There is a group of young Jews in Israel known as the “Hilltop Youth.” To hear many speak of them, you’d think they are monsters in human form—wild-eyed extremists, violent radicals, criminals lurking on the fringes of our society.
But I say: enough.
The Hilltop Youth are not monsters. I live on a farm that I helped establish on the tip of southeastern Judea. I know these kids. Hundreds of them have passed through here—volunteering, shepherding, working, and building. They are pioneers—and they are the tip of the spear, standing guard over the heart of our homeland. They are diamonds. Yes, sometimes diamonds in the rough, but diamonds nonetheless.
These are young men and women who, instead of chasing comfort, choose the wind-swept hills of Judea and Samaria. They live in caravans that shudder in the winter winds. They plant trees. They build homes. They raise goats and sheep—and children too. And they do it because they believe—in their bones—that this land is the inheritance of the Jewish people, promised by God, paid for in blood, and defended across generations. And for years, they were the favorite punching bag of Haaretz, BBC and much of the left in this country.
But Oct. 7, 2023, changed everything.
On that black day, when terror broke through Israel’s borders and massacred entire communities in the south, the nation awoke to a painful truth: Judea and Samaria is not the problem—it is the solution.
It was the communities of Judea and Samaria, perched on hilltops and valleys, that shielded the heart of Israel from the same nightmare that befell the south. It was the Jewish presence in these areas that prevented a tidal wave of terror from sweeping deeper into our country. The geography of Judea and Samaria, held by our people, was a wall that protected Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and the coastal plain from devastation.
And standing at the very edge of that wall—sometimes quite literally—are the Hilltop Youth.
They are the tip of the spear. They are the eyes and ears of Israel’s frontier. They are the first to see suspicious movements. The first to sound the alarm. The first to rush to help when a neighbor’s vineyard is set ablaze, when roads are ambushed, when terrorists stalk Jewish homes in the night.
And yet—rather than thanking them, or at the very least giving them the benefit of the doubt—they are maligned and castigated.
Politicians, journalists, and even fellow Jews are all too eager—sometimes almost gleeful—to slander these young people. To paint them as the problem. To throw them under the bus, sometimes it seems, to prove their own moral virtue.
It’s a grotesque theater: “Look at us,” they seem to say. “We condemn our own. We are the good Jews. We are not like them.”
How convenient. How cowardly.
It’s hard to cast too much blame, however, considering the slanted, biased, propagandistic coverage they receive in the media. Because while it’s fashionable to condemn them from the comfort of Tel Aviv or New York, these youth live where the law sometimes fails to reach and fails to protect them. Where families are murdered in their homes. Where the army’s hands are tied by political calculations. Where the police often arrive too late—or not at all.
When the law fails to protect them, some feel they must protect themselves. That is how vigilantes are born—not out of hatred, but out of fear and an unbearable sense of abandonment.
And for this, they are hunted. Hounded by their own state. Thrown into administrative detention—held without charge, without trial, without a chance to speak in their own defense. Stripped of their rights because they are “suspected.” Suspected of believing too strongly.
And the world applauds. Because it is easier to persecute Jewish teenagers than to confront the truth: that Judea and Samaria are the backbone of Israel’s security, and that removing Jews from these hills would invite catastrophe.
If there were any other group of minors in this country treated the way these kids are treated, the entire nation would be in uproar.
This past Shabbat, a 14-year-old Hilltop Youth boy was shot and is now in critical condition—all because he resisted the evacuation of his outpost. The boy sustained a gunshot wound to his arm, with the bullet entering his arm and lodging near his back. He is suffering from shattered bones in his shoulder and arm, lung trauma caused by blast effects, and multiple shrapnel injuries.
The 14-year-old was treated at the scene by United Hatzalah medics and evacuated by Magen David Adom to Hadassah Hospital. Unbelievably, the police arrested the United Hatzalah medic and another resident who assisted in the evacuation. Both were later released after questioning.
Imagine for a moment that it had been a leftist Kaplanist teenager who was shot under the same circumstances. The country would be on fire with outrage. The media would explode, politicians would line up to condemn it, and the soldier who pulled the trigger would likely be arrested before the sun set.
I have seen firsthand how the basic human rights of these kids are stripped away. How they are harassed, detained without charge, demonized in the press, and cast as monsters—when in truth, despite this persecution, the vast majority of them carry no hatred in their hearts. Only love.
These kids are teenagers—14, 15, 16 years old. Think back to the foolish things you did at that age. The mistakes. The recklessness. It’s part of growing up. Yes, some of them make mistakes. But they are still children—children who choose hilltops over nightclubs, goats over gadgets, and purpose over TikTok. Children who opt out of drugs and the hollow chase of modern trends.
Many of them even carry old-school Nokia phones because they refuse to become slaves to smartphones—a level of discipline and inner strength that, I’ll admit, even I haven’t managed to achieve. And I truly believe that the vast majority of people reading this article would come to love these kids if they simply met them face to face, rather than judging them through the twisted lies spun about them.
Before you swallow the words of politically and ideologically motivated actors who paint these precious young people as villains, I beg you: Go and meet them yourselves. See their eyes. Talk to them. You’ll discover young souls burning with idealism, passion, and love for their people and their land.
Are there acts that go too far? Yes. And they should be condemned. But to condemn the entire Hilltop Youth—to strip them of dignity, to treat them as criminals before conviction—is a moral failing of our society.
They are not a mob of savages. They are idealists. Builders. Dreamers. They are the descendants of those who drained the swamps, built kibbutzim in malaria-infested valleys and faced down armies to raise the flag of Israel over Jerusalem.
And let us be honest: it takes no courage to stand in a city square and condemn them. Real courage is standing on a hilltop, alone, with nothing but your faith, your hands and the conviction that this land belongs to your people.
Israel has always been built by those who refused to accept the easy path. The Hilltop Youth may be young, brash and sometimes reckless, but they carry the same fire that lit the hearts of every pioneer before them.
Let us not be so quick to sacrifice them on the altar of political convenience. Let us not join the chorus eager to prove its own moral purity by casting out our own flesh and blood. Let us instead recognize the Hilltop Youth for what they truly are: the pioneers—and the vigilant guardians—of our time.
They deserve our guidance. They deserve our justice. And above all, after the lessons of Oct. 7, they deserve the gratitude—and the benefit of the doubt—that every defender of Israel has earned a thousand times over.