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A growing number of federations are asking Jews if they identify as Zionist — and grappling with the results

(JTA) — Yet another survey has found that fewer than half of Jews in an American city identify as Zionists — this time in Milwaukee, the childhood home of Golda Meir, the Zionist icon and former Israeli prime minister.

The survey, released last week by the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, found that 43% of Jewish adults said they identified as Zionist, while 42% said they did not. A much higher share — 69% — said they feel somewhat or very “emotionally attached to Israel.” At the same time, 52% of respondents agreed that “Israel regularly violates the human rights of the Palestinian people.”

The results join a growing number of similar data points generated by Jewish groups that point to evolving, and at times seemingly contradictory, views about Israel among American Jews. A survey released in February by Jewish Federations of North America, an umbrella group, found that 37% of Jews identified as Zionist even as 88% believed that “Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish, Democratic state.”

The findings cut across North American Jewish communities of different regions and sizes and are prompting Jewish leaders to reexamine their assumptions at a time when Israel is shedding support among Americans of all backgrounds.

 

 

Miryam Rosenzweig, president and CEO of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation (Courtesy)

“A year ago I really would have had a knee-jerk reaction where I was stuck on the word, because I am a Zionist,” Miryam Rosenzweig, the Milwaukee federation’s president and CEO, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about her views on the survey. “What I needed to overcome and understand is that, as a brand, it’s tarnished.” The word, she said, “is tainted.”

Yet, Rosenzweig insisted, for her Jewish community, “the values are still there.”

The Milwaukee area is home to an estimated 27,500 Jews who attend more than a dozen synagogues and six Jewish schools. The local survey, completed by 980 families, was conducted between December 2024 and March 2025, at a time when criticism over Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza was sharply mounting. More than 100 hostages taken when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, triggering the war, were still in captivity at the survey’s start, while dozens were released during a temporary ceasefire midway through the survey period.

Conducted by researchers at Brandeis University and the University of Chicago’s NORC social research firm, the survey is the federation’s first deep dive into its Jewish population since 2011. It was conducted by email, mail and phone, with options to complete the survey online or over the phone, and has an overall margin of error of 6.5%.

The survey asked about a wide range of topics and, Rosenzweig said, has illuminated unique challenges for the federation, including the region’s aging Jewish population and its relatively lower average household income when compared to similarly sized Jewish communities.

The data also offered unique bright spots, such as high levels of what Rosenzweig classified as Jewish “participation.” Three-quarters of Jewish children in the area’s interfaith households are being raised Jewish, for example, and nearly one in four of all Jewish children in Milwaukee are enrolled in a Jewish day school or yeshiva, higher than the national average.

Golda Meir, the Milwaukee native who would go on to become Israel’s Prime Minister, in Tel Aviv, Israel, October 13, 1973. (Martin Athenstädt/picture alliance via Getty Images)

But it is the Zionism question that has seized public interest — in part because it was asked at all.

For decades, according to Matthew Boxer, a researcher at Brandeis’s Cohen Center for Jewish Studies who led the Milwaukee study and has worked on many others, local federations conducting population studies would ask about topics such as emotional attachment to Israel — but largely refrained from directly asking their communities whether they identified as Zionists.

That changed with the 2020 Chicago federation survey, also led by Boxer’s team, which found that 40% of the region’s Jewish adults self-identified as Zionist while 80% agreed with the statement “It’s important for Israel to be a Jewish state.”

Since then, Boxer said, around a dozen federations have opted to ask some version of the Zionism question on their surveys. Recently released findings from the federations in Boston and St. Louis found similar results to Chicago’s and Milwaukee’s; new survey results in Austin, Texas, and Orange County, California, are expected later this year. (Some have decided against including the question, too.)

The findings have functioned as something of a Rorschach test for American Jews. Those who are deeply critical of Israel say the fact that a minority of American Jews identify as Zionists prove that American Jewish groups should roll back their support for and engagement with Israel. Those who want to preserve the historic relationship urge looking beyond the label and focusing on the fact that a significant majority of Jews are aligned in their support for traditional tenets of Zionism.

In an essay for JTA published after the national federations group released its survey, Mimi Kravetz, JFNA’s chief impact officer, concluded that most Jews still believe in the “historic definition” of Zionism, while conceding that the term has gone through “definition creep.” She urged federations to “open pathways for learning and belonging,” and avoid “responding with anger when the moment calls for steady leadership.”

