violence mounts — and killings, burnings and lootings go
unpunished — even some who once defended the occupation are sounding
the alarm.

“If I had to, I could make a legal defense of what the Israel
Defense Forces have done in Gaza,” said Gal Levertov, the former
head of the international division at the Ministry of Justice, who
represented Israel before the International Criminal Court in The
Hague.

“But what is happening today in the West Bank?” he added.
“It’s indefensible.”

THE TOUR

The retired Israeli generals came to the West Bank on a trip organized
by Yaakov Or, himself a retired general who spent much of his career
in the West Bank.

Outraged by the escalating settler violence and what he views as the
state’s involvement in it, Mr. Or has made it his mission to bring
as many Israeli notables as he can to the West Bank to see for
themselves.

He often begins with a warning.

“When I take you to see what is happening in the West Bank, you will
have two choices,” he said to a group in June. “You can stay
silent, and be complicit,” he told them, “or you can speak out,
and tell everyone you know about what is happening.”

He then invited anyone who preferred not to be put in that position to
leave.

 
A Palestinian man from al-Mughayyir seeking medical attention
following his release by Israeli forces.  (Photograph by Ivor
Prickett / New York Times)
 
Israeli troops firing tear gas at Palestinian villagers in
al-Mughayyir, following days of attacks by Israeli settlers.
 (Photograph by Ivor Prickett / New York Times)
Mr. Or, 79, began his military career fighting for Israel in the
Arab-Israeli war of 1967, which ended with the Israeli occupation of
the West Bank. He went on to oversee civilian and security affairs in
the territory, before retiring from the state comptroller’s office,
where he was responsible for investigating the Israeli defense
establishment.

Since he began organizing the tours a little over a year ago, more
than 250 participants — former military brass, high-ranking
intelligence officials, prominent lawyers, economists and diplomats
— have joined.

The New York Times accompanied him in June as he led several former
officials including generals, a cabinet minister, a military aide to
four prime ministers, an intelligence official, a state prosecutor and
an ambassador on an arc through multiple villages in the middle of the
West Bank. Along the way, highways were lined with Israeli flags,
equally spaced, kilometer after kilometer.

Mr. Or asked the visitors to note the miles of new fences erected by
settlers to hem in Palestinian villagers and keep them from accessing
their own land.

And he urged participants to look for the prevalence of settler
outposts, the makeshift frontier encampments placed on hilltops
throughout the territory.

“It is showing us the overall concept — how to widen areas of
control and narrow the places where Palestinian communities can
live,” he told them.

‘THEY WANT TO TAKE MY HOUSE’

In the village of Burin, Bashar Eid, a Palestinian farmer, took the
visitors to his roof, limping behind them with a cane, the result of a
settler attack that left him permanently impaired, he said.

He told them about the constant attacks from settler outposts, which
were visible from the roof, positioned along the hillsides surrounding
him. The settlers enter the village every day, he said, even during
the Sabbath.

One recent morning, he said, he spotted a young settler boy walking on
his land. When he asked him what he was doing, the boy told him to
shut up or they would break his other leg.

“A kid told me that,” he said, shaking his head.

 
Bashar Eid, a Palestinian farmer, speaking with visitors on his roof.
He limped there, the result of a settler attack that left him
permanently impaired, he said.  (Photograph by Ivor Prickett / New
York Times)
 
Tour participants looking out toward a settler outpost in the town of
Burin, from the rooftop of Mr. Eid.  (Photograph by Ivor Prickett /
New York Times)
He could no longer farm his land, he said, because settlers attack him
when he tries. His days have been reduced to sitting on his roof,
watching for settler incursions.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “They want to take my
house.”

The participants took notes as the heat bore down from above. The
scent of sunscreen filled the air.

A former chief state attorney raised his hand. “It is absurd that
Israeli forces are not doing their duty to protect them — it is
embarrassing to even ask, but why don’t the Palestinians defend
themselves?” he asked.

“I’m afraid if I defend myself, it will be even worse for us,”
Mr. Eid said.

Mr. Or agreed: Any violent response from the Palestinians would invite
retribution, which would be much more severe and likely include the
Israeli military, he said. Retaliation against the settlers would be
deemed terrorism, prompting more crackdowns, he said.

Raphael Schutz, a former Israeli ambassador to Spain, Norway and the
Holy See, mopped sweat from his brow as he processed what he had
heard.

He thought of his mother, who had fled Nazi Germany as a 9-year-old
with her parents and siblings, he said.

Today, he said, when she watches videos of settlers setting cars
ablaze and shooting innocent farmers, she feels shame.

“To her,” said Mr. Schutz, 68, “it is inconceivable that Jews
can behave this way.”

“I’m glad I left the foreign service,” he added. “It would be
impossible for me to explain this.”

A COMMUNITY ERASED

The Jordan Valley runs north to south along the banks of the Jordan
River, a fertile plain that marks the eastern border of the occupied
West Bank.

In the last few years, settler violence has displaced several
Palestinian communities from the area, largely Bedouin encampments
like Hamamat al-Maleh.

Just a few months ago, during a separate visit to the community by The
Times, a few families were still holding on. Violent incursions in the
middle of the night had already forced most to flee. But when we
visited in February, we came across a couple of Palestinian families
holed up in a stone edifice from Ottoman times, clustered together on
mattresses on the bare floor.

“We don’t even sleep an hour,” said Mohammad Khalil, 37, who was
born in the community, as his father had been. “If they come and
you’re asleep, you won’t survive it.”

