Netzah Yehuda veteran was among ‘guards’ who intimidated Jerusalem Armenians in November 2023

[This article is the fifth part of The Armenian Quarter Files, a series of investigations into a controversial land deal in occupied East Jerusalem].

The New Arab Investigative Unit can reveal that a veteran of the notorious Netzah Yehuda battalion was involved in confrontations with the Armenian community in Jerusalem.

He is among more individuals identified by The New Arab’s Investigative Unit present at the confrontations between representatives of Israeli Xana Gardens Ltd, and members of the local Armenian community, in the Old City of Jerusalem.

The altercations, which occurred on 4-5 November 2023, saw armed settlers attempt to intimidate residents of the Armenian Quarter, who were protesting a controversial land deal between Xana Gardens and the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

The New Arab (TNA) Investigative Unit previously identified two American settlers present at the confrontations.

These include Saadia Hershkop, an American Jewish settler with ties to Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s minister of national security.

Also present was Sam Tzvi Goodman, a US citizen from Jacksonville, Florida, and ex-Israeli border police guard, with a seven-year-long history of involvement in the eviction of Palestinians from occupied East Jerusalem.

The newly identified individuals include a veteran of the Netzah Yehuda battalion, as well as an Israeli reservist who was accused of being involved in a ‘Skunk’ spray attack at a January 2024 pro-Palestine demonstration at Columbia University in the US.

Once again, TNA’s investigative work sheds light on how, to different extents, settler violence and its international ramifications affect all communities in the Occupied Territories, not just the Palestinians.

A controversial land deal

The controversy around the deal started in April 2023, when news broke out that the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem had leased some 13% of the Armenian Quarter to Xana Gardens to construct a luxury hotel.

The homes of some Jerusalem Armenians, threatened by displacement, were allegedly included in the deal.

As a consequence, both the Palestinian Authority and Jordan have withdrawn their recognition of Armenian Patriarch Nourhan Manougian, who signed off on the deal.

Eventually, the Armenian Patriarchate reversed course, and announced on 1 November 2023 that it had informed Xana Gardens of the cancellation of the lease agreement.

This did not stop the situation from escalating.

In late October 2023, Armenian activists denounced the start of alleged “illegal construction” on the site of the leased land, with local residents reportedly intervening to halt the works.

On 4-5 November 2023, Danny Rothman, the Australian Jewish investor behind the deal, confronted the protestors, accompanied by a group of armed Jewish settlers. 

Eventually, both parties dispersed after the police intervened.

TNA contacted Mr. Rothman for comment. No reply was received at time of publication.

Former Israeli soldiers and Kitat Konenut

The two identified individuals are Netanel (Sonny) Danziger, previously from the Netzah Yehuda battalion, and Menajem Mendel Perez, who claims to have been part of the Israeli army as a paratrooper. 

TNA contacted Mr. Danziger over WhatsApp, social media and the phone to respond to the allegations in this piece. We did not receive a reply.

TNA also contacted Mr. Perez by email and over social media as well. He did not answer our repeated attempts to seek comment.

During the confrontations at the Armenian Quarter, the armed men presented themselves as guards protecting the land of the Cows’ Garden.

In an interaction recorded by Jerusalem-based journalist Nicole Schiavi Jansezian on November 4, one of the men is heard saying that they were from “Kitat Konenut [...] providing backup to the police”.

Tensions in Jerusalem Armenian Quarter

Kitat Konenut (meaning “rapid response squads”) are volunteer security forces, usually operating in rural areas, and generally found in Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank. 

In the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attack, the Israeli Ministry of National Security announced it would train some 600 new rapid response squads all over Israel. Ten groups are reportedly already operating in East Jerusalem, including in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter.

TNA contacted the Israeli police back in November 2023 to ask whether Kitat Konenut were supposed to “provide backup to the police” during incidents in Jerusalem’s Old City. The Israeli Police Spokesperson Unit did not respond to these questions.

In another interaction recorded on 5 November 2023 and later shared with TNA, Perez can be seen in the middle of an altercation between Mr. Rothman and Father Koryoun Baghdasaryan, the current director of real estate at the Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem.