For Rosenzweig, who came to Milwaukee in 2019 after years working with Jewish young professionals at Detroit’s federation, polling her community about Zionism was a no-brainer even when they were first conceiving the survey before Oct. 7. “We have to ask the question,” she said.

“The demographic study is not meant to answer what we want to hear,” she said. “We need to know where they stand, where do people agree and disagree?”

While the survey found a split on Zionist identification, it found broad consensus on other issues — sometimes ones that are in tension with each other. For example, 84% of Milwaukee Jews somewhat or strongly agreed with the statement, “I consider it important for Israel to be a Jewish state.” At the same time, 88% agreed that “Israel should be a democratic state for all of its citizens, regardless of religious identity.”

Rosenzweig said she believes the two ideas could coexist. “Our community can support Israel and support Israel’s right to exist and be a Jewish state, and they’re concerned for the human dignity of Palestinians. It’s not binary,” she said. “And I think that’s really an important message about who American Jews are.”

Rabbi Noah Chertkoff, who leads the Reform Congregation Shalom in the suburb of Fox Point, said he wasn’t surprised by the survey results on Zionism but cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from them.

“I proudly identify as a Zionist, but I also recognize that the word itself has been badly distorted and, at times, deliberately defamed by people more interested in vilifying Jews than engaging seriously with Jewish history, Jewish belief and the Jewish people’s own understanding of our story,” he wrote in an email to JTA.

Chertkoff added that his own congregants have expressed both “real anguish” over Oct. 7, as well as concerns for democracy in Israel and “the suffering of civilians on all sides of the conflict.” He added that the survey should be read as a “mandate”: “If we want the next generation to inherit a durable connection to Israel and Zionism, we cannot rely only on inherited labels.”

Rabbi Lex Rofeberg, a Milwaukee native who runs the alternative Jewish engagement network Judaism Unbound from his current home in Rhode Island, said he believed the survey is surfacing more than mere confusion over the word Zionism.

“As a person who would self-identify as ‘not a Zionist,’ I hope that Jewish organizations in Milwaukee — and beyond — would respond to this finding not by trying to shift my beliefs, or by insisting that I don’t really know what I’m opposing,” he wrote in an email. “I’d hope instead they’d recognize the reality that ‘I’m not a Zionist’ is a sincere, deeply-held belief for a lot of Jews all around the world — and that includes just over 40% of Jews in the greater Milwaukee area.”

Jewish institutions, he suggested, “should respond to lower support for Zionism not with ‘how do we re-brand Zionism’ but rather ‘how can we create meaningful Jewish experiences for folks who are actively not Zionists?’”

Jewish Milwaukee, which Rofeberg calls “awesome” and credits with having “shaped me as a person and a Jew,” could achieve this, he insists.

What the federation does with this new information is still to be determined. Rosenzweig is currently drafting “a very extensive strategic plan,” she told JTA, but said it was too early for specifics. She does hope to focus on points of commonality, rather than trying to convince half of the local Jews they are, or should be, Zionists.

For inspiration, Rosenzweig has been dusting off Milwaukee’s community survey from exactly a century ago. (Meir had already moved to Palestine by way of Denver at the time.) Back then, she said, the community was roughly the same size it is now, and its Jewish funding arms were raising roughly the same amount of money, adjusted for inflation.

“It was talking about the ‘Campaign for Palestine,’ in 1926, because the Jews of Eastern Europe had nowhere to go,” Rosenzweig said. “They were worried about it then. And so today, we’re responding to the moment. And yes, it looks dark. There were dark days, and we survived because we came together. We know how to do this.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post A growing number of federations are asking Jews if they identify as Zionist — and grappling with the results appeared first on The Forward.

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Assailant attacks congregant, guard at NYC Shabbat services

(JTA) —A man who attacked a congregant and a security guard at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue on Friday night is now in custody, according to the New York Police Department.

The individual disrupted Shabbat services before allegedly assaulting the two individuals.

“As synagogue security was escorting him out, he struck a member of the congregation, damaged synagogue property, and then spit at and headbutted a member of the security team,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch stated in a post on X.

Tisch, who grew up attending the iconic Reform synagogue, said that an NYPD sergeant who was working on a paid detail on site “immediately stepped in and took the individual into custody.”

