He should be tired from Yom Kippur.
He should be drinking coffee.
He should be talking about Sukkot.
He should be surrounded by his six children.
His sixteen-year-old son should remember the spring they visited together before the fast as nothing more than a quiet moment with his father.
INSTEAD, NETANEL SHAKRON IS DEAD.
MURDERED.
His son came home without his father.
Six children woke up without Abba.
A wife woke up without her husband.
And Hamas praised the shooting.
That is where I want this conversation to begin.
Not with borders.
Not with diplomats.
Not with resolutions.
Not with some bureaucrat carefully pronouncing the word “settler” as though it explains away a corpse.
WITH NETANEL.
NETANEL SHAKRON.
A FATHER OF SIX.
A HUSBAND.
A JEW.
A HUMAN BEING WHO SHOULD STILL BE ALIVE.
And now I am going to say something that apparently causes sections of the international political class to lose their collective minds:
I AM A PROUD SETTLER!
Proud and Jewish.
There.
I said the inflammatory word.
SETTLER.
Such a beautiful word.
I am a Jew living in Judea.
And I am PROUD OF IT.
Proud to be Jewish.
Proud to live in the land of my ancestors.
Proud that after thousands of years of exile, persecution, expulsions, massacres, pogroms, and industrialized slaughter, Jews are once again raising Jewish children in the hills where Jewish history actually happened.
That is how we win!
WE ARE DAMN WINNERS!
I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE FOR THAT.
Not to Britain.
Not to Canada.
Not to France.
Not to Norway.
Not to Ireland.
Not to Spain.
Not to the United Nations.
Not to anybody.
And after what happened to NETANEL SHAKRON, the lectures about the supposed moral danger presented by Jews living in Judea and Samaria are worthless garbage.
Those lectures belong in the trash.
On September 20, just hours before Yom Kippur, Netanel went with his sixteen-year-old son, Yoav, to immerse at a spring near Neve Tzuf.
He should have returned home.
He should have eaten before the fast.
He should have gone to Kol Nidrei.
He should have stood beside his children.
HE SHOULD BE ALIVE.
Instead, a gunman opened fire.
Netanel was killed.
His son survived.
At Netanel’s funeral, Yoav thanked his father for saving his life. According to the family, Netanel shouted a warning to his son in the final seconds before he was shot.
READ THAT AGAIN.
A sixteen-year-old boy stood at his father’s funeral and thanked his murdered father for SAVING HIS LIFE.
And Hamas?
HAMAS PRAISED THE SHOOTING.
It praised it.
A Jewish father of six is murdered while preparing for Yom Kippur.
His teenage son escapes.
And the terrorist thugs in Hamas applaud.
Evil.
They are evil.
Now let us talk about the governments of the supposedly enlightened world.
Because apparently the Jew living on a hill in Judea and Samaria has become one of international diplomacy’s favorite emergencies.
On September 8, twelve governments issued a joint statement:
Canada.
Denmark.
Finland.
France.
Iceland.
Ireland.
Norway.
Poland.
Portugal.
Spain.
Sweden.
The United Kingdom.
They announced that they intended to introduce, support, or actively consider restrictions on trade in goods from Israeli communities beyond the 1967 lines.
Britain, France, and Canada specifically said they would advance national measures banning trade in settlement goods.
Twelve governments.
Coordinated diplomacy.
Trade restrictions.
National measures.
European measures.
Meetings.
Statements.
Officials.
Lawyers.
Press offices.
An entire machinery of government grinding into motion over Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.
Those governments say their measures concern settlement policy and violence, not Jews as Jews. They have also condemned Hamas, terrorism, and antisemitism.
That is their stated position.
So here is the question they should answer:
Why has restricting, sanctioning, and economically isolating Israelis in Judea and Samaria become such an organized multinational diplomatic project while a Jewish father can be murdered in those same hills and Hamas can publicly praise his killing?
That question does not require conspiracy theories.
It requires arithmetic.
Canada announced its FIFTH ROUND of sanctions under its extremist-settler-violence regulations in June.
Fifth.
Not first.
FIFTH.
Government after government has demonstrated that when it wants coordinated sanctions, travel restrictions, trade measures, and diplomatic pressure concerning Israelis in Judea and Samaria, the machinery exists.
It moves.
It functions.
It produces statements.
It produces policy.
Then Netanel Shakron goes to a spring with his son.
BULLETS.
A father falls.
Six children lose Abba.
A sixteen-year-old runs for his life.
HAMAS PRAISES IT.
And suddenly I am supposed to discuss “settlers” as though that word tells me everything morally relevant about the dead Jew?
NO.
A crime against an innocent Palestinian should be investigated and prosecuted.
Punish the guilty person.
That is justice.
But do not turn an entire Jewish population into an international political contaminant.
Do not teach people that “settler” is a magic word capable of stripping a Jew of ordinary human sympathy.
