The 'Settler Violence' Libel: A Campaign Over Fifty Years Old

Dr. Zvi Elhayani argues that the term 'settlers' has undergone a linguistic and historical inversion over more than fifty years, from a designation of pioneering to a loaded term associated with violence. He describes a media and legal campaign, including the Karp Report and a letter from senior security officials to Trump, aimed at defaming the settlement enterprise. The article calls for restoring the original meaning of words.

Dr. Zvi Elhayani, an architect and member of the Professors for National Resilience circle, argues in an opinion piece that the term 'settlers' has undergone a linguistic and historical inversion over more than fifty years, from a designation of pioneering and Zionist fulfillment to a loaded term associated with violence and threat. He describes how, since the rise of Gush Emunim and the 1977 political upheaval, the term became politicized, and especially after the Simchat Torah massacre, a wave of headlines about 'settler violence' and 'Jewish terror' intensified. The article mentions the Karp Report, prepared at the initiative of Attorney General Yitzhak Zamir, as an influential document in the defamation campaign, and the letter from hundreds of former security establishment officials to President Trump, which presented the rise of 'Jewish terror' as a threat. Elhayani claims this is a coordinated campaign by 'peace movements' aimed at toppling right-wing governments, and that public discourse portrays settlers as a violent public, using imagery from European history. He calls for restoring the original meaning of words as a condition for restoring the truth to the act of settling the land.