A unprecedented coalition of dozens of high-ranking former Israeli national security and government leaders has launched a scathing rebuke of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government, issuing a urgent “final wake-up call” demanding immediate action to crack down on growing Jewish settler violence and terrorism targeting Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank.
Released publicly Thursday and first reported by Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the joint statement carries unprecedented weight, signed by former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, former Israel Defense Forces chiefs of staff Moshe Ya’alon and Dan Halutz, ex-Mossad director Tamir Pardo, former heads of the domestic Shin Bet security agency Carmi Gillon and Yaakov Peri, a former Israeli national security adviser, a retired Supreme Court justice, retired major generals, a former state prosecutor, prominent rabbis, leading academics, and six recipients of the Israel Prize, the country’s highest civilian honor. Drafted by Israeli attorney Shmuel Berkowitz, copies of the statement were also delivered to Defense Minister Israel Katz, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, senior military commanders and other top government officials.
The coalition accuses Netanyahu and his governing coalition of complete inaction to root out organized settler violence, and in many cases, of actively enabling the terror campaign. The statement charges that Netanyahu and his ministers “have done nothing to eliminate Jewish terrorism”, pointing out that sitting officials have provided material backing to the illegal West Bank outposts where extremist settler leaders are based. “They do not condemn it, do not require the Israel Defence Forces, the police, the Shin Bet and the Civil Administration to fight it, and some of them, at least, even support this terror by providing financial and equipment assistance, and building illegal farms and outposts that serve as residences for Jewish terror activists,” the statement reads.
The group specifically pushes back against Netanyahu’s repeated framing of settler attackers, challenging the prime minister’s description of the perpetrators as just “about 70 kids” from broken homes who commit minor offenses like tree cutting, a claim Netanyahu made in a December 2023 interview. The coalition dismisses Netanyahu’s casual label of “hilltop youth” as intentionally misleading, arguing that the violence is not the work of a small group of unruly teens, but a coordinated, systematic movement that includes hundreds of adult organizers who incite minors to carry out attacks.
“For some reason, these Jewish criminals are referred to by you with the naive term of ‘hilltop youth’, as if they were members of a youth movement, marginalised youth or outliers. These are also young people and adults who lead even minors on the path of terror, crime and deadly violence,” the statement notes.
The open letter ties the violence directly to the expansion of illegal settlement outposts built near Palestinian villages under the goal of so-called “Judaisation” of the occupied West Bank. The document explains that these outposts are intentionally established to displace local Palestinian communities through force, advancing the extremist movement’s ideology of “land redemption” by expelling Palestinians from their ancestral land. The coalition details how the attacks are coordinated: armed settlers from outposts are regularly joined by adult extremists from other settlements, regional defense units, and local security squads from inside Israel during large-scale raids on Palestinian communities. Attacks have included fatal shootings of Palestinian villagers and shepherds, as well as widespread destruction and looting of Palestinian property.
The statement comes after several of the signatories joined tours of recently attacked Palestinian villages in the West Bank earlier this year, where many reported being shocked by the scale of damage and shared accounts from survivors, with multiple former leaders stating publicly that they felt “ashamed” by what they witnessed.
Settler violence against Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank has spiked dramatically since the outbreak of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza in October 2023. Multiple on-the-ground reports have documented that these attacks frequently occur in full view of Israeli military forces, which rarely intervene to stop the violence. International bodies including the United Nations and Amnesty International have repeatedly warned that the campaign of settler expansion and violence amounts to systematic ethnic cleansing that has forced entire Palestinian communities to leave their land.
If the Netanyahu government fails to enact immediate policy changes to crack down on settler terror, the coalition says it will petition the Israeli Supreme Court to force action, marking an extraordinary step by former top Israeli officials against a sitting Israeli government.