Netanel Danziger: veteran of the Netzah Yehuda battalion

According to his Facebook profile, Netanel Danziger, who also goes by Sonny Danziger, was in the Israeli army from July 2010 until January 2014.

TNA was not able to determine whether Danziger is an American citizen, like some other settlers present at the Armenian Quarter on 5 November 2023.

A post on Facebook from 23 September 2011 shows Danziger in uniform with other Israeli soldiers from his military brigade.

A retired officer of the Netzah Yehuda battalion confirmed to The New Arab that, “to the best of my recollection”, Danziger enlisted in the unit some time in 2010.

This is also corroborated by a Facebook post from 22 January 2014, where Danziger is seen wearing a military tag cover, displaying the emblem of the Netzah Yehuda battalion, as well as the number 97.

The 97th Netzah Yehuda battalion is a notorious unit of the Israeli army, formed in 1999 to encourage ultra-orthodox Haredi men to enlist.

Haredim represent 13.5% of Israel’s population, but have historically preferred to “defer” the compulsory military service in the Israeli army by studying full-time in yeshivas - traditional Jewish educational institutions - instead. Outside Israel, some Haredim have been staunchly opposed to Zionism, from a religious and moral viewpoint.

Haaretz described the battalion as “a kind of independent militia that doesn’t obey the army’s rules”.

In December 2022, the unit was moved away from its usual deployment in the West Bank, after its involvement in the death of 78-year-old American-Palestinian Omar Abdalmajeed As'ad.

According to Haaretz, soldiers from Netzah Yehuda handcuffed As’ad, gagged him, and left him to die of cardiac arrest out in the cold in the village of Jiljilya, near Ramallah.

The U.S. State Department is currently considering the suspension of military assistance to the Netzah Yehuda battalion over its violation of the Leahy laws.

According to US-based human rights advocacy organisation Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), the law authorises the suspension of “US military assistance to a specific foreign military unit if they find it has committed gross violations of internationally recognized human rights and those responsible have not been brought to justice”.

DAWN had previously documented what it called “a pattern of gross and systematic human rights abuses” by the Netzah Yehuda unit and submitted its findings to the State Department in October 2022.

On 29 April 2024, a letter from Secretary of State Anthony Blinken stated that three Israeli Army battalions and two “civilian authority” units in Israel’s security forces were found responsible for gross violations of human rights, according to Reuters.

According to the US State Department, Israel had taken “effective steps to bring to justice” the culprits in four of these cases, in compliance with US law. Therefore, no more measures were needed.

The only pending case relates to the Netzah Yehuda battalion, for which Washington is still possibly considering restrictive measures.

"The two identified individuals are Netanel (Sonny) Danziger, previously from the Netzah Yehuda battalion, and Menajem Mendel Perez, who claims to have been part of the Israeli army as a paratrooper."

The battalion has been deployed inside the Gaza Strip as part of Israel’s ongoing offensive, according to the Israeli army’s Arabic and MENA Media Desk.

The media unit told TNA over WhatsApp that “the battalion is professionally and bravely conducting operations in accordance to [sic] the IDF Code of Ethics and with full commitment to international law.”

Human rights organisations and the UN’s human rights office have decried Israel’s repeated violations of international humanitarian law - the so-called laws of war - in its onslaught on Gaza.

When asked about the involvement of soldiers from the battalion in the death of As’ad, the Israeli army’s media unit told TNA that “there were failures in the conduct” of the soldiers involved.

However, according to them, the army had found “no causal link between the failures of the soldiers’ conduct and Assad’s death”. Therefore, no criminal prosecution was undertaken.

The outcome of the army’s investigation is unsurprising. According to Israeli human rights group Yesh Din, between 2017-2021, only 0.87% of Israeli soldiers involved in cases of alleged offences were prosecuted.

The potential decision to suspend military assistance to the Netzah Yehuda battalion would follow an earlier Executive Order, issued by US President Joe Biden on 1 February 2024, aiming to impose sanctions on Israelis who have been involved in “high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction” in the West Bank.

