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On Israel’s 75th Independence Day, its flag has taken on new meaning as a protest symbol
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Avigail Arnheim has been protesting Benjamin Netanyahu for years, starting with the demonstrations in Jerusalem that began in 2020, calling on him to resign as Israel’s prime minister.
When Netanyahu returned to office in December, Arnheim again took to the streets — this time to protest Netanyahu’s attempt to sap the Israeli Supreme Court of its power. And now, she comes armed with what she sees as a potent symbol: an Israeli flag emblazoned with the words of the country’s Declaration of Independence.
“I feel that the people of Israel woke up, and finally understands that life needs to come with values, with morals and with caring,” she said at a mass protest Tuesday night in Tel Aviv, as Israel began celebrating its 75th Independence Day. Arnheim believes those ideas are reflected in the declaration, which was signed on the day of Israel’s founding, traces the connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, and pledges democracy and human rights.
She added, “I think that the meaning of the flag has received a place in a society that wasn’t aware of it for a long time.”
Seeing the streets of Israel festooned with flags is one of the hallmarks of the country’s Independence Day, called Yom Haatzmaut in Hebrew. It’s common for flags to line streets and hang from balconies. A popular children’s song sung on the holiday begins, “The whole land is flags.”
But this year, Israel’s quintessential national symbol has taken on a different meaning for some, as the hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters have, for months, made the flag the icon of their cause. The flag has become so associated with the protests that Zichron Yaakov, a city north of Tel Aviv, briefly banned the flag and images of the Declaration of Independence from its Independence Day parade.
Voices on the right have chafed against the idea that the flag now indicates opposition to the government. But there was little, if any, skepticism about that idea on the streets of Tel Aviv on Tuesday night, where protesters enthusiastically adapted a range of Independence Day traditions to express their opinions.
Thousands of Israeli protesters wave flags during a rally against the Israeli government’s judicial overhaul bills in Jerusalem, March 27, 2023. (Gili Yaari/Flash90)
Some protesters viewed their embrace of the flag as a corrective that now allows the flag to represent what they see as Israel’s founding aspirations, following years during which it was perceived as a symbol of Israel’s right wing. Before this year’s protests, another prominent political association for the flag was with religious nationalists who hold an annual “flag march” in Jerusalem’s Old City that has stoked Israeli-Palestinian tensions.
“It’s a symbol that had been hijacked for way too long by the right,” said Roy Rob, a graphic designer at the Tel Aviv rally who splits his time between Israel and Brooklyn. “It’s the same in the States: The American flag has really been hijacked and pigeonholed.”
Regarding the Israeli flag, he added, “Now it’s being democratized again. It makes sense that the people who really care about the origin of Israel, what Israel is all about, use the original symbols of it.”
Some right-wingers aren’t ready to yield Israel’s national symbols. Gideon Dokov, an editor at the right-leaning newspaper Makor Rishon, called the idea that the flag represents opposition to the judicial overhaul “absurd.”
“By mistake or intentionally, it seems that in recent months, there are those who are trying to take ownership of the national symbols — the flag and the Declaration of Independence — on behalf of the protests, just as they’re trying to take ownership of [the concept of] democracy,” Dokov wrote earlier this month. “Both are incorrect.”
In any case, flags were ubiquitous at Tuesday night’s protest. When asked where they got theirs, several protesters made a perplexed face that seemed to ask, “Where have you been all this time?”
The flags, they said, aren’t hard to get. Many were distributed for free at earlier protests, along with black T-shirts that read, “De-mo-cra-cy” in Hebrew block letters, copying the central chant of the demonstrations. Other shirts, like Rob’s, which read, “There’s no democracy with occupation,” were also distributed by activist groups at earlier protests. Many flags included the phrase “Free in our land,” which comes from Israel’s national anthem.
Others already had flags at home, and some bought them recently. At the protest, a man who was selling the flags and other assorted tchotchkes out of a stuffed shopping cart said the flag itself, without a pole, costs around $5.50. He said he bought his merchandise from stores and was reselling it, but would not provide further details.
