by Anav Silverman On Tuesday night, thousands of people gathered together to celebrate 40 years to the establishment of Samaria’s first community – Kedumim, home to over 900 families. Participants included Chief Rabbi David Lau, who spoke at the festivities, along with Education Minister Naftali Bennett, Culture Minister Miri Regev, and MK Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan, among other public figures and supporters.

The celebrations also included a reunion of the original members of the Elon Moreh pioneering group, many of whom are grandparents today. Affiliated with the Gush Emunim settlement movement, the Elon Moreh pioneering group established Kedumim following the Yom Kippur War.

Led by Rabbi Menachem Felix and Benny Katzover, the young members did not immediately succeed in settling the barren Samaria hilltops. “We went up seven times, and we were removed each time,” Benny Katzover recalled of the group’s attempts to settle in the early 1970s in Sebastia, near Shechem, during an interview with Tazpit Press Service (TPS).

“But nothing could stop our spirit,” said Katzover, 68, founder and leader of the Elon Moreh community, located northeast of Shechem in northern Samaria.

At the time, the Israeli government did not support the group’s activities and the army removed the residents from Sebastia, the capital of the ancient biblical kingdom of Israel. But by their eighth attempt on Hanukkah 1975, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin compromised and allowed the settlers to stay in Samaria, with 30 families settling in Kadum, an army camp. It was the first time that Jewish inhabitants populated the rocky mountaintops of Samaria since ancient times.

Among the supporters of the Elon Moreh pioneering group was the late Ahuvia Tabekin, of Kibbutz Ein Harod, whose wife, Chava, spoke during Kedumim’s celebrations. Ahuvia, the son of Yitzhak Tabekin, the founder of the United Kibbutz Movement and a labor movement leader, strongly supported the Jewish settlement of Samaria.

“Ideology about land was different back then, even among some kibbutz members,” said Chava Tabekin, who also pointed out that Ein Harod took part in building Kedumim’s synagogue – the first synagogue to be built in Samaria. “Ahuvia supported Kedumim from its inception. He was a member of both Kibbutz Ein Harod and a resident of Kedumim.”

Other early pioneers of Kedumim remembered the difficult beginnings. “When we first came to Kedumim, everything was barren and the conditions were very hard,” Nurit Ben-Menachem Graus, 67, told TPS.

Graus, who grew up in Tel Aviv and was the first teacher in Kedumim, said that she and her husband came to Samaria 40 years ago out of ideology. “There was no water, no electricity,” she said. “We came because this is the land of our forefathers.”

“All my children and grandchildren live in Samaria today,” said Graus. “We made history happen.”

Chana Gofer told TPS that she and her family came to Kedumim in August 1979. “There were only 40 families at the time, and we arrived with 40 more families, following Menachem Begin’s promise to settle the heartland of Israel. Kedumim doubled its population within one night,” recalled Gofer, whose has grown children living in Samaria today.

“Today we have over 400,000 Jewish residents living in Judea and Samaria,” said Yigal Dilmoni, the deputy head of the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea and Samaria to TPS. “It’s amazing how 40 people paved the way and completely transformed the reality of Judea and Samaria – to one where we have 200 thriving communities today.”

“We are here in their merit.”

Israeli legal watchdog Regavim has appealed to its supporters in Israel and abroad to write to Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman to take action against the illegal squatter camp in Susya. The call comes one day after the Israeli Supreme Court has given government a two-day extension on the deadline to deal with the issue through legal means.

There has been immense public pressure on the Netanyahu government by the US State Department, the European Union and dozens of anti-Israel NGOs, to halt the legal process of evicting the illegal Arab squatters who only arrived in Susya over the past few years. The Arabs’ assortment of lean-tos and tents borders on a legal Jewish community that was established by the government in 1986. Should Israel permit this illegal outpost to remain, in Area C of Judea and Samaria which was designated for Jewish settlements, more camps like it will soon dot the landscape everywhere inside the Jewish area of the “disputed territories,” enhancing the Arab side of the dispute.

Regavim released a video call-to-action in which the organization’s International Director Josh Hasten called on supporters to rally around the government as they deliberate on the fate of the squatters’ camp. Explaining the importance of the Susya case, Hasten says the Arab squatters “have set-up shop deliberately on an ancient Jewish town that existed 1,500 years ago — this is a litmus test to see if the government of Israel is willing to uphold the laws of the land.”

