What is Hashomer Yosh, the latest settler group hit with U.S. sanctions?
The government-backed organization, which brings volunteers to Israeli farming outposts, is a major driver of violent land theft in the West Bank.
Israeli settlers, including one wearing a Hashomer Yosh T-shirt, block a main road around the Palestinian city of Nablus, occupied West Bank, April 10, 2022. (Oren Ziv)
While U.S. President Joe Biden shows no intention of ending his support for Israel’s war on Gaza, his administration has ramped up its opposition to Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank, which has reached new extremes in recent months. In February, the United States began sanctioning several individual settlers known to have attacked Palestinians and Israeli activists in the West Bank. Other countries soon followed suit, and sanctions have since been leveled at illegal outposts and some settler organizations.
On Wednesday, Aug. 28, the United States announced a new round of sanctions — this time targeting Hashomer Yosh, an Israeli NGO with close ties to state ministries. The group, whose name means “The Guardian of Judea and Samaria” (referencing the Biblical term for the West Bank), supports settler farmers throughout the occupied territory, and sendshundreds of teenage volunteers each year — some of whom are settlers themselves — to work in and defend illegal outposts.
The U.S. State Department accused Hashomer Yosh of contributing to “extreme levels of instability and violence against civilians in the West Bank,” by providing material support to Meitarim Farm, an outpost sanctioned in July, as well as to several settlers named in prior rounds of U.S. sanctions. In response, the organization denied that it engages in illegal conduct, affirming that its activities are “legitimate and coordinated with the [Israeli] government,” from which it receives funding.
Despite its claims to the contrary, Hashomer Yosh has been pursuing an extremist settler agenda since its founding over a decade ago. And along with other volunteer-based “agricultural” organizations in Israel, it has seized the current political moment to expel Palestinians and expand outposts in the West Bank.
Palestinians in rural areas of the West Bank argue that Hashomer Yosh has become a central driver of settler violence. “This is the number one organization,” said Ali Awad, a +972 contributor and human rights activist living in the village of Tuba in the South Hebron Hills. “It describes itself — their name is connected to supporting settler colonialism.”
An Israeli flag and Star of David is seen in the Evyatar settlement during a demonstration in the Palestinian town of Beita, on whose lands the settlement was built, occupied West Bank, July 26, 2024. (Wahaj Bani Moufleh/Activestills)
Government-backed land theft
The ideological roots of Hashomer Yosh can be traced back to the early twentieth century. As European Zionists began settling in Palestine, Alexander Zaïd, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, founded an organization called Hashomer to safeguard Jewish settlements in rural areas.
The original Hashomer was disbanded with the formation of a formal Zionist paramilitary organization, the Haganah, which was later integrated into the Israel Defense Forces. But over a century later, Hashomer Yosh continues in the old tradition: establishing an agricultural presence to cement Jewish control of the land at the expense of Palestinians, under the guise of protecting communities and fighting “agricultural terrorism.”
Hashomer Yosh was founded in 2013, with the objective “to assist the various farmers throughout Judea and Samaria, who bravely protect our lands and stand strong in the face of economic difficulties and frequent agriculture crime.” But the prevalence of “agriculture crime” and claims of violence against Israeli farmers is controversial: while there have been numerous media reports citing thefts and arson on Israeli farmland in the past decade, others say this threat is overstated and operates in service of a nationalist agenda to take over land.
The founders of Hashomer Yosh have long been known for their aggression and violent rhetoric toward Palestinians. One, Meir Bertler, was previously arrested in 2011 after breaking into private Palestinian property near the Jordanian border with a group of settlers. The same year, he wrote an op-ed about the “monster population” of Palestinians growing in West Bank villages and called for the Israeli army to “avenge the blood” of Israelis killed.
Like better known “guard” movements, such as the right-wing Hashomer Hachadash (“The New Guard”) and Zionist-left Hashomer Hatzair (“The Young Guard”), Hashomer Yosh is focused on engaging Israeli youth, offering volunteering and pre-military programs that send young people to guard land in illegal outposts. The Israeli army has offered these programs as an alternative to traditional military service, while Ariel University, located in a settlement in the West Bank, gives academic credit to students who volunteer with the group.