A flag vendor stands with his wares during a Yom Haatzmaut celebration and anti-government protest in Tel Aviv, April 25, 2023. (Ben Sales)
The flags with the Declaration of Independence text, Arnheim said, went for about $13.75 and were sold by their creator via group chats used to organize the protests. Nati Hochberg, who traveled from a town north of Tel Aviv to demonstrate, said he bought his flag (with pole) for some $11 at a hardware store, after someone stole a previous flag of his from his motorcycle.
“We’ve taken back what belongs to us,” Hochberg said of the flag. His friend Tal Vardi, who traveled with him and has had his flag for years, added, “This population for many years ceded these symbols and now it’s taking them back. … I don’t know if it happened coincidentally, but it’s a feeling that it also belongs to us.”
That the flag has turned into a protest symbol, said one woman from northern Israel who declined to give her name, elicits a mixture of “pride and sadness” regarding the political conflict raging in the country.
“It’s clearly preferable for this not to be,” she said while holding a flag identical to Arnheim’s. “But if it is like this, at least the flag should have meaning.”
The protesters didn’t shy away from adapting other Independence Day pastimes, either. A white, foamy spray traditionally blasted by children on the holiday was being rebranded at the protest as “democracy snow” (one big can for about $2.75).
At a less crowded area of the protest, someone used the spray to spell out “democracy” in large letters on the ground. On a nearby bicycle path, the word “Leave,” used as a chant against Netanyahu, was also written in the spray. A cyclist stopped short before running it over.
A Tel Aviv protest at the start of Yom Haatzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day, featured a sea of flags, April 25, 2023. (Ben Sales)
Soft plastic hammers, another holiday mainstay, were also visible throughout the crowd. And a DJ blasted classic Israeli dance music in the middle of the demonstration, including the American Jewish summer camp favorite “Zodiac,” sung by Yaron Hadad.
In general, signs of the protests freckle Tel Aviv, which has been the nerve center of the demonstrations and the bastion of Israel’s left-wing minority. Municipal bus stops bear signs playing on the words of the national anthem and implying that the protests will keep Israel “Free from racism,” “Free from repression of women” and more. Graffiti supporting the protests — such as “Bibi is a traitor” — also isn’t hard to find, though there is also a smattering of pro-overhaul graffiti such as one message calling Israel’s Supreme Court a dictatorship.
Some paraphernalia at the demonstration trumpeted specific causes, like an LGBTQ pride flag, a flag that spelled out “democracy” in the colors of the Israeli and Palestinian flags, or a T-shirt, given out by an self-styled “moderate majority” activist group, that read “I [heart] Bagatz,” the Hebrew acronym for the Supreme Court.
Some participants got more creative. At a table in a sparse area, a few people offered free alcohol to passersby while a young man using a megaphone sang “Democracy and arak” to the tune of the famous riff from the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.”
The idea, his colleague Ron said, was to give people free drinks to celebrate the country and the protests — which they hope will preserve the possibility for young people to get an education and find dignified work.
“In general, this is our last shot to save democracy, so everyone who wants to save democracy gets a shot as a gift from us,” said Ron, 23, who declined to give his last name. ”We love everyone, and we love democracy.”
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Israel’s upcoming election could damage the country irreversibly
We live in an age of political hyperbole, when it can seem as if every election is described as the most important ever and each defeat as an existential catastrophe, and after years of hearing these warnings it is understandable that voters have become numb to them.
Thomas Friedman recently issued such a pronouncement in The New York Times, placing the coming American midterms and Israeli general election alongside each other, arguing that in both the future of democracy itself is on the ballot. But while the comparison captures the stakes, it also understates an important distinction between the two countries.
Countries are generally more resilient than their politicians, and even terrible administrations eventually end. With that in mind, I believe the United States – a globally impactful behemoth – can survive the madness Donald Trump is imposing on the Western alliance and on the norms and sanity of American political life, however long-lasting the damage may be.
