Beyond US military and economic support for Israel as its imperial outpost in the region, an estimated 160,000 Americans live in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and are some of the most active participants in the ongoing campaign of terror against the indigenous Palestinian population.
Israeli settler terrorism as a movement also draws inspiration from two Americans infamous as the godfathers of the campaign of settler violence against ordinary Palestinians.
An American doctor from Brooklyn, Baruch Goldstein, murdered 29 Muslim worshippers (and injured 125) in a mass killing in Hebron in 1994. His grave became a site of pilgrimage for Israeli extremists. Prior to entering the Knesset, Israeli minister for national security Ben-Gvir displayed a portrait of Goldstein in his living room.
Goldstein was a follower of another American, Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the far-right religious Kach party that was eventually banned in the US under anti-terrorism laws. He also founded the Jewish Defence League (JDL), a far-right terror organisation which both inspired and maintains links to the English Defence League (EDL), and which launched several terror attacks of its own on US soil in the 1970s.
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