Yesterday we were told on the news that 14 year old Benjamin Achimeir went missing. He left his home early in the morning to herd sheep. His home is in the Benjamin region, named after the ancient Jewish tribe of Benjamin who lived more or less in the same area during biblical times.
A missing shepherd could be someone who walking on the hills fell and was injured and unable to call for help. Or someone attacked by terrorists.
Today Benjamin’s body was found. He wasn’t taken hostage, he was murdered and thrown nearby. He was stoned, tortured, beaten, stabbed and his skull was crushed by a large rock. A 14 year old boy.
Now the reports are of “settlers” aka Jews who live in the region, “rampaging” in the closest Arab village, the place where one logically assumes the murderer or murderers came from. It is worth noting that the reported “rampaging” includes setting fire to houses and cars, not murdering people.
Those who live in civilized places will respond in horror “Oh, no, one mustn’t take the law into your own hands,” and “two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Which is true. I believe those things. The problem is that this isn’t a civilized area and there is a big difference between theory and survival.
Let’s unravel some of the complications here:
“Settler violence”
This term encapsulates multiple lies.
The first is that Jews living in their ancestral homeland somehow are settlers who don’t belong there. The idea that “settlers” are Jews who live in the Benjamin region and not the Jews who live in Tel Aviv is an idea born from elites who don’t listen to what the Arabs say about us. To them, every Jew living in Israel is a “settler”. We saw this on October 7th when Hamas called the people of Be’eri and other kibbutzim in Israel “settlers”.
The next lie is that Jewish violence against Arabs is a common occurrence. This is an absolute lie, supported by warped statistics that include instances of Jews defending themselves from terrorists trying to kill them. For example, terrorists that were injured in these instances were counted as a case of settler violence and if they subsequently died in the hospital, it was counted as a second instance of violence. Another example of these outrageous lies with statistics is that every Jew who ascends the Temple Mount is counted as an instance of “settler violence”
“Taking the law into your hands is wrong”
Israel is a nation of law and murdering people is not allowed. Obviously. The law is supposed to protect all citizens. The problem is that the law isn’t fully enforced to protect Jews, particularly those who live in Judea, Samaria and the Benjamin region – people who stand in between the Arabs of the PA territories who promised to repeat October 7th and the Israelis living in the center of the country. The Arabs of the PA territories have proven their desire as they have committed small scale attacks for years. Their culture and education are identical to that in Gaza. Elections in PA territories have been postponed for over a decade because it is known that the people would elect Hamas. Gaza is Hamas. So is the PA.
Further complicating the situation is the decisions and attitude of the IDF general in charge of the region. The residents living there have been crying out for help, for years. According to them, many of his decisions about how to manage the area are more focused on maintaining Arab rights to freedom of movement than protecting Jewish right to not be murdered. Most recently he was criticized for a military exercise that proposed a scenario where “settlers” kidnapped an Arab child and the army needed to intervene. A scenario that never happened, one that would never happen and is exactly the opposite of what actually happens – as we see in the murder of Benjamin Achimeir. So here we have a terrible situation where Jews are under attack and the State is not defending them. If you were in such a situation, what would you do? Sit and wait for the next attack or make sure your attackers know they cannot attack with impunity?
What will be reported?
Most of the media will focus more on the “settler violence” than on the fact that a 14 year old boy was murdered for the crime of being a Jew in his ancestral homeland.
For Muslims, Jews returned to our ancestral homeland are a problem because it proves their religion wrong. God did not replace Jews with Islam. We were exiled but we were also returned.
For Progressives (in America, Israel and Europe) Jews who are both religious and connected to the Land, Jews who are willing to be a “Nation alone” are the last major threat to the new world they are trying to create. People that still live according to biblical guidelines are in stark and violent contrast to those who say that there is no difference between man and woman, nations, facts and feelings or even right and wrong. THAT is why “settlers” are a red flag to so many.
The murder of a child should make everyone pause. The murder of Benjamin Achimeir should make us all consider what is necessary to enable Jews to live freely in our ancestral homeland.
{Reposted from the author’s blog}