But Israel faces a different order of danger. Another victory by Benjamin Netanyahu would, in the view of many people, carry the country past a point at which a subsequent election can realistically restore the developed Western democracy Israelis and the world have known. There are geopolitical and demographic issues that mean time is running out to undo the grievous damage caused by his rightist-religious coalition.
Another four years of Netanyahu could change the country’s democratic institutions, population, economy and international position so profoundly that the conditions for reversing course will substantially disappear. The choice concerns which population, which institutions and which conception of the state will define Israel for the generation ahead.
The danger lies in how these trends reinforce one another: institutional erosion enables political entrenchment, demographic change makes it more durable, emigration weakens its opponents, and international isolation compounds the damage.
For people who care about Israel, the stakes could hardly be higher.
The ‘Putinization’ of Israel
Almost immediately after Netanyahu returned to power at the end of 2022, his rightist-religious coalition embarked on the “Putinization” of Israel: a systematic effort to weaken the independent institutions capable of restraining elected power. They hoped to transform Israel’s system of liberal democracy into something closer to an elected autocracy. “Liberal”has nothing to do with leftism, as it does in America, and everything to do with the concept of checks and balances.
The original attempted judicial overhaul would have given politicians almost total control over judicial appointments and allowed a simple parliamentary majority to override Supreme Court decisions – an extraordinary concentration of power in a country with no written constitution, no second legislative chamber, no federal system and few institutional checks on the government except for the courts.
Hundreds of thousands ofIsraelis understood the implications, and throughout 2023 filled the streets week after week. Reservists threatened to stop volunteering for duty, technology leaders warned of economic consequences and the country descended into the deepest internal crisis in its history. Then came Oct. 7, shattering the country and redirecting virtually all national attention toward war, hostages and survival.
But the interruption increasingly looks like a postponement. The legislative blitz of recent months has revived the same project through measures targeting the attorney general, government legal advisers, judicial authority, independent regulators – and blocking a real investigation of Oct. 7.
This time Netanyahu’s aim is not to fool the other side (which is no longer possible) but to fire up his base. So he is campaigning on his true program – completing the judicial overhaul, exempting the Haredim from the draft and entrenching their privileges, and effectively creating a situation that would enable him to force an end to his corruption trials. A victory would not only be interpreted as a mandate for this madness – it would be an endorsement of it.
The Haredi draft exemption is especially important because it shows how institutional, political and demographic change reinforce one another. Throughout the war, Netanyahu’s government repeatedly sought to codify broad draft exemptions for the Haredi population even as Israel fought a prolonged, multi-front war and the military was howling about an acute shortage of soldiers. But Haredi parties are indispensable to Netanyahu’s coalition, and their political leverage will grow with their population. The exemption bill is now lined up.
The consequences extend far beyond the moral obscenity of unequal military service. This rapidly growing population – a sixth of the population today and perhaps a third in 20 years – receives extensive state support while participating at comparatively low rates in the workforce, and frequently educates its boys without the mathematics, English and science required by a sophisticated modern economy and society. It creates a demographic and fiscal structure that cannot sustain itself.
Israel’s predicament becomes particularly dangerous because the people most capable of carrying the burden of funding and defending the country for a while longer are also the people most capable of leaving.
The demographic dilemma
Almost 300,000 Israelis have left the country during the Netanyahu years, and many more are essentially waiting for the election. They overwhelmingly belong to the perhaps one million people who drive the tech and innovation and security sectors, medicine, academia, entrepreneurship, business and the arts. Their skills generate a disproportionate share of the investment, tax revenue, innovation and international connections that sustain Israel as a first-world economy capable of financing one of the world’s most sophisticated militaries.
They are mostly secular, or moderately observant, and they would have an increasingly difficult time living under right-wing rule, given how the right has changed. The Israeli right that created Netanyahu was substantially secular, nationalist and security-minded, while the emerging version is increasingly religious, ethnonationalist and hostile to the liberal restraints that once commanded broad support in Israel.