So far, however, the Executive Order has not been applied to individuals involved in settler-linked violence in East Jerusalem.

‘Lone soldier’ at the Jerusalem Heritage House

After his deployment with Netzah Yehuda ended in January 2014, Mr. Danziger stayed as a guest at the Jerusalem Heritage House, a non-profit youth hostel in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, founded in 1985.

The Heritage House is run by Rabbi Ben Packer, who was born and raised in Virginia, before moving to Israel in 1999 and volunteering with the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip.

TNA contacted Rabbi Packer to comment on the allegations in this piece. No reply was received at time of publication.

In a recent Facebook post by Rabbi Packer on 21 March 2024, Packer called Danziger a “long time friend of the Jerusalem Heritage House”, where he stayed as a “lone soldier”.

Lone soldiers are volunteers in the Israeli army who come from abroad on their own to join it. According to the Israeli non-profit Lone Soldiers Center, there are over 7,000 lone soldiers currently in the 169,500-strong Israeli army.

In November 2017, Haaretz revealed that Rabbi Packer had “lured” hundreds, if not thousands, of young American Jews - including lone soldiers - to stay for free at the Heritage House.

Some of these youth had apparently no idea of Packer’s political agenda or his close ties to radical factions in the settlement movement.

Sam Tzvi Goodman, whom TNA previously identified as an armed guard at the confrontation in the Armenian Quarter, also stayed at the house as a guest before working there as a Madrich (Hebrew for “youth leader”).

From paratrooper reservist to suspended Columbia University student

The second individual identified by TNA is Menajem Perez, a Florida-native who flew back from the US to Israel to join the flight against Hamas after its October 7 attack.

During an interview with American television network CBS on 11 October 2023, Perez claimed to be a paratrooper reservist in the Israeli army.

TNA was not able to determine whether Perez was ever deployed in the ongoing war on Gaza.

However, less than two months later, he was seen at the Armenian Quarter, along with the guards present there on 5 November 2023.

Perez made news again on 17 January 2024, when he was accused of throwing “stink bombs” at pro-Palestine protesters at Columbia University.

On 22 January, the office of the provost at Columbia University announced that “the alleged perpetrators identified to the University were immediately banned from campus while the law enforcement investigation proceeds.”

TNA contacted Columbia University to ask whether Perez was among the identified perpetrators. In its response, the University stated that it “can’t comment about individuals or the specifics of disciplinary proceedings”.

TNA also contacted the New York Police Department for updates on the incident. It stated that “there are no arrests and the investigation remains ongoing.”

Since the incident at Columbia University, all of Perez’ active social media profiles have been disabled. His whereabouts remain unknown.

"The newly identified individuals include a veteran of the Netzah Yehuda battalion, as well as an Israeli reservist who was accused of being involved in a ‘Skunk’ spray attack at a January 2024 pro-Palestine demonstration at Columbia University in the US."

However, on 16 April, Perez filed a lawsuit against the University, claiming that he had been the victim of “biased misconduct proceedings, which rushed to silence [him] and brand him as a criminal for harmlessly exercising his freedom of expression in opposition to a pro-Hamas pro-Palestine rally”.

The lawsuit affirmed that Mr. Perez was indeed present at the January protest and sprayed into the air “a non-toxic ‘fart’ spray”.

TNA contacted the lawyers of Mr. Perez to provide comments. No reply was received at time of publication.

The lawsuit did not explicitly name Mr. Perez as the plaintiff, choosing instead to include him under the pseudonym of “John Doe”. 

It described the plaintiff as a “Jewish Hispanic immigrant” and “a former Israeli Defense Forces soldier”. It also stated that Perez “was enrolled as a [...] student at Columbia University”. These details match the open-source information TNA was able to obtain.

The lawsuit coincides with a US-wide campaign of crackdown on pro-Palestine activism on campus.

As of 29 April 2024, this campaign included 13 different lawsuits against American universities, four of which targeting Columbia University alone.

Editing and fact-checking: Investigative Editor Andrea Glioti.