Sam Stein grew up in a world that was meant to be a bubble. As a young Jewish boy growing up in New York, he never really even looked at a Palestinian. His education was filled with tales of Israel and the Jewish Holy Land. Yet it was rare the word ‘Palestine’ was ever mentioned.

Now, Stein works when he can in Masafer Yatta and the Jordan Valley in the West Bank. He spends his days standing between armed settlers with the Unarmed Civilian Protection in Palestine and the Palestinian families they are trying to ethnically cleanse. He has an easy smile, quick to laugh, but his eyes glaze over as he recalls the horrors he’s seen during his journey to protect the West Bank.

Here’s a snippet of his story, and how he’s seen some of the truth Zionist Israel tried to hide from him.

A manufactured reality

Sam Stein’s journey started in a “Zionist bubble.” He spent his childhood in an all Jewish boys school in New York, part of a conservative family. His school life was a weird mix of distain for “Arabs,” yet almost total silence on Palestinians.

He spent a gap year at a mechina, a military prep programme, in the illegal settlement of Efrat.

Weirdly, he did know it was illegal when he arrived. Something he says Israel always withholds from so many young people.

At these programs, the Zionist state blends religious Torah study with the brutal martial art of Krav Maga and military drills. It’s a state-built pipeline, designed to make the occupation feel like a natural and important part of Jewish identity.

Stein explains that the entire infrastructure of the West Bank is built to keep up this illusion. He describes the massive red warning signs at the entrance to Area A.

These disgusting signs tell Israelis that going through these gates leads to danger. That the Palestinians that lie beyond them are a threat. It’s a psychological marker which ensures Jewish children never see the humanity of the very people they are displacing.

And of course, Jewish people are told never to speak to them.

For so many years, Stein said, he was oblivious to the reality of military rule. Israel ensured he stayed a stranger to the people living just minutes away.

But then he opened his eyes.

Sam Stein: when the bubble burst

Sam Stein spoke of his childhood and the weaponisation of religious passages. How extracts from the Torah were drilled into the heads of youths, justifying the oppressive actions of Israel. Yet simultaneously they were so secretive of what actually happened beyond the legal borders.

But everything changed when Stein moved to Masafer Yatta. He traded his sheltered life for the ongoing nightmare of the Palestinian reality.

Israel has declared much of this area a “firing zone.” This is an incredibly transparent legal trick used to justify the forcible transfer of over 1,000 residents so far.

Stepping into this world, Stein now witnesses the horrors of everyday life. From the constant harassment from the “Hilltop youth,” to the insecure and cold homes of the Palestinians he protects.

He witnesses the “randomness” of state violence on a weekly basis. In Masafer Yatta, everyone knows that Wednesday is demolition day.

Like clockwork, the army arrives to bulldoze homes, schools and communal hubs. Every week they try to rip what little the Palestinians have away from them, just to claim it for their own. Stein says the Zionist forces do it with no urgency; they do it when they feel it to further the psychological torture they put the innocent residents through.

According to B’Tselem, Israel demolished 343 Palestinian structures in the West Bank in the first half of 2024 alone.

Groomed to hate

Once he had stepped outside of the bubble, there was no going back. No amount of scripture or indoctrination could make Sam Stein turn his back on the Palestinians he now calls his friends.

Once the bubble had burst, he began to see the dark machinery running the occupation. And that includes the grooming of vulnerable Jewish kids. Stein admits he doesn’t know where these children come from, the ones who are funnelled by the state to these remote settler outposts.

All he knows is that these kids have usually dropped out of school, that they are isolated from society and their parents. These are the “Hilltop Youth” and he’s gone toe to toe with them time and time again.

That scares me so much. These kids are placed in these areas and the experience is sold as “nature therapy” to the public. Once in these programmes, these kids with barely any supervision except a few adults. Who the fuck is policing these adults?

And why are these kids so obsessed with pinching genitals, Stein would like to know.

These kids are given livestock, sent into the hills by the state and fed a diet of divine mission and pure, unadulterated hatred.

The state gives these kids as sense of purpose and belonging. Then it gives them a rifle and tells them it’s their holy right to steal.

Stealing livelihoods

This grooming goes beyond a sick ideology. It is practical and cruel. The Zionist state provides these kids livestock of their own, telling them to graze on Palestinian land. It is a slow but sure invasion, designed to destroy the livelihoods of local families.

When Palestinian farmers try to protect the land they have lived on for generations, these kids will physically assault and verbally intimidate them. They will throw rocks, kill livestock, set fires, but when this fails they will call in the military. And the Israeli Defence Force doesn’t give a single, solitary shit about the law. They will come and claim the sheep for the settlers without question.

Because the IDF are there to protect Jewish lives above all else, they believe the youths without question. They sneer as they take livestock, so often an essential lifeline to so many Palestinians.

And then they arrest, attack or shoot them for trying to defend their own property.

This is the fucked up reality of the occupation: the state has turned children into livestock thieves to expand it’s illegal borders.

The uniform of lawlessness — as Sam Stein observes

Since October 7 2023, the mask has slipped off the Zionist entity entirely. The line between these groomed youths and the IDF has vanished. They both do the dirty work of an oppressive state.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has recorded over 1,000 settler attacks since October 2023. Many involve these young kids and settlers in military uniform.

Why? Because Israel is more than happy to let children do it’s dirty work for them, as long as they get more land.

Sam Stein notes that they carry out attacks with state-issued weapons. The “racist hierarchy” of the law was made to clear to him on 13 May 2021 when the settlers beat him with metal rods for protecting Palestinians.

But when the army arrived, they didn’t give a single, solitary fuck.

He argues that Jewish safety can never be built on the “bones of another people.” The only way out of this cycle is to dismantle the apartheid system for one democratic state.

And Sam Stein is willing to do that from within.

Featured image via Instagram

By Antifabot

This post was originally published on Canary.