British rabbis on Yachad trip say they were attacked by settlers on tour of West Bank

Videos of the truck show it reversing towards the group[Missing Credit]

During the rabbinic tour, as the group walked around the ruins of Zanuta, a man driving a white Toyota pickup truck approached them.

Instead of stopping on the rocky terrain, the driver, an Israeli man appearing to be in his 40s, drove close to the group, before he allegedly started spitting at them and laughing.

Among those on the Yachad tour was Rabbi Robyn Ashworth-Steen, co-chair of the Assembly of Reform Rabbis and Cantors in the UK, and Rabbi Daniel Lichman, the former rabbi of north London Reform congregation, Makor Hayim.

Both of the British rabbis claimed that the group was attacked by the settler. “He suddenly reversed, nearly hitting one of our colleagues,” Ashworth-Steen claimed.

“We all shouted out in panic. The man in the truck – who I saw clearly – just laughed and then began driving at each of us. We kept moving to avoid him. There was a pregnant woman in our group, and he targeted her as well,” Ashworth-Steen added. “I have never felt so unsafe, I have never been the victim of such a violent attack.” Videos of the incident show the truck reversing towards the group and members of the tour scattering.

The rabbis sought shelter in the remains of a school partly funded by British taxpayers and devastated by settler violence, according to Yachad. “We were stranded on this rocky outpost and help was not coming,” Ashworth-Steen said.

Lichman described how the attacker left twice and then returned. “It was scary knowing he might return again, so we decided to leave,” Lichman said.

As they drove away on the main road, the rabbis allege that the driver pursued them, lurching towards their minibus. “He tried to force us off the road twice,” Ashworth-Steen claimed.

The British-based rabbis and cantors on the Yachad tour visited the ruins of Zanuta[Missing Credit]

The group continued to their next planned stop – the Palestinian village of Umm al-Khair – where they were welcomed for lunch. “I was still shaking as Palestinian children waved us in,” Ashworth-Steen said.

While they ate, they spotted a confrontation in the distance. “A Palestinian man was trying to plant a tree when a settler approached him,” Lichman recalled. “We saw two Israeli soldiers standing with the settler, while a member of Rabbis for Human Rights recorded the incident.”

The rabbis reflected on how safe they felt with the Palestinians compared to the incident in Zanuta hours earlier. “Hearing their stories felt even more real because we had just encountered the reality of settler violence firsthand,” Ashworth-Steen went on.

Later, the group travelled to Hebron. Some of the Progressive women rabbis wearing yarmulkes asked if they should remove their kippot, as they were aware that their presence might agitate some of the city’s strictly Orthodox population. “We were told not to because Jews are ‘safe’ in Hebron,” Ashworth-Steen said.

When they entered the city, a group of Israeli boys aged six to ten spotted them. “They were intrigued by us,” Ashworth-Steen recalled. “They were hanging around on a corner and watching us.”

But then the children started to shout. The rabbis claim that one of the boys called the group “traitors,” another jeered, “Reform.” The boys spat at a Muslim man walking past and then surrounded and kicked two Muslim women, Ashworth-Steen and Lichman allege.

“It was awful. A couple of us tried to intervene, and then IDF soldiers stepped in to break it up,” Ashworth-Steen said.

“Then the children started running after us,” she said, claiming that a soldier again intervened, but one young boy, no older than seven, spat at the rabbis and taunted in Hebrew, “Come on, bring it on.”

Eventually, the children left, but the group felt unsafe and backed into a corner of the city. They headed onto the minibus to leave Hebron – only for the children to return, allegedly pelting them with eggs as they clambered into the vehicle. 

“Luckily, it was just eggs. We thought it might have been rocks,” Ashworth-Steen said. Inside the bus, they wiped off the mess with wet wipes.

Reflecting on the experience, Ashworth-Steen said: “I was struck by the man’s face at Zanuta, full of rage and delight, and the child’s face full of rage. The spitting, the aggression, the fact that we were Jews being targeted.

