“Call me Yakov,” the burly, red-bearded settler told the Palestinian villagers who lived in his shadow. They should, it was understood, consider him their mukhtar, their chief, mayor and sheriff.
It was only after he was singled out for sanctions by the US government last week that they learned his real name: Yitzhak Levi Filant.
On paper, Filant is merely the security coordinator (ravshatz) of the Yitzhar settlement, perched on a West Bank hilltop south of Nablus overlooking a string of ancient Palestinian villages strung out on the steep slopes below.
Reservists such as Filant were called back into duty and he has recruited young male settlers to form what is known locally as “Yakov’s army”. Yitzhar’s religious school, or yeshiva, is known for teaching Jewish militancy, and was closed for more than a year in 2014 on the grounds it served as the base for attacks on Palestinians.
On the afternoon of 18 June, that militia descended on Burin and went on a rampage, attacking anyone they found out on the street.
“I could see people running away and first I thought it was the army, then I saw the men attacking us were naked from the waist up and had their T-shirts around their heads to hide their faces,” Najjar recalled. “They set fire to a car, and attacked the driver, and they attacked the grocery store here.”