Jewish opposition to Zionism has a long history, and many Israeli scholars and critics have been harsh in their judgements of the way their state has carried out its settlement and control policies in the Palestinian territories.
Many Israeli organizations such as B'Tselem, Yesh Din, Ta'ayush, Rabbis for Human Rights, Gush Shalom, and Machsom Watch are active in the West Bank and both assist and document the plight of Palestinians under occupation.
[11] Zeev Sternhell has argued that the West Bank for the radical right is the touchstone of Zionism, serving as a staging post or territorial basis from which to challenge the secular state of Israel and what they perceive to be its Hellenization on the other side of the Green Line.
[16]Ronit Lentin, following Shlomo Swirsky, suggests that a central function of settlement is psychological, a means of overcoming a "self-perceived Israeli-Jewish victimhood" complex.
[f] This position is similar to that espoused by the philosopher of science and Auschwitz survivor Yehuda Elkana[g][h] and has support from empirical studies of Israeli media portrayals of the conflict, which highlight incidents of violence, and play into historic anxieties, such as those drawing on the collective memories of existential threats and the Holocaust to produce a "siege mentality" productive of the same distrust that Palestinians nurture from the sense of victimhood as an occupied people.