“I have spoken with the rabbi of the synagogue, and I’m relieved that no one was seriously injured,” she said, confirming that those who were hurt are now doing well.

While noting that the investigation is still ongoing, Tisch confirmed that there are no other known threats at the moment, and that additional NYPD resources were deployed to Central Synagogue.

For the police commissioner, however, the event was also personal, as she described the synagogue of her childhood as “a place of comfort and peace,” both “in joy and in sorrow.”

“What happened there tonight is deeply painful,” Tisch added. “A place of worship should never be a crime scene.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wrote on X that he was “horrified by the assault at Central Synagogue during services today.”

“I can only imagine the pain and fear an attack like this, during Shabbat services, causes for the congregation and for Jewish New Yorkers across our city,” Mamdani stated.

The mayor emphasized that every New Yorker should be able to practice their religion without fearing violence, describing the event as a “despicable act” that “has no place in our city.”

“Our administration will do everything in our power to keep Jewish New Yorkers safe,” Mamdani added.

Julie Menin, speaker of the New York City Council, commended the NYPD for its “swift response that brought the individual into custody,” adding that she was “disturbed” by the incident.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James described the assault as “appalling and unacceptable” in a social media statement. She stressed that “no one should feel threatened in their place of worship.”

“I am relieved that everyone is okay and recovering, and my heart is with the Central Synagogue community this evening,” James added.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Assailant attacks congregant, guard at NYC Shabbat services appeared first on The Forward.

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Nigeria has more than 100 synagogues — but no local rabbis. This summer camp wants to change that.

On summer mornings in Abuja, Nigeria, a small fleet of cars fan out across the sprawling capital city carrying unusual cargo: children headed to Jewish day camp.

In a one-story synagogue on a dirt road in Kubwa, a densely populated suburb, children who spend most of the year as the only Jew in their school spill out of cars alongside dozens of their peers. They might spend the day acting out scenes from the Torah, crocheting kippot or competing in color war.

It’s an untraditional location, but almost everything else about Camp Sarah is inspired by Jewish summer camps in the U.S. After all, it was founded by an American.

Debbie Isser, who moved to Nigeria in 2021 for her work with the World Bank, started the camp with members of Abuja’s Jewish community after local mothers told her they wanted their children to have some kind of Jewish education. For Isser, whose own childhood summers at Jewish camp in New Hampshire had been formative, the solution felt obvious.

“I just felt like it was in my genes,” she told the Forward.

Children participate in a relay race. Photo by Anya Herzberg

Now in its fourth year, Camp Sarah, a two-week-long day camp hosting 80 campers and 20 staff, is trying to give a new generation of Nigerian Jews something their small, dispersed community has struggled to provide: Jewish teachings that will allow them to sustain religious life there.

The hope, of course, is that the children make Jewish friends and learn Torah stories. But organizers also want Camp Sarah to begin producing the religious leaders the community currently lacks — perhaps, one day, even a homegrown rabbi or a shochet, ritual slaughterer, so that kosher Nigerian Jews can finally enjoy meat with their jollof rice.

Fifteen-year-old Shedrack, who is one of two Jewish students at his public school, attended Camp Sarah for the first time last summer. When, during the following school year, his classmates made fun of him for not believing in Jesus, he called his camp friends.

Color war at Camp Sarah. Photo by Anya Herzberg

“It’s like being with myself,” he told the Forward. “They understand me. When it’s closing hour from school, I usually call them. We have some chats, ask ourselves some questions and we talk about Torah.”

Nigeria’s Jewish community is itself an unlikely story. Most of its members are Igbo, one of Nigeria’s largest ethnic groups, some of whom believe they are descended from one of the 10 lost tribes of Israel. Igbo identification with Jewish identity intensified during and after the devastating Nigerian Civil War between 1967 and 1970, when the Igbo-led breakaway state of Biafra was defeated, and at least a million people died.

In the decades that followed, a small number of Igbo who had been raised Christian began practicing Judaism, teaching themselves Hebrew, seeking out Jewish texts and eventually establishing synagogues. Today, thousands of Nigerians practice Judaism, though those who have not formally converted are not considered Jewish by many mainstream Jewish institutions.

