115 Members of Congress to Netanyahu: Stop Enabling Settler Violence
August 3, 2026 – New Jewish Narrative today welcomed a letter from 115 Members of Congress that calls on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to order the removal of a razor wire fence that blocks the path that children in the West Bank village of Umm Al-Kheir use to reach their school. Representatives Jamie Raskin, Rosa DeLauro, Sean Casten, and Sara Jacobs deserve our thanks for their leadership of this initiative.
NJN endorsed this letter and mobilized our supporters to urge their representatives to sign on.
That 115 Members of Congress – a majority of the House Democratic Caucus – put their names to this letter is significant. It reflects a growing recognition on Capitol Hill that settler violence in the West Bank, enabled by the policies of the Israeli government, is not a series of isolated incidents but a policy failure that demands a response from the highest levels of the Israeli government.
The facts on the ground speak for themselves: In mid-April, settlers from the settlement of Carmel erected a razor-wire fence across the path Umm Al-Kheir's children walk to school. When villagers called the police for help, soldiers arrived and fired tear gas toward the children. More than two dozen kids were exposed to gas on their way to class.
The fence is but the latest chapter in a long string of injustices facing Umm Al-Kheir. The village has spent years fending off demolition threats and settler violence, including the killing of Awdah Hathaleen by a settler in July 2025. Hathaleen was a teacher at the village school and a contributor to the Oscar-winning film No Other Land. His five-year-old son was among the children tear-gassed at the fence this April.
“This letter is about more than a fence,” said Hadar Susskind, President and CEO of New Jewish Narrative. “It is about a pattern of behavior by the Israeli government to encourage settler violence and to trample on Palestinian rights. The letter is Congress saying that America will not continue to look the other way.
"Every child has the right to walk to school without fear. As American Jews, we refuse to accept the false narrative that keeping a five-year-old from his classroom with a razor wire fence is done for security reasons. It isn't. It makes Israelis less safe. It makes peace more distant. And it is a moral disgrace. We are grateful to Representatives Raskin, DeLauro, Casten, and Jacobs, and to every Member who signed, for saying so clearly."
