And why would the Israelis aggressively pursue holding the killers to account? The settlers are agents of the regime. Indeed, they are the leading edge, the shock forces, if you will, for the Netanyahu government’s evolving plan to annex the West Bank. These marauding gangs function more like paramilitaries than ad hoc mobs. They’ve been armed to the teeth by Netanyahu’s Kahanist National Security Minister Itamar Itamar Ben-Gvir with more than 120,000 weapons since October 7, 2023, many of them supplied by the US. Some of these armed settlers have now been deputized into police units. But they’re not there to keep law and order, but to sow chaos. The intent is to terrorize people into abandoning their fields, their villages and their homes.