“I don’t know whether what happened in Zanuta was because we were Progressive, but in Hebron, that was certainly part of it – if not all – of it,” she claimed, suggesting that the visible presence of women rabbis affected the children.

At the site of the Nova music festival, the delegration held a short ceremony[Missing Credit]

The visit was part of Yachad’s four-day tour of Israel and the West Bank that began in southern Israel, where the group met victims of the October 7 Hamas terror attack at Sderot and Kibbutz Nirim, where they planted a tree and met with Israeli organisation Rabbis for Human Rights. The delegation also visited the site of the Nova massacre, where they held a short memorial ceremony.

“It was an incredibly intense and heartbreaking experience to visit southern Israel,” Ashworth-Steen said. “But it was a blessing to be with rabbinic colleagues,” she added, noting the importance of meeting rabbinic victims of Hamas terror.

“When we experience terror, the instinct is to withdraw and close our doors, but we saw people doing the opposite – opening their doors, engaging in activism, and working for peace. To witness that, even in the depths of such darkness, was profoundly moving.”

She added: “Hearing stories of communities rebuilding, not retreating but reaching outwards, was painful yet inspiring. That perspective became even more meaningful after what we experienced a settler attack the following day.”

 

Hannah Weisfeld, Executive Director and founder of Yachad, told the JC that the rabbis’ experience in the south Hebron hills was symptomatic of how some settlers operate in the region. “They aim to intimidate,” she claimed.

“The attempt to ram a car into the group is the worst case of violence we have seen. It feels like they [the settlers] can do what they want, and it doesn’t make any difference what we say. For years, we would see examples of this violence but rarely experience it ourselves. Now it is very visible.”

Weisfeld noted that the rabbis were shaken by the realisation that their visible Jewish identity offered them no protection. “But imagine how much worse it is for Palestinians,” she suggested.

Weisfeld said a police report has been filed, but did not expect any arrests: “Nothing will happen, nothing ever does.”

The Yachad group planted a tree at Kibbutz Nirim, one of the sites of the October 7 massacre[Missing Credit]

Yachad organises trips to Israel and the West Bank to provide a “multifaceted perspective,” she explained, bringing participants to meet families affected by Hamas terror in southern Israel, as well as families impacted by settler violence in the West Bank.

“We want to give people information they can use to foster informed discussions in their communities and advocate for a resolution,” Weisfeld said.

She noted that sending home a group of rabbis who had personally experienced an alleged incident of settler violence would have a profound impact.

“The combination of these two experiences left some of them physically scared and all of them viscerally shocked to their core,” Weisfeld said. “It is one thing to know that this violence happens, but it is another to experience it.”

It has given Lichman a renewed sense of moral clarity: “I witnessed settlers acting violently and with impunity. It is a desecration of God’s name and the opposite of what I understand Judaism to be,” he said. “I am compelled by a Judaism that commands us to love our neighbour and strangers.”

Ashworth-Steen said the trip had “transformed” her.

“I came out with a clear understanding of how important it is to talk about our Jewish values,” she said.

“There was something very stark about being at the Gaza envelope on the first day, and then, on the second, becoming the victim of violent attacks alongside my rabbinic colleagues. I felt a call to action – to speak out against terrorism in all its forms, in all communities, however it is expressed.

“We saw the many faces of terrorism and the havoc it is causing,” she continued. “There is a fear of talking about Jewish violence because that is not the story we want to tell about ourselves. But I will not be silent. I will speak out – for the sake of Israel.”

When the JC asked pro-settler organisation Regavim about allegations of the attack at Zanuta, a spokeswoman for the group accused the visiting British rabbis of provoking settler agitation.

Naomi Kahn, director of Regavim’s international division, said: “Foreign activists and anarchists who do not hold Israeli citizenship began arriving in the area every day, instigating provocations and clashes with security forces and residents of nearby Jewish communities.” She called on the Israeli High Court to ban entry to the area from those who she accused of “operating to incite and provoke confrontation and conflict.”