Demography accelerates that transformation. Haredi Israelis have vastly more children on average than secular Israelis, while religious Zionists (who are not Haredi) also maintain larger families. Religiosity has consequently become one of the strongest predictors of political allegiance among Israeli Jews: Haredim overwhelmingly support Haredi parties, non-Haredi religious voters (known as the “national religious”) overwhelmingly support the right, and secular Israelis lean heavily toward the parties opposing Netanyahu.
Elections in such a reality therefore increasingly resemble a census between populations with incompatible ideas about the basic organization of the country, from military service and education to civil marriage, public transportation on Shabbat, women’s equality, the authority of religious law and the character of constitutional democracy.
Netanyahu himself may ultimately prove a transitional figure in this transformation. He remains personally secular, cosmopolitan and Western, a product of the classic Israeli center-right, while the notorious firebrand National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir more closely resembles the constituency the right is becoming: religious, ethnonationalist, impatient with liberal constraints and comfortable making Jewish supremacy throughout the land an organizing political principle – essentially, the idea that Arabs need not have equal rights.
For Israelis with foreign passports, global careers, transferable skills and children who can study abroad, emigration is a practical option. Even the departure of a fraction of this group could create a vicious cycle: a shrinking productive population faces higher taxes and greater military burdens while losing political influence, encouraging still more to leave.
Four years can therefore change the electorate twice: through demographic growth among the religious right and through selective emigration among the secular, liberal and highly productive population most alienated by the direction of the state.
The international implications
The same feedback loop operates internationally. Israel’s prosperity and military strength depend on integration with the Western economic and diplomatic system, and especially on the extraordinary strategic protection provided by the United States. Washington’s diplomatic umbrella, particularly at the United Nations Security Council, has long helped protect Israel from forms of international isolation capable of producing serious economic consequences.
A more religious, nationalist and institutionally illiberal Israel permanently ruling millions of Palestinians will become progressively harder for Western governments to defend. A future American administration willing to withdraw that protection could expose Israel to sanctions, boycotts and other forms of economic pressure precisely when demographic change and the departure of productive Israelis have weakened its capacity to absorb them.
The danger therefore lies in the convergence of these trends: weakened institutions make sectarian policies easier to entrench; those policies strengthen the religious coalition; demographic change makes that coalition more durable; emigration weakens its opponents; economic deterioration encourages further emigration; and international isolation magnifies every domestic weakness.
Israel’s secular and moderately traditional population still constitutes a majority and remains overwhelmingly central to the country’s economic, technological, scientific, military and cultural life, which means the political future remains open today even as the demographic trajectory increasingly favors the religious right.That window can close.
I predict the opposition will win, and will take steps to reverse the damage of the judicial overhaul and integrate the Haredim properly. But much could go wrong – in the vote itself and in the comportment of the divided opposition in victory.
If Netanyahu wins
An outright Netanyahu victory could be an extinction event. It would provide four uninterrupted years for institutional devastation, Haredi entrenchment, demographic sorting, brain drain and international estrangement until elections themselves become increasingly incapable of producing fundamental change.
Israel would continue to exist, sure – with considerable military power and technological sophistication for some time, while the country that emerged would bear progressively less resemblance to the liberal, globally integrated, Western-oriented society that generated its extraordinary success. But the writing will be on the wall, and the effects would snowball.
The question facing Israelis in October therefore reaches beyond Netanyahu and his corruption scandals, the Oct. 7 breakdown and the Gaza war, judicial appointments or any individual controversy, because the choice concerns which population, which institutions and which conception of the state will define Israel for the generation ahead.
