Israeli extremist settlers use sheep farms, intimidation to expand West Bank control, CBS reports

Extremist settler sheep farmers in the West Bank have been using their flocks in an attempt to drive out Palestinians living in the area, according to a CBS News 60 Minutes investigation, broadcast on Sunday.

According to the investigation, the settlers' flocks have "taken over" around 20% of the West Bank.

"Over 100 Palestinian communities have been displaced or erased by the settler violence and the ever-encroaching sheep," CBS's Lesley Stahl said in a voiceover at the end of the broadcast.

A local Palestinian mayor told CBS that the settlers "actually seized the land with their sheep."

"They enter, they open the gate of the house and take the sheep inside to eat the trees around the house," a man identified as a Palestinian schoolteacher added.

Stahl spoke with Mordehai Minster, one of the co-founders of a sheep farm in the area.

"Sheep are amazing. They're dumb, but they're amazing creatures," Minster said.

"So the idea is you send your sheep down to graze, and then you can say, 'That's my land because my sheep are grazing on it?'" Stahl asked.

"When you have sheep, everyone understands. Arabs tend to fight over grazing land among themselves. It's a language that we understand, and they understand. And it's a way to delineate the border. This is where I graze my sheep. You don't take your sheep here. You don't plant here. You don't build here," Minster said in response.

"A lot [of the farms], including this one, have used violence against the [Palestinian] villages down around you," Stahl said.

"Whenever you have ethnic religious communities, especially in the Middle East, fighting over land and resources, that conflict sometimes gets ugly. The fact that violence exists doesn't change the merit of the right that we have to this land," Minster responded.

Stahl asked Minster about a group of extremist settlers, often called the "Hilltop Youth," who formed part of the movement.

"Those are kids that are ranging [in] age between, I don't know, 15 and 25. They don't do great in school. They don't get into the army that easily because maybe behavioral problems. So some of them end up in places like this, taking care of sheep, doing construction. Some of the kids may have drug problems. They smoke [and] grow pot (Cannabis)," Minster said.

Stahl raised that US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee had called violence against Palestinian farmers "terrorism," as well as "thuggish and disgusting."

"I wouldn't classify it as terrorism, but are there some children who overreact and act in thuggish ways and need to be controlled and held in? Yeah, definitely," Minster said.

Stahl flagged that Palestinians have died as part of the violence.

"Yes. None of this is great, and none of this changes the fact that our right to be here is legal and it's ancient," Minster said.

Stahl also spoke to Palestinians living in the area.

Mahmoud Faraj, his cousin Hassan, and Hassan's daughter Salma, spoke about their village, Jannatah [Arabic for Paradise], and how residents of the area feel amid rising extremist settler violence.

"They come over here, and they shepherd here," Mahmoud said.

"Actually, it was a paradise until March 26 when a group of settler invaders entered our land, our property, private property, and they established a tent. They were something like 20 people, 25 people, and they started to behave like they owned everything," Hassan said.

"This is my cousin's house over there. He's not allowed to go there at all," Mahmoud said.

Hassan said that Hilltop Youth are "succeeding" in getting Palestinians to leave. "If you go around them, you will see many houses they [Palestinians] just left really empty. Abandon; they abandoned their property. They [Hilltop Youth] steal electricity from the locals, and they also steal water. This is their strategy: to make the area unlivable."

The Faraj family also claimed that every time they try to approach their house, teens from the hilltop outpost "rush down to beat them up."

"Within few seconds, they started to attack us in small groups with wood sticks and with stones. And they have tear gas. And three of them, they were armed. So one of the armed guys, he started to shoot. He shot my cousin in his head. And it didn't stop here. They came, and they started to beat my uncle and his son, who was dead, with wood sticks," Hassan said.

The Faraj family took Stahl to the family's house they were discussing, but were intercepted by Hilltop Youth teens wearing black hoodies.

CBS highlighted that the Hilltop Youth were not the only Jewish activists at the scene.

Members of Bnei Avraham (Sons of Abraham), a group of Jewish activists who attempt to protect Palestinians from extremist settlers by stepping in between the extremists and Palestinians, were also present.

"They are trying to push us back. They don't want us to enter with cameras. So they are pushing and waiting for someone to react with their hands, so they have an excuse for more extreme violence," Roie, one of the Sons of Abraham, said.

According to the Sons of Abraham, "Judaism calls on them to protect, not expel, their neighbors," Stahl said.

"When the settlers see you, they get even angrier because they see you as traitors," Stahl said to one of the activists.

"I think they are angrier because we threaten them ideologically. And also, I'm not coming from outside [the movement]. I also grew up as a settler. I tell them I changed my ways. I know what you're doing, and I know it's not the right way," she answered, adding that sometimes they know and recognize each other when she interacts with the extremists.

One of the Hilltop Youth asked Stahl who she was, with the reporter replying that she is "an American journalist - television."

"Are you in with Hamas?" the extremist asked, to which Stahl replied, "No."

This extremist settler was then shown in the broadcast headbutting Hassan Faraj in the face.

"This is my land, and you won't stay. These are my roots," Hassan replied, before the same extremist settler headbutted him again.

The Palestinians and Sons of Abraham then attempted to leave. An IDF captain and squad of soldiers appeared, "seemingly out of nowhere," according to Stahl. The soldiers went to rescue the two Sons of Abraham activists trapped by extremist settlers, before the captain instructed everybody to leave the scene.

Stahl noted that the IDF allowed the Hilltop Youth to return to the disputed house but did not let the Faraj family pass through.

"The army's priority is the settlers. Some soldiers are settlers themselves and occasionally join the violence. Though there've also been cases where the soldiers have been attacked by the young settlers," Stahl said in a voiceover.

Stahl voiceover continued by saying that the Israeli government has "poured tens of millions of dollars into expanding the sheep farms, arming them and giving them American-made off-roaders."

"People call it 'settler violence.' I don't agree with that. It is state violence. There is a violence of a government," Roie, one of the Sons of Abraham activists, said.

Sons of Abraham released a statement following the 60 Minutes broadcast.

"Last week, we went to the village of Jannata, near the 'Kochav Yehuda' outpost, an offshoot of the violent 'Eitam Farm' outpost, to accompany a Palestinian man to the home from which he had recently been evicted," the statement said.

"The structure has since been 'converted' into the outpost's latrine. Settlers blocked our path and injured the homeowner, while soldiers forced both us and the homeowner away from the area," the Sons of Abraham said, noting that the 60 Minutes crew were at the scene, documenting it.

"At Sons of Abraham, we are a group of over 200 activists who head out into the field four times a week. We believe the Torah commands us to rescue the oppressed from the hand of the oppressor, driven by the conviction that this Holy Land can bring blessing to all who dwell in it," the group said.

Stahl asked Minster if he cares about US public opinion towards extremist settler violence, and possible ramifications of Israel losing American military aid.

"I do...I am bothered by the fact that America's turning on us, and we're turning on America. It's like, I see it as losing a friendship. And I'm also concerned that, as a military ally, as a political ally, we may lose America as well. It looks like it's going in that direction. But Israel will find other allies," Minster said.

"You're not worried enough about it to dial back?" Stahl asked.

"No. I am worried about that. But I don't look at it as an existential threat," he replied.