Camp founders Debbie Isser and Moshe Hezekiah Nwafor in the Camp Sarah courtyard. Photo by Anya Herzberg

But maintaining a Jewish community in Nigeria is no easy feat. While Nigeria has over 100 synagogues, the community has no resident rabbi of its own. Jewish books and ritual objects are few and far between, usually arriving from donations abroad.

Moshe Hezekiah Nwafor, 28, a Nigerian Jew who founded the camp alongside Isser, told the Forward that when he celebrated his bar mitzvah, there was only one Torah scroll in the country. Today, he estimates there are about 10. And without a shochet, his community relies heavily on fish and vegetables because there is no way to access kosher meat.

Nwafor and Isser met by chance. While Isser was looking for a synagogue to celebrate the Jewish holidays after she moved to Nigeria, she came across a WhatsApp number for Nwafor’s congregation. Nwafor answered her message and immediately arranged for someone to pick her up and bring her to the synagogue to celebrate Sukkot.

That night, they made kiddush in a sukkah with walls fashioned from banana leaves; afterward came a l’chaim with local schnapps.

“I thought, OK, I’ve really found a Jewish community here,” Isser recalled.

Isser began returning from trips to the United States with suitcases stuffed with donated tallitot (prayer shawls), siddurim (prayer books) and other Jewish books. Eventually, after one Shabbat service, she sat down with elders of the congregation to ask what a more systematic relationship with American Jews might look like.

The clearest request, she said, came from the mothers. Most of their children attended schools where they were the only Jew. Instead of letting their kids sit idle over the summers, the mothers wanted them to receive a Jewish education and know what it feels like to have Jewish friends – in other words: Jewish summer camp.

Campers perform for their peers. Photo by Anya Herzberg

The request resonated with Isser, a mother too, for whom Jewish camp had been a formative part of childhood. Her parents had met at Camp Ramah, the camp of the Conservative movement, when they were 16. Her mother went on to become a Jewish educator.

At first, Isser considered sending Nigerian children to camps in the U.S. But she and Nwafor, who had worked as a traveling Jewish teacher among Nigerian communities, quickly landed on a more ambitious idea.

“Immediately, we’re like ‘no, no, no,’” Isser recalled. “’We should do camp in Nigeria.’”

They named it Camp Sarah, in honor of Isser’s mother.

The first summer required some improvisation. Organizers borrowed a car to collect children from around Abuja. Isser recalls one trip taking two hours, the car breaking down and, at one point, 15 children squeezing into a sedan.

Campers at Camp Sarah. Photo by Anya Herzberg

Rabbi Kerrith Solomon from Adas Israel, a Conservative congregation in Washington, D.C., came with her two children to help run the camp. Looking back, Isser said, “We kind of laugh because it was pretty disorganized.”

Today, anyone who grew up going to camp would recognize much of Camp Sarah, where campers spend their days competing in relay races or Jewish trivia and writing songs to perform for their peers. Four-year-olds act out Torah stories. Older campers study the Jewish life cycle and discuss what it means to become role models in their communities. Counselors from Nigeria, Uganda and the U.S. compare their Jewish traditions over lunchtime.

But some camp traditions require distinctly Nigerian adaptations. Each Friday, the camp bakes challah. With no conventional oven, sand is poured into the bottom of a cooking pot that rests on a charcoal stove, before unbraided challah dough is placed in the pot and covered for hours.

Many of the Jewish songs sung at camp were written in Nigeria and sound nothing like the standard repertoire in America. Sung in harmony, they are accompanied by traditional Nigerian instruments like the konga drum, a shallow gourd covered in beads known as the shekere and a metal hand bell called an ogene.

Camp Sarah’s ambitions also extend beyond Jewish education. Isser said that during her work at the World Bank, she has watched young Nigerians earn university degrees only to struggle to find jobs in their fields. This year, the team introduced leadership training for the counselors, and activities like soap-making, candle-making and crocheting – skills they hope campers and counselors can turn into sources of income. Organizers have even discussed creating a camp store where staff can sell their handmade tallitot and kippot.

Isser reads “Soosie, The Horse That Saved Shabbat” to campers. Photo by Anya Herzberg

The 20 Nigerian counselors who take long overnight buses from Jewish communities across the country to camp each summer have already started bringing what they’ve learned back home, hosting events for their communities during the Jewish holidays.

