This update is part of our September 2026 newsletter
Fighting Violence at its Source
Roots works in Palestinian society to combat violence against Jews and to inculcate Quranic values of mercy, compassion and nonviolence. In this newsletter we want to focus on our efforts to fight Jewish violence against Palestinians in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria.
This violence got worse when the present Israeli government took office and began growing exponentially a year later on October 7, 2023. The words terrorism and pogroms are not out of place in describing it. What was done to the Jews for generations is now being perpetrated by Jews upon others – and it is being done in the name of Judaism.
Many wonderful organisations are doing their best to stem the tide. The major vehicle they are employing is protective presence: Jews expressing their solidarity with those who are most vulnerable by spending time in the Palestinian hamlets under attack, putting their bodies between the perpetrators and the victims to protect the latter and at the same time documenting the injustices and atrocities in order to bring the terrorists to justice. We have only praise and admiration for the brave souls who are doing this frightening, demoralizing and dangerous work.
But there are additional ways to fight this Jewish terrorism. Protective presence does battle against it from without while there is also a need to fight it from within. From within means to deal with its sources and not just its manifestations. From within means to work with the settler communities from which the violence is emanating and to enlist them to grapple with it. From within means to get to the roots of the ideologies that are fuelling it. From within means not only to meet it in the field but rather to nip it in the bud in schools, homes, synagogues and yeshivot.
Roots/Shorashim/Judur, like the organizations that I referenced above, is very much involved in protective presence, but in our case the people doing the protecting are from the communities and social circles of the perpetrators and not from the outside. Many times this adds an additional layer of effectiveness.
Roots activists are sometimes able to develop connections and to work with the leaders of the extremist youth who are out of control and get them to rein in those who are under their care.
Roots works in schools in the settlements and has implemented – in complete coordination with the educational leadership – conversations and programs that grapple with the extremism and violence. We work with local rabbis, community leaders and politicians to galvanize them to acknowledge and to speak out against the violence.
And finally, Roots works with the Israeli army in the field and with the Israeli police, to help them better act to prevent the violence and to bring its perpetrators to justice. Again and again we find that since we work in tandem with the army, the police and with settler leaders, they are much more likely to cooperate with us, rely on us and trust us, than they are with activists and organizations – as wonderful and as crucial as they are – that are perceived as coming from the outside.
The ecosystem needs both – those working from without and those working from within, but it seems at this point that Roots is just about the only organization that is doing the crucial work from within.