Because Netanel was a settler.
I am a settler.
My neighbors are settlers.
Our children are settlers.
And do you know what that actually means on the ground?
Families.
Homes.
Schools.
Synagogues.
Playgrounds.
Shabbat tables.
Teenagers complaining about homework.
Mothers getting children out the door.
Fathers making Kiddush.
People going to work.
People buying groceries.
People arguing about parking.
LIFE.
JEWISH LIFE.
IN JEWISH LAND.
And I am not ashamed of that.
I AM PROUD OF IT.
You call it the West Bank.
I call it Judea and Samaria.
You can disagree with me politically until your throat hurts.
But you do NOT get to turn Jewish humanity on and off according to a map.
NETANEL SHAKRON WAS NOT LESS HUMAN BECAUSE HE LIVED IN ALEI ZAHAV.
His blood was not cheaper.
His children do not cry differently.
His widow does not grieve differently.
His son’s terror does not become an academic exercise because diplomats dislike the longitude and latitude of his home.
Anyone celebrating the murder of a Jew because he was a “settler” is celebrating the murder of a human being.
Stop hiding that behind vocabulary.
If the murder of a Jewish father becomes acceptable to you because you hate where he lived, then the problem is no longer geography.
It is you.
For centuries, the excuses for hostility toward Jews changed.
Too religious.
Too assimilated.
Too foreign.
Too powerful.
Too weak.
Too visible.
Too successful.
And today, there are people for whom the offense is apparently:
TOO JEWISH IN JUDEA.
Well, here is the inconvenient fact.
WE ARE STILL HERE.
And I am not hiding.
I am not embarrassed.
I am not lowering my head.
I AM A JEW.
I AM A ZIONIST.
I AM A SETTLER.
I LIVE IN THE JEWISH HOMELAND.
And I am unapologetically proud of those words.
Condemn me at your conference.
Pass another resolution.
Write another report.
Hold another emergency meeting.
I will still wake up Jewish in Judea tomorrow morning.
And to the United Nations:
If your diplomatic machinery has endless energy for where Jews build homes while terrorists murder Jewish fathers and Hamas publicly praises the bloodshed, then spare me the moral theater.
Take the sanctimony and go rot in hell.
Not because Palestinian lives do not matter.
They do.
Innocent human life matters.
THAT IS PRECISELY THE POINT.
Jewish life matters too.
NETANEL’S LIFE MATTERED.
And I am sick of the grotesque ritual in which everybody understands universal human rights until the dead human being is a Jew from Judea.
Then suddenly somebody needs a map.
A seminar.
A resolution.
A qualification.
A “however.”
THERE IS NO “HOWEVER” AFTER A FATHER OF SIX IS MURDERED.
There is a widow.
There are six children.
There is Yoav.
There is an empty chair.
There is a father who should have come home.
And there is one sentence I want burned into this entire conversation:
NETANEL SHAKRON HAD THE RIGHT TO LIVE.
That right did not come from the United Nations.
It did not come from Britain.
It did not come from France.
It did not come from Canada.
And it certainly did not come from Hamas.
He possessed it because he was a HUMAN BEING.
Yom Kippur has ended.
Netanel’s family cannot end their grief.
His son cannot rewind those seconds.
His children cannot bring their father back.
So yes.
I AM RAGING.
Raging at the murderer.
Raging at Hamas for praising murder.
Raging at anyone who cheers because the murdered Jew had the “wrong” address.
Raging at the grotesque double standard that can scrutinize every Jewish caravan on a Judean hill while finding endless vocabulary when Jews themselves are slaughtered.
NETANEL SHAKRON.
SAY HIS NAME.
NETANEL SHAKRON.
Father of six.
Murdered before Yom Kippur.
His son survived.
Hamas praised the shooting.
Those facts should be enough to make any decent person furious.
And if you want to call me a settler?
Please do.
I AM ONE.
I am a Jew living proudly in the land where Jewish roots are measured not in diplomatic communiqués but in millennia.
I am home.
My family is home.
My people are home.
NETANEL SHAKRON SHOULD BE HOME TOO.
His children should have their father.
Yoav should have his Abba.
He should be alive this morning.
That is where this began.
That is where it ends.
NETANEL SHAKRON SHOULD BE ALIVE.
נתנאל שקרון הי״ד
May his memory be a blessing.
May his family be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.
May justice be done.
I AM A JEW.
I AM A ZIONIST.
I AM A SETTLER.
I AM HOME.
עם ישראל חי
“Hamas praised the shooting”. Hamas also praised the sanctions implemented in the UK by Red Ed and Andy Pandy. Yes, those lovable Muzzies praised by the keffiyeh-wearing marchers for Palestine have acquiesced in the killing of another Jew—from a comfortably safe distance from any harm to themselves. Moral turpitude of virtue signallers.
We should all boycott those countries