My brilliant longtime friend Larry Derner recently wrote,: “When I think of Netanyahu winning the October 27 election, I think of my two 30-ish sons and the older one’s wife, and how their future in Israel will be ruined. I say that because they are Israeli patriots. … I don’t think it’s possible to remain patriotic about your country once it gets taken over permanently by a force of evil, which is what my sons, daughter-in-law and masses of other Israeli patriots see in Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir … the settler pogromists and their kind. And if they win this election, these people and others like them will indeed run the country permanently.”
He’s dead right. Countries survive bad elections because another election provides another chance, while Israel is approaching an election in which the most consequential result of another Netanyahu victory is permanence for something catastrophic.
An Israel that is shorn of its productive center and run by fanatically religious and nationalistic politicians – lording over millions of stateless Arabs, and quite probably under international sanctions – will be gradually impoverished. It will project a vulnerability greater than it did on the eve of Oct. 7, and eventually invite a far greater attack. In such a scenario, I doubt Israel will reach its hundredth birthday in 2048. This – even more than its vilification by many progressives and denigration by antisemitic far-right agitators – would be the ultimate tragedy of Zionism.
The post Israel’s upcoming election could damage the country irreversibly appeared first on The Forward.
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How wrong I was about the young Ukrainian with the Chabad yarmulke
מײַן מאַמע, עליה השלום, פֿלעגט מיר זאָגן, אַז בעסער איז טראַכטן גוטס וועגן אַ שלעכטן מענטשן, איידער שלעכטס — וועגן אַ גוטן.
ניט איין מאָל אין פֿאַרלויף פֿון מײַן לעבן האָב איך זיך אָנגעמאַכט צרות און צומאָל זיך צעקלאַפּט ביז בלוט מײַן אייגענעם פּרצוף, זיך באַמיִענדיק פֿאָלגן די דאָזיקע עצה. עס זײַנען געווען פֿאַלן, ווען איך בין אָפּגעטראָטן פֿון דעם דאָזיקן פּרינציפּ, און איך באַדויער דאָס טאַקע.
הײַנט אַרבעט איך ווי אַ פֿאָרשטייער פֿון דער ייִדישער אַגענץ אין מאָלדאָווע מיט ייִדישע — און צומאָל מיט ניט־ייִדישע — פּליטים פֿון אוקראַיִנע. מײַן אויפֿגאַבע איז פֿאַרשנעלערן דעם פּראָצעס פֿון זייער אַרויספֿאָרן קיין ישׂראל. הונדערטער פּנימער, הונדערטער גורלות. כּמעט אויסשליסלעך — פֿרויען מיט קינדער און זקנים. ניט זעלטן זקנים, וועלכע האָבן איבערגעלעבט אַלס קינדער די צווייטע וועלט־מלחמה. צו מאָל — קינדער, וועלכע שרעקן זיך פֿון דעם, וואָס איך רעד אויף רוסיש מיט אַ מאָסקווער אויסשפּראַך. אַזוי רעדן דאָך רוסישע מערדער.
דאָס גאַנצע באַזיניקטע לעבן מײַנס בין איך געווען אַ ייִדישער נאַציאָנאַליסט און איך בלײַב אַזאַ ביז איצט. איך בין ניט קיין „רוסישער“ ייִד, הגם איך בין געבוירן געוואָרן אין מאָסקווע און רעד רוסיש, ווי אַ מאָסקווער גוי. איך בין ניט קיין „אוקראַיִנישער“ ייִד, הגם מײַן מאַמע איז געבוירן געוואָרן אין פּיריאַטין אין דער פּאָלטאַווער געגנט, און איך רעד גאַנץ נישקשה אוקראַיִניש.
איך בין אַ ייִדישער ייִד. מײַן היימלאַנד אינעם סאַמע טיפֿסטן זין פֿונעם וואָרט „היים“ איז ישׂראל, און קיין שום בירגערשאַפֿט, חוץ דער ישׂראלדיקער, האָב איך ניט און דאַרף איך ניט. אָבער דאָ און איצט זע איך אַן אַבסאָלוט בייז און אַן אַבסאָלוט גוטס, וועלכע מעקן אָפּ גרענעצן פֿון נאַציאָנאַליטעטן און צווינגען זיך צו דערמאָנען, אַז מיר אַלע זײַנען בני־אָדם, אַז מיר זײַנען געבוירן געוואָרן מענטשן און מוזן שטרעבן צו בלײַבן מענטשן. טאַקע יענץ, וואָס אויף ייִדיש רופֿט מען „אַ מענטש“.
