Armed with an M16 and Jewish privilege, this settler makes Palestinians’ lives hell

Israeli outpost settler Zvi Bar Yosef.

Hagar Shezaf reports in Haaretz on 7 August 2023:

Just one herd of cattle was enough to set the destructive chain of events in motion. Before that, few people had ever heard of Umm Safa, a small and quiet West Bank Palestinian village north of Ramallah. Then in June, the residents of the village photographed a new tent that was erected on nearby land. There were also cows grazing nearby.

That same weekend initial clashes erupted between Palestinians and settlers over the tiny unauthorized outpost. The following day, the settler rampage in Umm Safa occurred. Dozens of settlers set fire to homes and vehicles and vandalized Palestinian property. They had arrived after settler WhatsApp groups alerted them to “a drop-off at the new spot,” a euphemism for a new outpost. Some came by car. A few were caught on video firing weapons on the nearby highway.

Two weeks after the rampage, the residents of Umm Safa organized a protest march over the small outpost. At the end of the march, Abdel Jawad Salah, 24, was shot to death, an incident that the Israeli army said is under investigation.

Before the settlers rioted in the village, the Israeli military presence there was a rather rare occurrence, Umm Safa residents said, but the army prevented them from staging another march on July 14. Then a week later, during another protest, another Palestinian, 17-year-old Mohammed al-Biad, was killed.

How did the cattle herd get to the land near the village in the first place? According to a senior source in the Israel Defense Forces, it was an extension of an older outpost: Zvi’s Farm, which belongs to Zvi Bar Yosef. “He had expanded to a new spot facing Umm Safa. That’s Zvi exactly,” the source said.

Bar Yosef, who did not respond for this article, became a headline name in 2021 when he was filmed expelling Palestinian families picnicking in a grove several kilometers from his outpost. One video clip shows Bar Yosef dousing the family’s barbecue. Soldiers who came to the scene can then be seen asking them to leave. At the time, Bar Yosef declined to comment.

In many respects, Bar Yosef is not unique. Others like him have surfaced around the West Bank in recent years. They erect “farm outposts” with herds of sheep or cattle and build structures without authorization, but the structures remain. They do this with at least tacit agreement from the authorities. A series of complaints of violence against Palestinians in the vicinity of Bar Yosef’s outpost – sometimes with his active participation – provides a glimpse of the impact of a tiny outpost on the lives of Palestinians living nearby.

Assistance from the authorities

Bar Yosef, 31, had formerly testified in court that his parents “met through Rabbi Kahane,” a reference to the American-born Meir Kahane, whose Kach party was banned by the Knesset as racist and antidemocratic.

Bar Yosef established his farm outpost in 2019, he says, following the murder of three members of the Solomon family two years before by a Palestinian assailant in the nearby settlement of Halamish (also known as Neveh Tzuf). His declared goal was “to move forward to the edge of the blue line [the municipal boundary] of Neveh Tzuf, following Palestinian construction in the area.”

Bar Yosef, along with his family and his herd of cattle settled 10 minutes from Neveh Tzuf, near the Palestinian villages of Jibiya and Kobar. Over time, there have been numerous complaints against him from the two villages. Only one of them, from 2020, is known to have resulted in police questioning of Bar Yosef, but it was closed due to a lack of evidence.

The only criminal charges filed against him stemmed from a dispute with another settler in the northern West Bank settlement of Itamar. In 2012, as part of a plea agreement, Bar Yosef admitted to assault and threats and was sentenced to 30 hours of community service at the yeshiva in the settlement of Nahliel. In approving the plea agreement, the court noted in part that Bar Yosef had been an outstanding soldier.

“Naturally, we managed to anger a lot of people when we came here,” Bar Yosef said in police questioning during an investigation into an alleged assault on Palestinians in 2020. “The territory here [belongs to] Neveh Tzuf. There are land reserves here. … We’ve come to open the chakras, as they say [in yoga].” Before he settled in the area, he said, “there were Arabs wandering around here all day. There was no road. It’s all new.”

Although his outpost is illegal, Bar Yosef receives assistance from the authorities. In a previous police interrogation, he reported having received his M16 rifle from the IDF. Asked why by the police, he said it was because “I have a farm and live in a dangerous place.”

A record of complaints
March 30, 2019
The Abu Ziyada family try to reach their land, encounter a roadblock and are assaulted. In court, the father testifies that Bar Yosef was present.
April 7, 2020
The Salah family are attacked and tied up by settlers who threaten them and lead them toward Neveh Tzuf. In a complaint, they identify Bar Yosef as one of the attackers.
April 16, 2020
The Qattash brothers are attacked by settlers. They lose teeth and one of them is tied up. The brothers testify that Bar Yosef was among the assailants.
February 6, 2021
Bar Yosef expels a family from the grove where they were picnicking.
February 26, 2021
Bar Yosef expels another family from the grove where they were picnicking.
October 28, 2022
Jibiya residents and activists who came to pick olives are attacked by masked assailants.
The IDF said that Bar Yosef is in possession of an army weapon because he is a member of Neveh Tzuf’s on-call security squad. In court, Bar Yosef also said that he has installed hidden cameras in the vicinity of his farm.

