Radlett United Synagogue, where Leo Dee was a Rabbi, before he made the radical decision in 2014 to move his young family to illegally occupied West Bank, Palestine (photo credit: (Watford Observer).
Firstly, what compelled this family of British citizens to abandon their life of safety and stability in the UK, to migrate and start a new life in the middle of what essentially is a war zone? The family were not tourists, but had made Aliyah or permanent immigration to Israel.
Secondly, what motivated these parents to decide to resettle, not in Tel Aviv or Haifa, but in Efrat, an illegal settler outpost (settlement) in the occupied West Bank, Palestine?
Efrat is the largest colonial settlement in the occupied West Bank, where 12,000 Jews from North America and Europe have been living on land stolen from the indigenous Palestinian population since the 1980s.
These settlements are internationally recognised as illegal.
These settlements are populated with the most extreme Zionist Jews who believe it’s their biblical right to live on all of the land, regardless of the indigenous population. In one settler’s words, “if I don’t steal it, someone else will steal it”.
These settlers migrate to these colonial outposts specifically to benefit from the apartheid structure that provides them with better roads, food, education & healthcare services than the Palestinians they have ethnically cleansed from the land.
Many are attracted to make the move to Efrat by slick propaganda videos, many of which can be found online. Were the Dee family influenced by such material?
These videos are reminiscent of the propaganda videos that attracted many British Muslims to travel to Syria and Iraq, to live a utopian life in the self-proclaimed caliphate.
Children of these settlers are indoctrinated from an early age, both ideologically and militarily. Which cannot be healthy for any child.
Real estate companies thrive on exploiting the Zionist ideology, to entice Jews from America and Europe to leave the stability of life in a Western liberal democracy, and start a new life as illegal settlers in an effective war zone.
And it is critically important to remember, that the illegal settlers are only sustained in the illegally occupied territories through the brutal terror and murder that the Israeli occupation forces commit against the native Palestinians.
Many illegal settlers in those territories are active participants in the violence. But the ones who aren’t, like the Dee’s, are fully aware that they in effect have outsourced the brutality required to sustain them there, to the Israeli occupation forces.
Efrat is also home to Caliber 3, a site for physical training that also provides “commando tourism”, where Western Jewish families can learn how to fire arms, and fight while understanding the principles of settler colonialist Zionism.
Should big tech be doing more to stop these propaganda videos being posted on their platforms that lure vulnerable Jews to participate in apartheid, and crimes against humanity in a foreign land by manipulating their religious beliefs?
What compelled Rabbi Dee and his wife to leave the prosperous village of Radlett, and take their young girls, then ages 11 and 4, to join this messianic death cult? How many more Jewish families in Britain have embarked on this path?
In order to ensure that future tragedies are avoided, there needs to be an urgent inquiry into the extent of radicalisation within the British Jewish community, which should include how education and religious institutions failed in their safeguarding duty towards these kids.
When the Dee’s decided to move to Israel in 2014, all 5 of the Dee kids would have been minors.
Bad faith actors will be quick to jump on this and accuse us of “victim blaming” the deaths of these three women. Far from it. But as with British Muslims who died after travelling to Syria to join ISIS, their deaths leave us with more questions than answers.