Hasten urges viewers to “get involved, let the Prime Minister know that the State of Israel and people of Israel are behind him and we are here to strengthen him in making this decision which is necessary to uphold the laws of the land.”

The Magistrate’s court in Petach Tikvah had harsh words for the police today following their bizarre arrest this morning of a minor from his parents’ home in Yitzhar.

The 15-year-old boy, a recipient of an anti-democratic administrative distancing order, was forcibly removed him from his parents’ home at 3 AM this morning.

The police and the Shabak broke into the boy’s home, without a warrant, and took the boy away. He was not allowed to be accompanied by a parent as required by law. He was not allowed to take his personal items including his T’fillin. His parents’ had their phones confiscated during the arrest so they couldn’t contact their lawyers for assistance.

A hearing was called and the police demanded the Petach Tikva court allow them to keep the boy in jail for 3 days while they investigate why he didn’t leave his parents’ home as the IDF ordered.

The boy has no where to go if he is removed from his home.

The court told the police,

“The picture we’ve seen so far is unsatisfactory. It seems that not enough consideration [by the police] was given, if any at all, to the relevant welfare authorities. And certainly now that the police have arrested the boy, they [the welfare authorities] must now be made involved.”

The boy’s lawyer, Chai Haber from the Honeinu legal aid society, expressed gratitude that finally there was one sane voice of authority that realized that there are rules and laws to be followed, which the police did not do.

“We must remember that we are talking about a minor with no criminal record,” his lawyer said. Haber added the police were not only acting like “thought police” arresting the boy based on what they thought he might do, but treating him like an object that they could throw anywhere they want.

The court ordered the boy sent back to his home, under house arrest.

Update: The court also queried the police regarding the conditions the boy would have on the farm, including the availability of kosher food. The police said they were unable to answer the court’s questions, as they didn’t know the answers.

GOC Home Front Command Chief Maj. Gen. Eyal Eisenberg on Sunday rejected a plea by the parents of a 15-year-old boy who had been ordered to leave his home three weeks ago by an administrative decree, one of the last such decrees issued under former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon. Eisenberg ordered the minor to be out of his parents’ home and the community of Yitzhar in Samaria by 9 AM Monday.

The administrative order forbids the minor to set foot in Judea and Samaria, and he must observe a nightly curfew at the home of his grandparents, in Petach Tikvah. When it turned out that the Petach Tikvah address was not available, the minor received a temporary stay, pending the hearing on Sunday this week.

It should be noted that the administrative decree does not specify what past actions of the boy in question merited the expulsion from his home environment, other than a general statement about his being a threat to national security.

At the hearing, attorney Chai Haber from the legal aid society Honenu, told representatives of the Major General that his client had nowhere to go. He noted that it is next to impossible to get anyone to agree to board the minor because police are known to keep a close watch on curfew detainees and pay late-night visits to their addresses, knocking on doors and waking up entire neighborhoods.

The Major General’s response has been that the minor must nevertheless vacate his parents premises by 9 AM as ordered.

The minor’s father said on Monday morning, “My son has nowhere to go, he lives here, his family lives here, it’s inconceivable that one day they’d present him with an order of evacuation. The impact of such an expulsion on a minor are unacceptable. Who will take responsibility? Who will care for my child? The Major General sleeps well with his children in his home while my son is being thrown out to the street. We cannot accept this.”

Decorated special forces soldier Sgt. Yehuda Yitzchak Hayisraeli who fought and was critically injured in the 2014 Gaza War, during the courageous attempt to retrieve the late Lt. Hadar Goldin who had been captured and killed by Hamas. Sgt. Yehuda was in a coma for two years, surrounded by his wife and family, who never gave up on him. His son Erez was born and was circumcised while his hero father was still in a coma, an event that focused national attention on the family one more time.

Then a miracle happened and Yehuda came out of the coma, a few months ago. Since then he has been engaged in a grueling and demanding rehab process, where he is re-learning a large variety of basic skills, on the way to full recovery. Eventually the time came for Yehuda to be discharged from the hospital to continue his rehab at home. Like every injured soldier, the defense ministry pays for adjusting his home environment to his rehab needs. But Yehuda is a resident of the community of Ofra in Judea and Samaria, and since the entire region is under a construction freeze in an attempt to please Israel’s many friends in the world, the funds could not be legally transferred to him, no matter how deserving he may be.

