Ariel Danino imprisoned administratively
For making the IDF feel bad about itself and look bad in front of its American bosses
The Israeli security apparatus has had three specialties over the last few decades: preventing riots, preventing spectacular terror attacks, and, most importantly, looking good in the eyes of the Israeli public and our American patrons. In 2021 it failed in the first, on October 7th it failed in the second, and the third isn’t coming along great. All of this is despite tremendous budgets combined with legal and extralegal authority. So when a Jew with long peyyot came to represent successful popular efforts by private Israeli citizens to do the apparatus’ work for it, without any budget or authority to speak of, this was intolerable.
So they arrested Ariel Danino in his house by Yitzhar in Samaria on 28 October and put him in jail for four months, administratively, with no trial. Once the four months are up, there’s nothing to keep them from administratively detaining him again. And again. That would be unpleasant for anyone, but for a 27 year old father of four small children, it’s horrible.
Who’s Danino and what did he do? By amazing coincidence, I know the guy and published a translation of his Middle Eastern Fairytale into English here. I can see his house 5 km across the valley from where I live, on a clear day. I’ve planted trees in Kumi Uri, his hilltop. Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a “Danino is a good boy who didn’t do nothin’” article. The story is much more interesting than that.
Danino started off learning in the Ramat Hasharon yeshiva, part of the Garin Torani movement which is bringing Judaism to secular central Israeli cities. He then moved to Yitzhar and lived in the hilltop settlement of Kumi Uri. Kumi Uri made the news for being targeted by the local authorities for years with home demolitions, closure orders (non-residents were blocked from entering), Border Police taking over the local synagogue and turning it into a gym, preventing people from building sukkot and so on. This was in response to Kumi Uri becoming a focal point for the Hilltop Youth, who were fighting with the local Arabs and cops showing up to demolish their houses.
The terrible crimes of the Hilltop Youth allegedly included completely unprovoked acts of violence against the peace loving Palestinian people as well as disrespecting the coronavirus quarantine facilities to which they’d been confined for their own health and that of their community. Our news outlets reported on this in their typical Poland-invades-Germany style, explaining that our police and courts, famous for their love of religious settler types, were scuttling efforts to bring Jewish evildoers to justice.
Anyway, Danino was not accused of any of these nefarious crimes. He worked in construction for a few years until about a year and a half ago when he had a workplace accident and then started working with HaKol HaYehudi (Israel’s only real right wing paper). Through this work, he came to be a sort of spokesman for the Hilltop Youth to the general Israeli public. In addition to his journalism and public relations work, he also worked at a sort of informal fusion center for the hilltops, collating and analyzing open source intelligence gathered by volunteer settlers on impending Arab attacks and land grab efforts. They would pass this information to the IDF forces operating in the area.
Sometimes, the IDF would act on the information, other times they’d blow it off. Personally, I don’t think that this represented prejudice on the part of the IDF so much as a pattern of negligence and incompetence which led to the October 7th massacre. After a brief break after the massacre, the IDF has recovered and returned to its normal functioning everywhere that it could, including the border with Gaza.
In some cases, Arabs organized demonstrations against isolated Jewish farms which were supposed to turn into riots and end with the rioters burning the farms. In some cases, as a result of the IDF’s lackadaisical response to the fusion center’s warnings, the rioters came within a few tens of meters of the farms before being stopped. The fusion center then started to alert groups of local residents to come out and respond. They also started to send preemptive warnings to the Arabs of surrounding villages, threatening consequences for future attacks.
These efforts were intolerable to the Israeli security apparatus, because they threatened its main mission, which is public relations vis the Israeli public and its American patrons. If a ragtag crew of volunteers can make the case that they are doing a better job of keeping Israelis safe than the IDF and the Israeli police are (not hard after October 7th,) then why do we need to pay three quarters of our income in taxes? Why do we need to send our kids to the IDF’s gender equality and LGBTQ indoctrination camp for three years? Why not let, as the saying here goes, “everyone do whatever he wishes to”? In addition, the US State Department has been pressuring the GOI (Government of Israel) to crack down on “settler violence”.
Putting Danino in administrative detention was the natural move. No evidence, charges or trial needed. It sends a message to the Americans-”we’re on the case, please give us more money and leeway for the Gaza operation”-and to the Jews-”don’t think you can defend yourselves without us, unless you can defend yourselves from us.”
It’s a half measure on both counts, but when has the GOI ever dealt in anything but half measures?
Stay on this one. Can you post IDF official statements on this?
This is disgusting. Can anything be done to help this great man? These people are the best Jews of Israel. I saw their dedication in Homesh. They truly believe in the cause, and this is why they cannot be defeated. Ariel may be in jail for some time, but Kumi Ori will never fall.