Anti-Yesha Media Attack on Hikers

At Ynet, one Akiva Miller decides to paint the reality black in his writing an article that begins:

Fearless in the West Bank

Special: Jewish hikers ignore security warnings, go on trips throughout Judea and Samaria

It even has typos like

For the wonderers, almost no spot is out of bounds

That should be 'wanderers'.

But he has to admit the truth:

Each tour begins with five or six trekkers who are generally familiar with the region and are armed with a gun or an IDF rifle that belongs to their unit. More travelers, mostly religious ones, join the tour through Facebook. A member of the Observation Unit, a group of volunteer photographers, accompanies most of the tours. The photographers aim to document violence perpetrated by the police or by Palestinians, and collect evidence for court – in case one of the hikers ends up on trial after the trip.


The routes are chosen especially for the landscapes and their historic significance. Many of the heritage sites are found next to or in hostile Palestinian villages, which is where the problem begins; the law does not prohibit trips in the region as long as they avoid official Palestinian territories, and the IDF order to coordinate each such trip is not enforced [but read this letter, in Hebrew].

This theme is a recurring one.  In 1988, a group of teenagers from Elon Moreh who had gone hiking near the village of Beita were attacked with stones. One of the teenaged girls from Elon Moreh, daughter of Menachem Felix was killed by shots fired by the security guard who joined the group and was attacked by several Arabs. A year later, I was involved in an incident at Qarawat Bani-Zeid.  In 1995, an additional two teenaged boys were killed in Wadi Kelt.  And there have been many other terror acts including the stabbing of a Christian hiker in December.


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For Background:

a story from 2007.

a  year earlier.

on the most recent incident.


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If you are looking for sites on these hikes, in Hebrew though, try

Tiyulim B'Ertz Yisrael

Tzeida Laderech


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