Debbie Hezekiah Nwafor, a 25-year-old counselor, said that when she first arrived at camp four years ago, she was terrified of public speaking, but her role forced her to propose activities, teach dozens of children and command the attention of the rowdy group. Today, she leads the camp’s division for 14- to 16-year-olds.

“I used to have stage fright; I thought I’m not really bold enough for leadership,” she said. “But whatever idea I’m bringing, camp is implementing it.”

“This is not just a camp to us.” she added. “For real, this is something really big. I would say camp really changed me.”

Camp Sarah has also become a place to experiment in a way that has proven difficult within established Nigerian congregations. According to Nwafor, women have traditionally played smaller leadership roles in local Jewish communities both because of cultural expectations around gender in Nigeria and because of the community’s limited access to Jewish religious instruction.

For communities that have had limited access to rabbis and other sources of contemporary Jewish religious instruction, Nwafor said, biblical texts have sometimes served as a primary guide for how to live Jewishly.

Isser has seen some of those tensions surface in surprisingly fundamental questions. When visiting rabbis have taught at Camp Sarah, she said, mothers have asked whether Jewish law would require them to marry their husband’s brother if their husband died — a practice described in the Torah’s Book of Deuteronomy known as yibbum, or levirate marriage.

Nwafor (center) and his campers. Photo by Anya Herzberg

But last year, the camp held a service led by women and they did an encore this week. Some of them have even said they would like to become rabbis.

“That’s something you don’t see here, but I’m like, ‘why not?’” Nwafor said. “Just go for it.”

Ruth Munghoho, a Ugandan Jew, flew through Ethiopia to Camp Sarah to teach after studying under Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, the first native-born black rabbi in Sub-Saharan Africa. She sees her younger self in her campers.

“I grew up in a Christian community where we had no Jewish friends or neighbors,” she said. It took until young adulthood for her to be able to learn about Judaism. “If I could get this knowledge from childhood,” she said, “I know that I could be more than what I am now.”

The post Nigeria has more than 100 synagogues — but no local rabbis. This summer camp wants to change that. appeared first on The Forward.

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U.S. ambassador calls settlers who sieged Palestinian homes in Qusra ‘terrorists’

(JTA) — TEL AVIV – The West Bank settlement movement’s leadership joined with one of its most prominent defenders, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, in condemning an Israeli settler outpost set up in a Palestinian family’s yard.

Huckabee’s remarks are a signal of the degree to which a group of radicals is rattling Israeli politics and the U.S.-Israel relationship.

Israelis affiliated with the West Bank’s Tel Talpiot outpost, which is illegal under Israeli law, set up temporary structures at the entrances to Palestinian homes on the outskirts of the village of Qusra on Sunday.

Earlier this week, cables connecting the homes to the electricity grid and to solar panels were cut, and water pipes were damaged, leaving the Palestinian families unable to leave or bring in food. Israeli activists in the area who monitor settler attacks on Palestinians confirmed the account to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Huckabee wrote on X on Thursday that Israeli forces had gone to Qusra at the U.S. Embassy’s request and described the people who set up the outpost as “Israeli terrorists.” He posted that “the IDF & Israel Police have gone at our request to remove the Israeli terrorists doing this.”

The language was a departure for the ambassador, who told Israel’s Channel 14 last September that the United States “respects Israel as a sovereign state and will not tell Israel what to do” regarding sovereignty in the West Bank. Huckabee has also consistently described the territory by its biblical names Judea and Samaria. He routinely takes to social media to dismantle what he says are lies depicting Israelis as unfairly treating Palestinians.

He has condemned settler violence before, but has rarely done so in language as blunt as what he used on Thursday. In July 2025, he visited the Christian village of Taybeh in the West Bank after an arson attack at its fifth-century church and called it an “act of terror and crime.”

The actions of Israeli settler extremists have been a major concern to Democrats in the U.S. Congress in recent months, adding fodder to their calls to condition aid to Israel on its behavior. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists the reports are overblown, and that Palestinian violence is much more serious. President Donald Trump, who has often supported Netanyahu, has called on the prime minister to crack down on the violence, seeing it as an impediment to his hopes for a broader Middle East peace. Huckabee’s intervention suggests that the Trump administration is increasingly concerned about ending the violence.

Yisrael Ganz, who chairs the Yesha Council and governs the Binyamin Regional Council, condemned the outpost.

