There is no better time than the first anniversary of the Itamar massacre [March 11] to call for a halt to the demonization of “the settlers,” the thousands of Jews who live beyond the “Green Line” and their reduction to second-class citizenship. They are Jews who live in constant uncertainty, having no idea whether they will keep the homes for which they have worked hard and risked much. The manner in which these Israeli citizens are being portrayed is disconcerting. It will be remembered as a seminal case in the history of blood libels.

These citizens have been called “leeches,” “snakes,” “vicious,” “primitives,” “medieval,” “obscurantists,” “corrupt” and “parasites.” They are the target for the arrows of Israel haters, both domestic and foreign. The media paint them as being separate from Klal Yisrael. Their villages are branded “illegal” and in the end they find that they themselves have become “illegal beings.” Pariahs. Vilified as a needless burden on the defense budget. They have been chosen as Israel’s scapegoats, the ever-guilty, the Jewish state’s Jews.

Their houses have been demolished, their children traumatized, their businesses ruined.… Their human and democratic rights are often trampled underfoot and disregarded.… A sinister equivalence has been created between their caravans in the wilderness and suicide bombers, [thereby] turn[ing] their houses into something more urgent to dismantle than the Iranian bomb.

[But in reality], they are the Israelis who choose their place of residence by what’s best for the country, rather than where it’s more comfortable or stylish to live. They are normal people, just persevering and tough, who see themselves as part of a work in progress: Israel. Their lives are a living statement: this is home and for this land we are ready to fight and lay down our lives.… Their commitment is not just to themselves but to the land and people of Israel.…

The memory of friends and relatives who paid with their lives is almost everywhere around their towns.… People in the West ignore the amount of blood spilled in their communities. Overwhelmingly, the Western media and intellectuals ignored and downplayed the terrorist atrocities suffered by the “settlers.” They are like the early pioneers who drained the swamps and fought malaria as they built the foundations of Israel’s land. They are the builders.

Mordechai and Shalom Lapid, who literally gave their lives to build Kiryat Arba and Elon Moreh, are like the four families who in 1891 made their way from Russia to take home in Hadera. Their bodies served as Israel’s frontline, like in 1948, when the heroic resistance of isolated settlements—Mishmar Ha’emek, Ramat Yohanan, Negba and Yad Mordechai—held back the invading Arab armies from attacking the heartland of the newly formed and beleaguered Jewish state.…

I know a settler woman who lives in Hebron’s Tel Rumeida neighborhood, which became a round-the-clock target of shooting and sniper fire. She and her husband have six children.… They arouse hostility for the same reasons Jews throughout history have been reviled—an unwillingness to compromise on issues of Jewish principle. He is studying to become a rabbi and he is a caretaker of the historic graves of Ruth and Yishai which lie next to his home. His wife is studying about children with disabilities. This stubborn woman, like Ruth Fogel of Itamar, is a living, wonderful reminder to the world of what a Jew is.