The family was dumbfounded at this degree of bureaucratic autism, but a group of Israeli citizens who last week heard about the case in the media decided to come to their aid. They launched a communal fundraising page on the website headstart.co.il, and asked for the equivalent of $156,000, the amount needed to pay for Yehuda’s accommodations. As of Sunday morning, the page has raised $373,061.61 from 7,778 individuals.

On the fundraising page, the organizers have thanked profusely everyone who contributed (including opposition leader MK Isaac Herzog who gave about $300), and declared that the collection will continue, at least until the official expiration time, which is in 26 days. The money will go to provide for Yehuda’s family in the next year or so.

What a wonderful example of community values in face of government deafness. (Click here for an update on the government’s response).

Hundreds of Jewish patriots, including many who had been evicted from the two Jewish villages in Northern Samaria, Homesh and Sa-Nur, back in 2005, on Wednesday night, Israel’s 68th Independence Day, went back to revisit their demolished homes, only to be blocked by military and police forces.

The large group ran into several barricades which had been positioned by IDF soldiers in every possible access road to Sa-Nur, including roads leading from local Arab villages.

The event was planned as a combination celebration/protest, demanding to let Jews return to their old homes, from which they had been exiled by the Sharon government, with tacit approval from then Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The expulsion of Jews from north Samaria was done at the same time as thousands more Jews were forced out of the Gaza Strip.

The name Sa-Nur is a Hebrew paraphrase of the name of the nearby Arab village Sanur. The Hebrew name was proposed by the late composer/songwriter Naomi Shemer, and it means Carry a Light. The community was established in October 1977 and destroyed on August 23, 2005.

The families and their supporters who tried to return home argued that many who at the time supported the “disengagement” — the laundered name for the forced expulsion of more than 8,000 Jews — today recognize it was an abysmal failure that led to three consecutive wars in Gaza. “There’s no reason, from a security or a moral point of view, not to let the people of Homesh and Sa-Nur come home.”

Indeed, what would better express Israel’s independence than allowing the thriving communities of northern Samaria thrive again.

MK Bezalel Smotrich, who participated in the interrupted event, issued a statement saying, “There is no better fitting day than Independence Day for returning to the settlement of Sa-Nur to celebrate there our state’s independence. No demand is more righteous than the demand of these families. With God’s help, we will merit once more to return to our settlements and renew our independence across the Land of Israel. Happy Independence Day.”

Presidential hopeful Ted Cruz is no longer hoping, apparently, as on Tuesday night he dropped out of the race, following a series of losses that culminated in a 54%-37% loss in Indiana to Donald Trump—who also went over the 1,000 delegate hump.

And just to show he could be on the side of the angels, in an interview with The Daily Mail Tuesday, Trump rejected the idea that a Jewish settlement freeze in Judea and Samaria would bring peace between Israelis and Arabs any sooner. Positioning himself squarely opposite Hillary Clinton and the Obama Administration on this subject, he insisted that Israel should continue its construction projects in Judea and Samaria. Trump also declared: “Thousands of missiles being launched into Israel. Who would put up with that? Who would stand for it? I’d love to negotiate peace. But I mean a lasting peace, not a peace that lasts for two weeks and they start launching missiles again.”

Until Indiana, Senator Cruz (R-TX) seemed determined to go all the way to a contested convention in Cleveland this summer, but the losses in five out of five eastern seaboard states and the Indiana defeat apparently had a cumulative effect on the candidate, who no longer saw a path to the nomination for himself.

“From the beginning I’ve said that I would continue on as long as there was a viable path to victory,” Cruz told his campaign workers and fans Tuesday night. “Tonight I’m sorry to say it appears that path has been foreclosed. With a heavy heart but with boundless optimism for the long-term future of our nation, we are suspending our campaign.”

Trump won at least 51 of Indiana’s delegates, giving him 1,047 out of the 1,237 Delegates needed for the Republican nomination. With his chief rival out of the way, Trump is likely to win the 190 delegates he needs to lock the nomination.

It does not mean that Trump is anywhere near easy street come the general elections, with Hillary Clinton leading him by 7 points on average nationally. But Trump has also been the most unpredictable winning candidate in presidential elections history, and 2016 has been the most unpredictable presidential election year in anyone’s memory, so sit back comfortably, order pizza and watch the race with the rest of us.