Bar Yosef’s cattle near Umm Safa

In 2018, Bar Yosef was issued a grazing permit on at least 1,000 dunams (250 acres) of land by the World Zionist Organization’s Settlement Division. This was disclosed in discovery proceedings in connection with a defamation suit filed by Bar Yosef against Kerem Navot, an Israeli nonprofit whose main activity is investigating Israeli settler activity in the West Bank. The 70,000 shekel ($19,200) suit was filed against the organization, founded by left-wing activist Dror Etkes, after it published a Facebook post that called Bar Yosef a “violent settler who in any normal place would probably be on criminal trial.”

In connection with the case, Bar Yosef, whose farm lies within the boundaries of Neveh Tzuf, produced an agreement between himself and Neveh Tzuf allocating the land where the farm is located to him. But the contract doesn’t authorize the buildings at the site because no construction plans have ever been approved for the area.

Bar Yosef told the court that “all the buildings on the farm are mobile and their presence coordinated to the largest extent possible in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank].” Asked if demolition orders had been issued against the current structures at the site, he said that he “doesn’t know.” The Israeli Civil Administration in the West Bank told Haaretz that there are indeed demolition orders pending against structures on the farm.

In any event, the land that was allocated to Bar Yosef for grazing doesn’t include areas where he has recently been grazing his animals near Umm Safa. The Civil Administration told Haaretz that it was unaware of any grazing permit and had not consented to any such arrangement.

That should come as no surprise: Grazing permits often lack transparency, and the Civil Administration, which manages the land subject to these permits, has repeatedly claimed that it doesn’t know what is being done there. Etkes once submitted a freedom of information request to the Civil Administration to gain access to the permits. The Civil Administration replied that it did not have the documents. In addition, the World Zionist Organization’s Settlement Division, which issues them, is exempted from responding to freedom of information requests.

Grazing permits are especially important to the kind of outposts that have become prevalent in recent years in the West Bank: farm outposts. According to various estimates, there are around 70 outposts of this kind. These outposts typically have a very small number of structures and residents, and rely on grazing to take over land.

‘Unknown offender’

In March 2019, a short time after Bar Yosef established his farm, the Abu Ziyada family – a father, mother and their daughter – decided to visit a parcel of land that they own on the outskirts of their village. Their land, they would soon find out, has become off limits due to the outpost’s new presence.   “In the past, we had gone there a lot. It’s a very pretty area,” Hutar Abu Ziyada told Haaretz. “We would barbecue out there. There’s hyssop and sage there.”  That morning, she recounted, she and her husband took their daughter there for a “change of atmosphere” while she was studying. “All of a sudden, we encountered an [earthen] roadblock, and people approached us from every direction. Someone asked us what we were doing there.”

The court recently heard testimony by Khatem, Hutar’s husband, in the defamation case against Kerem Navot. He told the court how the settlers began shoving him. Even though Bar Yosef himself did not act violently, Khatem Abu Ziyada insisted throughout his testimony that Bar Yosef was the person responsible for what happened and was present throughout the incident. Khatem described how the settlers struck him with a rifle, punched him in the face and beat his wife as well. Afterward, he stated, the settlers threw stones at them, which smashed their car windows. “My wife told them, ‘Why are you beating him?’ – and then they begun hitting her too,” Khatem testified.

The family was taken to a hospital and later submitted a complaint to the police. The case was closed in January 2020 – according to the police because the offenders could not be identified. Bar Yosef was never questioned. But one thing did change dramatically: The land where the Abu Ziyada family had spent many leisure hours is now no longer accessible to them. “No one goes there anymore,” Hutar said.

A photograph of those whom Abu Ziyada identified as the assailants was attached to his affidavit. In court, Bar Yosef’s wife identified two of them as volunteers on their farm. The farm’s volunteers – some of whom are affiliated with the group Hashomer Yosh (the Watchman Judea and Samaria) that provides volunteers to several West Bank farm outposts – help guard the farm and assist with herding and other work.

In a promotional video for Hashomer Yosh, Bar Yosef described the situation at his farm: “We are here north of Kobar, the village of the murderers. We have an access path 700 meters (2,300 feet) further down that connects directly with Jibiya. They can easily reach us if they wish to.” An explosive device had once been placed on the access road to the outpost, he added.

When asked in court if he was responsible for the volunteers who come to his farm, Bar Yosef replied, “People come to volunteer at the farm for whatever reason and they’re responsible for themselves. I’m not responsible for them.”

Asked by a lawyer for Kerem Navot, Carmel Pomerantz, if he didn’t view himself as responsible for someone staying on the farm who beat another individual, Bar Yosef replied: “Are you responsible for everything your kids do?” Bar Yosef’s wife testified that, on at least one occasion, a juvenile volunteer at the farm was accompanied by a social worker.