זיך אומקערנדיק צום אָנהייב, צו מײַן מאַמעס עצה — שלאָג איך זיך על־חטא: נעכטן אין איינעם פֿון די פּונקטן אין אוקראַיִנע, וווּ עס זײַנען צײַטווײַליק אײַנגעאָרדנט די ייִדישע פּליטים, האָב איך זיך פֿאַרנומען מיט מײַן אַרבעט. צו מיר איז געווען אַ גאַנץ גרויסע ריי. צווישן די, וואָס האָבן געוואַרט אין דער ריי, האָט זיך געוואָרפֿן אין די אויגן אַ יוגנטלעכער מיט אַ חב״דישער יאַרמלקע. „מסתּמא אַ דעזערטיר, וואָס אַנטלויפֿט פֿון מאָביליזאַציע אין דער אוקראַיִנישער אַרמיי,“ האָב איך אַ טראַכט געטאָן און דערפֿילט אַן אַנטיפּאַטיע צו אים.
ניט לאַנג צוריק האָב איך באַזוכט מערבֿ־אוקראַיִנע און געטראָפֿן דאָרט עטלעכע מאַנצבילן — אוקראַיִנישע בירגער, בתוכם ייִדן, וועלכע האָבן זיך באַמיט אויסמײַדן מאָביליזאַציע אין דער אוקראַיִנישער אַרמיי, געגנבֿעט די גרענעץ צווישן אוקראַיִנע און מאָלדאָווע. איך האָב געמיינט, אַז דער דאָזיקער יונגער חב״דניק איז איינער פֿון יענע, וואָס האָבן באַוויזן זיך אַרויסצושמוגלען.
אָבער איך האָב אַ טעות געהאַט. ס׳האָט זיך אַרויסגעוויזן, אַז ער איז בכלל אַ רוסלענדישער בירגער פֿון איינער פֿון די צוויי הויפּטשטעט. צופֿעליק איז ער געווען צוליב זײַנע חב״דישע ענינים אין אוקראַיִנע, אין קיִעוו, ווען עס האָט זיך אָנגעהויבן די מלחמה. דער בחור איז געבליבן אַלס וואָלונטיר אין דער אָרטיקער ייִדישער קהילה. במשך פֿון אַ חודש האָט ער געהאָלפֿן אַרויספֿירן ייִדישע פּליטים פֿון דער שטאָט דער באַשאָסענער מיט ראַקעטן, אין בײַשטעט פֿון וועלכער ס׳איז שוין אַרײַן דאָס רוסישע מיליטער. בלויז איצט, ווען די באַוואָפֿנטע כּוחות פֿון אוקראַיִנע הייבן אָן איבערצוגיין אין דער קיִעווער געגנט צו אַ קאָנטער־אָנגריף, איז ער אַוועקגעפֿאָרן פֿון אוקראַיִנע קיין מאָלדאָווע כּדי עולה זײַן קיין ישׂראל.
הײַנט וועט דער דאָזיקר יונגער חב״דניק מיט גאָטס הילף זײַן אין ישׂראל.
זײַ מיר מוחל, בחור אין דער חב״דישער יאַרמלקע. איך זאָג צו צו האַלטן זיך אין דער צוקונפֿט שטרענגער בײַ דער עצה פֿון מײַן מאַמען: בעסער איז טראַכטן גוטס וועגן אַ שלעכטן מענטשן, איידער שלעכטס — וועגן אַ גוטן.