Israeli settlers watch on while Palestinians protest the erection of a new outpost on land next to Deir Jarir, occupied West Bank, December 25, 2020. (Oren Ziv/Activestills)
The organization has received millions of shekels from the Israeli government, including the Agriculture Ministry and the Negev, Galilee, and National Resilience Ministry. In 2021 it received state funding to finance drones — despite the fact that a general decree prohibits the possession of drones in the West Bank. This April, Hashomer Yosh launched a campaign to purchase 80 drones to protect shepherds on the agricultural farms.
It has also received extensive funding from the Jewish diaspora. Documents obtained by +972 show that it received over NIS 256,000 (US $70,000) from the New York-based Central Fund of Israel, known for funding settler groups, between 2015 and 2019.
In 2021, the left-wing NGO Peace Now appealed to the Agriculture Ministry to stop supporting Hashomer Yosh given its work with illegal outposts, and the fact that Israeli and Palestinian activists had been attacked by masked men wearing Hashomer Yosh sweatshirts. But the violence continued: in November 2022, according to social media posts, members worked with a private company to demolish a Palestinian school in Masafer Yatta. The following year, it placedyoung women serving in the army in the “Oppenheimer” outpost — named after the head of the land department in the local council that established it — where settlers were harassing Palestinian farmers and shepherds.
Shabtay Kushelevsky, another founder of Hashomer Yosh, encouraged volunteers to learn Arabic to further their ability to take over land. “If we want to take hold of the land and own it, knowing the language is an important part of being the landlord,” he said in an introductory lecture on spoken Arabic in June 2023.
Wartime escalation
Since the war broke out, Hashomer Yosh’s work has further intensified, in cooperation with the Israeli army. +972 has tracked multiple incidents of provocation and violence involving HaShomer Yosh since October.
“It’s possible to do things now which otherwise would be much harder to do,” said Dror Etkes, founder of the Israeli organization Kerem Navot which monitors settlement activity in the West Bank. “It’s easier to deport Palestinian communities, establish outposts, and take over land.”
Israeli settlers graze their flock on the lands of Umm al-Khair under the protection of Israeli soldiers, occupied West Bank, July 2, 2024. (Sofia Fani Gutman)
When the war started, farmers associated with the group allegedly feared that violence would spread to the West Bank. In response, Hashomer Yosh “quickly dispatched as many guards as they could to vulnerable areas” and “coordinated with the army to protect and reinforce exposed regions.”
Palestinians living in the West Bank felt the escalation almost immediately. “They already had the anger inside themselves before October 7, but now they have the possibility and power to do something with it,” Awad said.
The organization has close links to the settler Yinon Levi, sanctioned by the Biden administration in February, who has led assaults against Palestinian communities and burned their fields. Last November, it sent volunteers to Levi’s farm and started a fundraising page recruiting “armed volunteers.”
Then in January, a group of settlers — including some from Levi’s farm — expelled all the residents of Khirbet Zanuta, a Palestinian village in the South Hebron Hills, while wearing Hashomer Yosh-branded sweatshirts. The U.S. State Department noted that volunteers from the organization then fenced off the village to prevent residents from returning. In July, a field coordinator for Hashomer Yosh allegedly shot three camels in an area in which he built an outpost.
It is clear that Hashomer Yosh has been emboldened by the support that it continues to receive from the Israeli government amid the war effort. In January, Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman participated in a planting ceremony organized with Hashomer Yosh at an illegal outpost in the West Bank. In June, Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter met with Hashomer Yosh and a range of other volunteering organizations to affirm his support for their work during the war.
Whether the sanctions will make any difference to the group’s activity is dubious, activists argue. “I don’t see the organization collapsing because of sanctions,” Etkes warned. “I don’t think that will happen.”
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