In 2020, one of those volunteers was questioned in connection with an assault on Palestinians. Bar Yosef was also investigated in the case, which was closed on the grounds of lack of evidence. Investigators also questioned a shepherd whom Bar Yosef employed, as well as Neveh Tzuf’s security coordinator and another settler. Only the volunteer invoked his right to remain silent, on the advice of his lawyer, who was supplied by the far-right legal aid group Honenu. The Palestinian most seriously injured in the attack was a member of the Umm Safa village council, Naji Tantara.

“First someone jumped out of the car and came straight at me with his rifle,” Tantara recently testified in court. That man, he said, was Zvi Bar Yosef. “His worker attacked me. I lost consciousness. I fell to the ground and then they all attacked me,” he said.

Tantara claimed that, based on what he was later told by others at the scene, Bar Yosef attacked him with his rifle butt after he lost consciousness, adding that another assailant hit him on the head with an ax. In connection with the incident, after the settlers reported that Palestinians had attacked them first, five Palestinians including Naji were investigated for throwing stones and threatening settlers.

When questioned by the police following the incident, Bar-Yosef claimed that he had not been present when the confrontation began, explaining that at the time, he had been confronting someone who had come to pick sage. “I deal with this every day,” he said. “I go up to a guy, check him out, and tell him: ‘Listen, leave. This is our land. You can’t pick sage. It’s not legal.”

An officer from the Israeli Civil Administration provided testimony describing a great deal of friction between Bar Yosef and the Palestinians. “We carry out a lot of operations to prevent this friction,” he said. “I would like to note that Zvi and his farm cause us a lot of headaches.”

‘The violent shepherd’

Several weeks after that violent incident, another complaint was received. It was submitted on behalf of two Palestinian residents of Kobar via the Israeli organization Yesh Din Volunteers for Human Rights. The Palestinians claimed that they were tied up, abducted and attacked by settlers near the outpost. Attached to the complaint was a picture of Bar Yosef, who was dubbed “the violent shepherd.”

The incident was also mentioned in Kerem Navot’s response to the defamation suit. The organization alleged that armed settlers, including Bar Yosef, approached a father and his two sons, beat them up, bound the sons by their hands and led them to an army jeep, where the soldiers released them. The two Palestinians suffered from bruises and one of them had a punctured eardrum, the response to the suit said.

The Palestinians submitted their complaint by fax, an arrangement made between Yesh Din and the police during the coronavirus pandemic. But the police later claimed that there was no such agreement and they didn’t handle the complaint. In his affidavit, Bar Yosef didn’t deny the allegations, but added: “These are two young men who were observed trying to steal cattle from my grazing land. The two young men were detained and handed over to the IDF,” he stated, adding that he filed a complaint against them.

Two brothers, Moussa and Issa Qattash, from the Jalazone refugee camp north of Ramallah, testified in court in the defamation case that they had been attacked several days earlier by settlers, including Bar Yosef, on their own land. Moussa Qattash said the settlers had hit him in his teeth and legs and elsewhere on his body and that he requires surgery that he cannot afford to pay for. His brother, Issa, testified that Bar Yosef kicked him in the teeth in the presence of Israeli soldiers and that Bar Yosef and others who were with him knocked him down, beat him and tied his hands. He testified that he lost four teeth and required surgery on his leg.

Bar Yosef said in his affidavit that the described events were untrue. He testified in court that he had only encountered one of the brothers after the soldiers had arrived and that the brother was bleeding from his mouth. Bar Yosef said that he was called to the scene himself after being informed by people on the farm, whose names he said he could not remember, that someone had entered the grazing area.

In 2020, there were so many complaints relating to Bar Yosef’s outpost that the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs devoted a portion of one of its periodic reports to it. According to the report, the outpost has become “the source of systematic intimidation and violence, which have increased over the past year.” A year later brought the incident that first generated headlines about Bar Yosef – the expulsion of the picnicking Palestinians.

In court, he claimed that the army had declared a closed military area between the farm and the village of Jibiya, “where Arabs can’t enter.” The area was placed out-of-bounds, he said, because there were “dozens of warnings about terrorists coming to gather information, including people who came with families and children.”

“Every Friday and every Saturday, I would spend time in the area to guard the strip” of land, he said.  He said that he would regularly demand to see Palestinians’ ID cards because of the time that it took for the army to arrive. “There were a number of people walking around, and the army asked that I stop them and wait for a military force to arrive to take them in for questioning because they are wanted by the Shin Bet security service. All kinds of things,” Bar Yosef said.

In its response for this article, the army said it was not familiar with such an incident. Other witnesses testified in court that Bar Yosef had threatened them or had witnessed acts of violence against them or had detained them when they came to the outpost.

Bar Yosef’s herd continues to graze close to Umm Safa, near the villagers’ olive trees. The village’s residents who spoke to Haaretz expressed concerns that this isn’t the end of the matter and that the outpost will continue to expand its activities in their direction. A month after the rampage, they are still trying to recover.

This article is reproduced in its entirety