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Teenager eulogizes slain father who saved his life in West Bank terror attack just before Yom Kippur
(JTA) — Standing at his father’s grave after Yom Kippur 16-year-old Yoav Shukron thanked him for the warning that saved his life a day earlier, when a Palestinian gunman opened fire on the two of them at a West Bank spring.
“Dad, I want to say thank you for 16 years together. Thank you for giving me life,” Yoav said on Monday night as his father, Netanel Shukron, 48, was laid to rest in the West Bank settlement of Alei Zahav.
“Thank you for shouting out to me during the attack, when the terrorist came in. I don’t remember what you said to me, and I ran,” he added, in remarks carried by Channel 12 news.
Yoav had accompanied his father to the Ein Riya spring near the settlement of Neve Tzuf on Sunday to immerse ahead of Yom Kippur when the attack took place.
Yoav escaped unharmed. Shukron, a father of six, was critically wounded and later pronounced dead at Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva.
Hundreds of relatives, friends and residents attended the funeral, held after the Yom Kippur fast ended.
“Nati was the most involved father in the world,” his wife, Merav Shukron, said.
Reflecting on their 18-year marriage, she said, “We came from different families, but that didn’t stop us from being soulmates. Nati, our family is perfect, everything was perfect.”
The couple had six children, ages 4 to 16. Shukron worked as an information systems analyst at Hachshara Insurance Company, while Merav Shukron is a lecturer at Ariel University.
Merav said the family had been due to travel abroad the following week and that her husband had carefully planned the trip around spending time together, including packing a sukkah and food for the holiday.
According to the Israeli military’s preliminary investigation, the Palestinian attacker drove to the spring and opened fire. An Israeli military tracker who was nearby in an armored vehicle returned fire and wounded the gunman, preventing him from continuing the attack.
The attacker fled and was located several hours later receiving treatment at a hospital near Ramallah, where soldiers from the elite Duvdevan unit arrested him.
Israeli security officials identified the suspected attacker as Qadri Samara, a resident of the Palestinian town of Biddu who is affiliated with the Hamas terror group and was previously known to Israeli security forces, according to Channel 13. Investigators said he had visited the spring the previous day and determined that large numbers of people would be there to immerse in its waters ahead of Yom Kippur, a practice observed by some Jews before the fast.
In the aftermath of the attack, Israeli troops carried out a large operation in Biddu, mapping Samara’s home ahead of its possible demolition, searching about 100 locations and questioning about 90 suspects. The military also reinforced its forces across the West Bank, including by deploying the elite Egoz unit to the area.
About an hour after the shooting, soldiers thwarted a separate attempted car-ramming attack at the Ganim military post in the northern West Bank. One attacker was killed and a second was arrested, Channel 13 reported, adding that no soldiers were wounded.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a post on X, “No terrorist is immune, neither are those who assist them; we will settle scores with all of them – in Gaza, in Lebanon, and in Judea and Samaria,” using the biblical term for the West Bank.
President Isaac Herzog noted that the attack came “on the eve of Yom Kippur, as the people of Israel gather for the holy day.”
“Terror will not break us or shake our spirit,” he said. “We will stand against it together, united, determined and full of faith.”
Shukron’s killing has also become the first case in which Israeli officials are considering applying a death penalty law approved by the Knesset in March, according to the KAN public broadcaster.
The law, long championed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and his far-right Otzma Yehudit party, makes death the default sentence for non-Israelis convicted in Israeli military courts of carrying out deadly nationalist attacks, while allowing judges to impose life imprisonment in “special circumstances.” It passed the Knesset 62-48 and immediately drew a High Court challenge.
Ben-Gvir raised the possibility of applying the law to Samara during a security meeting before Yom Kippur, arguing that the case was the first to meet the law’s criteria. Netanyahu did not rule out the proposal and asked IDF representatives for their position on applying the law, which they said they saw no impediment to doing, according to KAN, though the report noted that the military advocate general was not present at the meeting. The issue is expected to be discussed again in a smaller cabinet forum with the IDF’s legal chief present, the report said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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