“The events in Qusra are serious and do not reflect our values or our way of conducting ourselves,” Ganz said. “There is no place for individuals to take matters into their own hands and establish an outpost in someone’s backyard, even when dealing with an illegal home or an attempt to seize control of the land. There is no justification whatsoever for violence against uninvolved civilians or security forces.”

He added that some were “exploiting these events as part of a campaign against the Jewish communities,” but that this “must not obscure the simple truth: What happened in Qusra was wrong and is unacceptable to us.”

Huckabee amplified Ganz’s statement later on Thursday, writing on X, “’Settlers’ are not the problem in Judea/Samaria. ‘Unsettlers’ are,” he wrote, describing them as “very small minority who do great damage to Palestinian families & to Israel.”

The village is located in Area B, territory that is under the civil jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority and security control of the Israeli military and where Israeli settlement is not permitted. The Israel Defense Forces called such takeovers illegal and reprehensible on Tuesday. Overnight Wednesday, Israeli security forces said they demolished the structures at Qusra and detained one Israeli.

Marmar Odeh, a village representative, told JTA that the Israeli military remained inside Qusra, and footage circulating on social media showed Israeli soldiers stationed inside the homes of evacuated residents.

“I won’t be going anywhere. I am staying in my house and on my land,” Odeh said. “I may not be scared, but the children are all the time.”

In a voice memo recorded on August 12 and obtained by JTA, Aisha Abu Rida, a Qusra resident, spoke from inside one of the besieged homes.

“We are surrounded by settlers, but we are steadfast,” she said. “Despite the water and electricity being cut off, we will remain steadfast … and stay in our homes.”

By Thursday, the structures were gone, but settlers remained on the hillsides above the homes, Odeh said, an account supported by footage he provided to JTA. Soldiers had left most of the homes they had entered, residents said Friday, but were informed the military operation could last until Sunday.

One of the affected homes belongs to Loui Ridi, a Toledo, Ohio, business owner who was born in Qusra and has followed the standoff through security cameras installed at the property. JTA attempted to reach Ridi through several channels and was unsuccessful.

Asked whether the State Department shared Huckabee’s characterization and whether the Embassy had requested the Israeli operation, a State Department spokesperson did not directly reply. “We are in regular dialogue with partners about improving stability and security in the West Bank,” the spokesperson said. “We condemn criminal violence by any party in the West Bank. A stable West Bank keeps Israel secure and is in line with this administration’s goal to achieve peace in the region.”

In a statement to JTA, the Israeli military said soldiers had been deployed in Qusra since Thursday morning “to protect the residents and maintain security in the area” and that they had been instructed that “the Qusra residents will remain in their homes.”

It added that troops would not operate inside the Palestinian family’s home near the site “where the tent that was evacuated and dismantled had been erected” and said Civil Administration liaison officers were in contact with Qusra’s local leadership and “working to avoid disruption to the daily lives of the residents in the area.”

Footage circulating earlier in the week appeared to show Israeli soldiers praying alongside the settlers at the outpost. The military said that the incident is under review and that soldiers found to have taken part in illegal activity would be disciplined.

The designation of Area B is the source of the ambiguity, according to Hanan Greenwood, head of the spokesperson and public diplomacy unit at the Binyamin Regional Council.

The council’s jurisdiction covers the settlements themselves, Greenwood said, not Area B land, meaning Qusra sits inside the council’s footprint but outside its authority. Its residents fall under Palestinian Authority civil jurisdiction and pay the council no arnona, the Israeli municipal tax.

“Geographically, Qusra is very much in our area,” Greenwood said. “But in real life, it’s not that we could go there, and it’s not that the residents of Qusra pay us.”

He described the result as a governance vacuum. “It’s ours, it isn’t ours,” he said. “It’s a whole mess, and the reason is that there’s no sovereignty.”

Israeli rights groups reject that framing, arguing that the military has the authority to remove outposts and does not use it.

The Israeli rights group B’Tselem said the events reflect a broader pattern.

“What is happening in Qusra is not an isolated incident,” said Yuli Novak, the organization’s executive director. “Settler militias, backed by the Israeli military, are expanding their attacks into Palestinian villages and towns, seizing land, attacking homes and forcing families out. Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the West Bank is accelerating and expanding in plain sight.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

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