While many Israelis contributed to the settlement of Judea and Samaria, few have accomplished as much as Benny Katzover. The 75-year-old “legend” of Judean pioneering is the father of seven kids and boasts over twenty grandchildren.

Standing in front of Mount Kabir in Samaria, the grey-haired Katzover recalls how he quit his pursuit of academic studies to settle the Land of Israel, more specifically, the strategic and biblically significant region of Israel referred to by some as the ‘West Bank.’

There he recalls how he, along with the late Rabbi Hanan Porat and Uri Elizur, were three of several thousand Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria in 1970, just three years after the land was liberated in the Six-Day War. The trio comprised a plan to populate the largely neglected region with hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews. This program was mocked and ridiculed by the Israeli media at the time, he says. Today, Judea and Samaria boasts over half a million Israeli Jews giving Katzover the last laugh.

Early life

Katzover grew up in Petah Tikva, a city founded in 1878, mainly by ultra-orthodox Jews of the Old Yishuv. It became a permanent settlement in 1883 with the financial help of Baron Edmond de Rothschild. The city was the original home of Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, making it a type of incubator for Israel’s leaders.  

Katzover’s father came from Germany. His father left Germany before the outbreak of the Holocaust. “My father realized that antisemitism was getting worse. She saw what was happening,” he told Israel365. When Katzover’s father turned 18, his mother (Benny’s grandmother) gave him money and told him to leave Germany. Meanwhile, his grandparents escaped to Belgium, where they held out until the end of the war.

Katzover’s mother arrived in Israel from Poland. Benny’s uncle on his mother’s side immigrated to Israel when he was in his 20s. Upon his arrival, he called on the rest of his family to follow suit. “He was Zionist and said to the family, this is your place. They went in 1933 and appreciated his initiative,” he noted.

Katzover went to a Bnei Akiva elementary school in Raanana, another central city a few miles north of Petach Tikva. He then went to the Mercaz Harav yeshiva high school in Jerusalem. Katzover partially credits his burning desire to resettle Judea and Samaria with Jewish families to the education at those institutions.

Communal villages

Speaking to a group of curious onlookers in the hills of Samaria, Katzover recalls how during his days of settling the land, “there was no electricity or water.” 

His original vision of the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria diverged from the Israeli urban planning model of cities and kibbutzim with nothing much in between. Since the villages in Judea and Samaria weren’t going to attract the mass influx that Israel’s urban centers did, they wouldn’t be transformed into cities. (Today, Judea and Samaria boast several prominent cities). On the other hand, Katzover and the rabbis wanted something different than the socialist nature of the kibbutzim. The concept he and Rabbi Hanan Porat came up with was given the term ‘communal villages.’ The idea was that everyone could work in any profession they wanted, unlike a kibbutz. But like a kibbutz, all of the children would learn together with a heavy emphasis on communal living. He was told at the time that his model wouldn’t last either. Now he says that the model not only survived but is the most sought after in all of Israel. 

Forgetting Hebron

Katzover still recalls a speech he heard from Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook on Israel’s Independence Day, decrying the fact that although Hebron and Shechem were under Israel’s control, they were not being repopulated by the Jewish people.  Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook was a prominent nationalist Israeli rabbi. He was the son of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine. The father and son are each credited with ‘Kooknik’ Zionism, which became the dominant ideology of Religious Zionists in Israel.

Soon after hearing those words, Katzover was called to a meeting of fellow students. Another prominent rabbi, Moshe Levinger, was going to Hebron, which was exclusively inhabited by Arabs at that time. Rabbi Levinger was seeking volunteers to provide security during his relocation. Katzover jumped at the opportunity to be among the first Jews to settle in Hebron since Arabs drove out its Jewish community following the notorious 1929 Hebron massacre.

