Herzog condemns "anarchist elements" behind West Bank violence

President Isaac Herzog used a ceremony honouring outstanding officers of the Israel Police to address what he described as a recent rise in violence in Judea and Samaria, the term used in Israeli official language for the West Bank. According to a statement issued by the President's Spokesperson, Herzog hosted the ceremony on Sunday, 6 September 2026, and turned in his remarks to what he called a crime epidemic in Israel spreading into other areas.

Herzog said the violence in the hills of Judea and Samaria involved "anarchist elements who long ago forgot the Torah's commandment on the treatment of the stranger, and who seek to dismantle Israel's sovereignty from within". He said confronting it required a shared effort "across every camp and party", and "clear, determined coordination and cooperation among all authorities".

What the Israeli presidency is, and is not

The President of Israel is the head of state, elected by the Knesset, Israel's parliament, rather than by direct popular vote. The role is largely ceremonial: the president does not set security policy, command the armed forces or direct police operations. What the office carries instead is moral and rhetorical weight, and Israeli presidents have traditionally used it to speak on matters of national cohesion. Herzog, a former leader of the Labour party and of the parliamentary opposition, has repeatedly framed his tenure around unity across political camps, and the appeal to act "across every camp and party" fits that pattern.

Because the presidency has no operational authority, a statement of this kind is best read as a signal to the bodies that do have it. Herzog's call for coordination "among all authorities" points at the division of responsibility in the territory, where the Israel Police, the Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Security Agency each hold different pieces of the enforcement picture. The statement does not name any of those bodies beyond the police force whose officers he was honouring.

Judea and Samaria, and the reference to the hills

Judea and Samaria is the official Israeli designation for the territory captured in the Six Day War and known internationally as the West Bank. It contains Palestinian cities and villages alongside Israeli settlements and smaller outposts, many of them on hilltops. Herzog's reference to violence "raging in the hills" is language commonly associated in Israeli public debate with incidents involving residents of those hilltop communities, though the presidential statement itself does not identify any group, community or individual, describes no specific incident, and gives no figures.

The phrase about the treatment of the stranger is a reference to a recurring biblical injunction. Herzog, who frequently draws on Jewish textual sources in public remarks, used it to frame the conduct he was criticising as a departure from Jewish religious obligation rather than only from Israeli law.

The reference to the US ambassador

Herzog also commended Mike Huckabee, the United States Ambassador to Israel, calling him "a true and devoted friend of Israel" and thanking him for what the president described as a firm stance. Herzog said Huckabee had gone to the area himself the previous day to document what was happening there firsthand, and added: "It is important that we listen to him."

The statement does not say where in the territory the ambassador travelled, whom he met, what he documented, or whether he issued any public comment of his own. Nor does it describe any coordination between the ambassador's visit and Israeli authorities. Praise from an Israeli head of state for a foreign envoy's intervention on an internal enforcement question is unusual enough to be worth noting, but the material offers no further detail on it.

The setting

The remarks were delivered at a ceremony recognising outstanding police officers in the Israel Police, hosted by the president. Such ceremonies are a routine feature of the presidential calendar, and the honouring of individual officers, rather than the situation in Judea and Samaria, was the occasion for the event. The statement was distributed through the Israeli government's official news channel and credits the accompanying photograph to the Government Press Office.

What the report does not say

This account rests on a single official document, and the gaps in it are substantial. The statement gives no description of the incidents Herzog was referring to, no dates, no locations beyond a general reference to the hills of Judea and Samaria, and no casualty or arrest figures. It does not say whether any Israeli authority has announced new measures, nor whether the president spoke to any official before or after the ceremony.

It also does not include the full text of the address, so it is not clear what else Herzog said about the police force or the wider security situation. No response from the Israeli government, the police, or any of the communities implicitly referred to appears in the material, and no comment from Ambassador Huckabee is included. Readers should treat every characterisation here as the president's own, as conveyed by his spokesperson.