"Hilltops"

28 Tevet 5772

Mishpacha Magazine ran an article on the "Hilltop Youth" in its January 11, 2012 issue. I feel a very close kinship to these young people and their ideals. Lest anyone forget, what is recognized today as "Israel Proper" was settled the same way as these hilltops a hundred years ago. No one can say that Tel Aviv or Haifa is more Jewish than Judea and Samaria.

Bunker Hill
Aharon Granevich-Granot

Five years ago, Meir Brettler was banned for six months from his home on a windswept Samarian hilltop — joining a list of 20 others thrown out of their communities in Judea and Samaria by administrative orders. At the time, it didn’t stop him from sneaking back into the Yishuv HaDaat farm (population three families at the time) for his second child’s bris. Today the Brettlers still live on that lonely hilltop, and Meir still infuriates Israel’s intelligence network.

Brettler, 25, would never fit into Lakewood, but he looks just like the other “hilltop youth” whom he mentors: a massive knit kippah covering his head, a large beard, wild peyos, and tzitzis fluttering in the wind. And he has no qualms about doing things that the Israeli government and security forces feel will inflame the Middle East — as long as those actions help him achieve the goals that he believes in.

“We are the front line,” he says. “There are two million dunams of land here, and we will settle them....

Read the rest here.