Godly miracles

Knowing that the military would immediately remove them upon entering Hebron, Katzover recalls a series of coincidences that he describes as “miracles from God” whereby Israel’s Military Chief broke his leg on the day they were supposed to be evacuated. His deputy was mourning the loss of his mother. This series of tragedies created the perfect storm for a replacement who was among the more sympathetic military leaders to the idea of Jews settling in Judea – Yigal Alon. Alon not only allowed them to stay, but he also provided them with weaponry and reinforcements from the army. Ultimately, the government made an unprecedented decision to recognize a yeshiva in Hebron.

Under the orders of Alon, who sought to help them establish a permanent Jewish settlement in Hebron, Katzover recalls going door to door among Arabs in Hebron in an attempt to locate a property that Arabs did not privately own. He recalls stumbling upon a restaurant that belonged to the Jordanian government. Katzover and his fellow students commandeered the establishment and began working as a waiter and dishwasher in the eatery.

Heading north to Samaria

After helping Rabbi Levinger launch a successful PR campaign to bring 250 Israelis to Kiryat Arba, a nearby suburb of Hebron, Katzover set his sights on the barren but ripe lands of Samaria.

In another “miracle from God,” Katzover convinced fifteen Israeli families to settle on the hilltop of Elon Moreh in Samaria even though they had no water or electricity and were defying the policy of the Israeli government, not to mention the Arabs and the rest of the Middle East and western countries. 

This was merely the beginning of his challenge. The goal was to settle the biblical city of Shechem. He managed to convince several high-profile Israeli figures to join the ambitious cause. Their participation was good for PR, but despite their prominence in Israeli society, none had the power to ensure that the military wouldn’t destroy anything Katzover built. One of the only people who did possess that power was then defense minister Ariel Sharon. Katzover recalls a meeting where to convince Sharon to allow them to establish a Jewish community in Shechem, he and his ‘crew’ delivered a presentation highlighting key reasons why the ancient city was a strategic asset for Israel. But it was to no avail. It turned out that Sharon was more familiar with the strategic advantages of Shechem than Katzover was. Hope appeared to be drifting away, and it looked like their plan to settle Shechem was slowly fading into a lost cause. 

But then Katzover decided to level with Sharon telling him that the most important reason to settle Shechem was its biblical significance. Sharon, who knew Israel well but less, so his Bible, received a clinic in Torah from Katzover, who opened the Good Book and showed him how the first city that both Abraham and eventually Joshua arrived at when they entered the Land of Israel was none other than Shechem. It is also the location of Joseph’s Tomb. Sharon, who was learning of its Biblical significance for the first time, made an about-face and was sold on the idea. He told Katzover to feel free to bug call him at any time of the night to help make the dream come true. He even asked Katzover to buy him a house in Shechem, a request that never materialized.

Katzover recalls settling on the hilltop of Hatmar Shomron even though he did not have permission to do so from the army nor from his spiritual leader Rabbi Kook, to whom he proposed the matter twice. Eventually, Katzover decided not to ask the rabbi for permission but rather inform him of his intention to settle on Hatmar Shomron and only asked the rabbi for his blessing. Rabbi Kook obliged and even joined him in defying the government’s orders, an act that opposition leader Menachem Begin feared would lead to a civil war like the one he fell victim to during the infamous Altalena massacre. 

Katzover also recalls trying to settle the Samaria hilltop of Homesh and the ancient Roman city of Sebastia seven times. Each time, the army evicted Katzover and his tens of thousands of fellow pioneers. The eighth time they entered those hilltops, Prime Minister Yitchak Rabin begged for a compromise with the relentless group of Israeli activists, which ultimately led to the establishment of the town of Kedumim and Ofra – both bustling Jewish cities in Samaria today. But the real victory came inadvertently from Israel’s High Court, who, during a ruling from an Arab contesting the Jewish settlements, ended up allocating 1 million duman of land for the State of Israel to develop for its Jewish population.

Looking forward

Looking forward to the future, Katzover is optimistic. 

“We are progressing. There is no doubt. I see it in the farms, the institutions,” he says. “Unfortunately, they (the government) ignore illicit Arab construction, but I see tremendous progress.”