If you are a settler, one of the 230,000 peace-abiding, conscientious, decent people out of about 250,000 people living across the Green Line, I urge you to act and act now, to stop the extremists in Hebron from tarnishing you all, from turning people away from you who currently have sympathy and a deep understanding of your position and beliefs and those who could take such a view if you play your cards right.

I am not suggesting that you can stop the nuts in Hebron from acting nutty, violent, and so forth. I am suggesting that you can and should take steps to mitigate the damage, the irrevocable damage, they are going to do in the eyes of greater public opinion, the courts, the government. There are steps you can take now to reduce the number of bored, looking-for-an-outlet-for-aggression-youth, from joining the Hebron extremists and making things even worse.

You need to speak out. You need to speak out in voices so loud they cannot be ignored. You need to speak out in numbers that cannot be ignored to say “this is not our way. This is not what we, who live in these communities across the green line, support. We firmly and strongly reject what these people are doing with their violence and their aggression. WE WHO LIVE ACROSS THE GREEN LINE ARE NOT A 5TH COLUMN.”

Because, you see, right now you are in the position that Arab-Israelis are in. You are in the position that Palestinians are in. You are letting the extremists define you in public opinion, you are letting the extremists’ voices be the only voices shouted from the rooftops. We here in Israel always say “so where are the moderates among the Palestinians? We don’t see them holding peace rallies, we don’t see them speaking out against the terrorists or the hate-mongers or the lawless.” And so we feel there are no real moderates among the Palestinians. With the Arab-Israelis, the loudest voices we hear are those who are extremist, those who give the impression that the vast majority of Arab-Israelis are really a 5th column that cannot be trusted and that will work against the laws and our greater society –and that belief is firmly entrenched in Israeli consciousness because we don’t see visible and vocal proof to the contrary. Silence from the majority of members of that group is taken as agreement. Silence is taken as complicity.

If I lived across the Green Line, at this moment I’d be putting together one big huge rally to make the statement that “the extremists in Hebron are not US. WE do not believe in attacking IDF soldiers. WE do not support attacking Palestinian civilians. WE do not support this escalation.”

And you see, I actually think that the people living in that house in Hebron who are going to be, at least temporarily, evicted, have the moral right to stay there. They bought the house legally. They paid for it. The Palestinian owner sold it to them for 1 million dollars –far above its value. They have proof that it was sold to them. Nonetheless, the high court has ruled that they must, temporarily, evacuate it. The high court has not ruled on who it belongs to and who can live in it. But the high court has ruled that for the time being they gotta get out. A moral right does not equal a legal right. Just like people in the U.S. who are against abortion, which the Supreme Court has ruled legal, cannot go around burning down abortion clinics, assaulting the doctors who work there or the people who go there for abortions, or attack the police who protect those clinics, neither can those who are living in that house flaunt the law, no matter that they have the moral right on their side.

And let’s look at how well the resistance in Gaza worked out. Especially let’s look at how well Amona worked out. Not only did those people get pulled, kicking and screaming out of there but because they threw rocks and paint and otherwise assaulted the IDF soldiers sent to remove them, they caused HUGE damage to the settler movement, to the reputation of anyone who lives across the Green Line. They lost the court of public opinion.

And without the court of public opinion on your side, you are going to lose it all. You are going to lose big. And you are going to do irrevocable damage to the fabric of society. You have a chance to get public opinion on your side. There is still time. But you have to act now and you have to act smart. Allowing those who behave in violent, anti-scocial, lawless ways to speak for you will not win you sympathy and will not win you support. It will win you a lot of enemies and enemies that could have been friends.