At the time, a school constructed with donor funds sat empty. The last
of the students had fled a few days earlier. By March, after a series
of settler raids, thefts and attacks, Mr. Khalil and the other
holdouts gave up and left, too. 

 
An Israeli activist, Elie Avidor, center, speaking to the group in
front of the ruined Palestinian school in Hamamat al-Maleh.
 (Photograph by Ivor Prickett / New York Times)
 
Books, school supplies and other material littered the floor of the
old building, which Palestinian students had fled in the face of
increasing attacks by Israeli settlers.  (Photograph by Ivor Prickett
/ New York Times)
Not long after, residents and activists said, settlers came with a
bulldozer and leveled the school. Settlers shared a video of
themselves celebrating Passover amid the ruins.

By the time the retired Israeli generals and other dignitaries arrived
in late June, the Palestinian residents were long gone. Mr. Or wanted
to show them what an erased community looked like.

The group walked past the broken school structure, where loose strands
of rebar poked through the rubble like unkempt hair. A roll of
artificial grass lay in dirty folds. A broken concrete wall betrayed
traces of a destroyed mural.

Within the old Ottoman structure, an office was upended. Desks in
disarray, a door torn from its hinges lying on the floor.

Elie Avidor, an activist who helps organize Israeli volunteers to
protect Palestinians from settler attacks, said he was in the village
not long after the school was destroyed and took video, which he later
shared, of settler women and children looting notebooks and markers
from the office.

Left behind were piles of academic detritus, smashed cabinets, shards
of glass and scattered papers.

“When you are burning books, when you are destroying knowledge and
attacking children, you’re like the Germans,” said Nehemia Dagan,
86, a retired Air Force general who helped build Israel’s helicopter
capabilities and also served as the chief education officer of the
Israel military.

“We have lost ourselves, and we have lost this fight,” he said,
shaking with rage.

“We must separate,” he added, referring to the two-state solution,
which would establish an independent Palestinian state alongside
Israel. “Not for their sake, but for our own.”

‘IT’S LIKE A JAIL’

On the last stop, in a barren valley in the northern Jordan Valley, a
young Palestinian farmer stood before the ranks of Israeli visitors
and pointed.

Behind him, a settler outpost had been scraped into the side of a
hill, the Israeli flag flying over it. In front of him, a few hundred
feet away, stood a long line of Israeli flags, planted one after the
next, as if lining a parade route.

Nearby, settlers had erected a fence, turning his farm into something
of a holding pen.

“Six months ago, this was our land,” he said. “Now, it’s like
a jail.”

 
A pen for sheep and goats, with an Israeli flag erected by settlers
alongside a Palestinian farmer’s land in the Jordan Valley.
 (Photograph by Ivor Prickett / New York Times)
 
A Palestinian farmer pointing to a settler outpost built into the
side of a hill.  (Photograph by Ivor Prickett / New York Times)
As recently as January, life in his village had been relatively
normal, he said. They farmed, grazed their sheep, and came and went as
they pleased.

That ended abruptly with the arrival of the first settlers, who
stationed themselves on the hillside, he said. Now, the farmer and his
family could no longer use his farmland or harvest his crops.

He was forbidden from accessing it, he told the assembled visitors,
and every time he tried, settlers called the police. He had already
been arrested four times, he said, though he was always released.

But whenever he called the police to report harassment, or vandalism
of his water tanks, “they never answer,” he said. The Israeli
national police said they “investigate every complaint or incident
involving suspected criminal activity, impartially.”

The Palestinian farmer said he decided to sell his sheep, rather than
lose them to settlers or starvation because he could no longer go out
and graze them.

“They should see this reality, and not accept it,” the farmer
said, referring to the Israeli generals.

Many of the men assembled had played their own roles in violence
against Palestinians — authorizing killings and striking locations,
knowing that children might die in some cases — because they
believed it helped ensure Israel’s security. 

 
The Israeli tour visited Palestinian farmers who have been repeatedly
attacked by Israeli settlers in the Jordan Valley of the West Bank.
 (Photograph by Ivor Prickett / New York Times)
 
A Palestinian facing off with a settler herding sheep.  (Photograph
by Ivor Prickett / New York Times)
But the settler attacks in the West Bank were not making Israel safer,
several of the retired generals said. Instead, the violence and
intimidation were having the opposite effect, they argued.

“When you ruin the image of Israel, the diplomatic value of Israel
and the core values that hold the military together, you achieve
nothing,” said Mr. Agmon, the retired Air Force general.

“I’ve earned the right to speak,” added Mr. Agmon, 78, whose
grandson, an Israeli soldier, was killed in Lebanon last year. “My
family and I paid the highest price for this country.”

“I am ashamed of what our people are doing here,” he said.

_[__AZAM AHMED_ [[link removed]]_ is
international investigative correspondent for The Times. He has
reported on Wall Street scandals, the War in Afghanistan and violence
and corruption in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean._

_NATAN ODENHEIMER_ [[link removed]]_ is a
Times reporter in Jerusalem, covering Israeli and Palestinian
affairs._

_RONEN BERGMAN_ [[link removed]]_ is a staff
writer for The New York Times Magazine, based in Tel Aviv._

_IVOR PRICKETT_ [[link removed]]_ is a
photographer based in Istanbul. He covered the rise and fall of ISIS
in Iraq and Syria while on assignment for The Times. More recently he
has been working on stories related to the war in Ukraine.]_

 

* Israel
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* West Bank
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* Israeli settlements
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* Israeli military
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* Israeli Occupation
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* Occupied Territories
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* ethnic cleansing
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* Genocide
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* apartheid
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* Palestinians
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* Palestine
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* IDF
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