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[This article is the third part of The Armenian Quarter Files, a series of investigations into a controversial land deal in occupied East Jerusalem].
Confrontations in East Jerusalem between representatives of an Israeli company and Christian Armenian residents have continued ever since the Armenian Patriarchate announced its intention to cancel a controversial land deal that locals say could alter the Armenian Quarter's character.
In July 2021, Australian investor Danny Rothman, representing Xana Gardens Ltd, secured a deal with the Armenian Patriarchate for the purchase of property comprising around 13% of the Armenian Quarter in the Old City.
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 November 1, the Patriarchate announced that it had informed Xana Gardens of the cancellation of the lease agreement.
Tension between the two sides escalated further on the night of November 4, when a confrontation between armed men intervened in support of Xana Gardens, and the Armenian residents drew in a couple of hundred individuals, requiring Israeli police intervention.
Among around 15 individuals, some of whom brought weapons and dogs, was Saadia Hershkop, an American Jewish settler with ties to Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s minister of national security. It is unclear whether all the persons on site were members of settlers organisations.
The New Arab (TNA) Investigative Unit has identified another US citizen, Sam Goodman, present at the confrontations of November 4-5. He hails from Jacksonville in Florida, and has a seven-year-long history of involvement in the eviction of Palestinians from East Jerusalem. He also goes by the name Tzvi Goodman.
Goodman has ties to current Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Arieh King and the Israel Land Fund, a charity founded by King in 2004 to settle Jews in East Jerusalem. Israeli newspaper Haaretz described King as a “right-wing Jerusalem settler activist” at the time of his appointment as deputy mayor back in April 2020.
Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, are a violation of international law, as the area falls under Palestinian Authority (PA) jurisdiction. The controversial Armenian land lease consequently alarmed not only Armenians but also Palestinian Arabs because of its political implications.
The land of the Armenian Quarter is especially strategic as it intersects the main access roads between West Jerusalem and the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, making it “prime real estate in Israeli eyes”.
Many within the Armenian community have pointed at an Israeli organisation called Ateret Cohanim to be allegedly behind the controversial land deal.
Ateret Cohanim is one of the main settler organisations engaged in buying up properties in East Jerusalem, with the goal of settling Jewish residents in them. It is known for having used shell companies to secretly purchase Greek Orthodox Church property in East Jerusalem in 2004.
TNA contacted Daniel Luria, the executive director of Ateret Cohanim, to inquire about potential links between his organisation and the Armenian Patriarchate land deal. He responded that “Ateret Cohanim has no connection whatsoever to the acquisition (long term lease) of the Armenian property in question inside the old city of Jerusalem.”
"The New Arab (TNA) Investigative Unit has identified another US citizen, Sam Goodman, present at the confrontations of November 4-5. He hails from Jacksonville in Florida, and has a seven-year-long history of involvement in the eviction of Palestinians from East Jerusalem. He also goes by the name Tzvi Goodman."
“He is one of the good guys”
During a [currently unavailable] Facebook livestream recorded on the night of November 4, Jerusalem-based Armenian-American journalist Nicole Schiavi Jansezian recorded her interactions with some of the armed men.
In one of these interactions (7:17 in the video), an individual who asked the journalist not to be recorded was heard saying that they were from “kitat konenut [...] providing backup to the police”.
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 to ask whether Kitat Konenut are supposed to “provide backup to the police” during incidents in Jerusalem’s Old City, especially if members of the police are already present at the scene. We also asked the police if the recently formed Kitat Konenut from the Jewish Quarter are supposed to intervene in the Armenian Quarter. The Israeli Police Spokesperson Unit did not respond to these questions.
Instead, the police stated that it “is not a party to civil or contractual disputes and it is not part of its role. Upon receiving reports or complaints in suspicion of a criminal offense, they are dealt with by the police accordingly, as is done in cases in which mutual complaints about assault and/or threats were received.”
“When someone responsible with a gun is here, everyone knows there is not going to be any fistfighting, no one is going to get in each others’ faces. It keeps everybody polite,” concluded Sam Goodman, the US settler.
TNA also contacted the Israeli ministry of national security over email and phone to inquire about the role of Kitat Konenut in the Old City. No response was received in time for publication.
In the livestream, Jansezian, the Armenian-American journalist, spoke to a second armed individual (18:50), asking him if he was also part of Kitat Konenut. “Absolutely not,” he responded “I am here in a completely unofficial capacity.”
“So, who asked you to come?” asked Jansezian. “I’d rather not say,” was the answer of the armed individual.
The conversation continued. Another interlocutor, this time from the Armenian community, interjected: “He is one of the good guys. I know him, he is a neighbour. I know [sic] him when he was a little boy. I know him personally.”
When asked why he felt the need to carry a rifle with him, the armed man explained that he used to live in the Muslim Quarter, where he is “known”, and that he was “told by the police that I should not come here without a gun”.
“When someone responsible with a gun is here, everyone knows there is not going to be any fistfighting, no one is going to get in each others’ faces. It keeps everybody polite,” he concluded.
Multiple witnesses present on November 4-5 have confirmed to TNA that the second armed individual’s physical appearance matches with images of Sam Goodman.
‘Known’ in the Muslim Quarter
TNA contacted Goodman via email and LinkedIn about the content of this report, but no response was received in time for publication.
One of the first mentions of Goodman’s involvement in settler activities dates to a June 2016 post on the website Israel Rising.
The website was founded by David Mark, a self-described “Land Reclamation Activist”, according to his LinkedIn profile. Since 2020, Mark is also the Director of Outreach at Ateret Cohanim, the settler organisation which secretly acquired the Greek Orthodox Church properties in the Old City using shell companies in 2004.
In the Israel Rising post from 2016, titled “Ending the Arab Occupation on Al-Haleddiya St”, Mark introduced Sam Goodman as a “local activist”. He wrote that Goodman was “standing guard” in the basement of a building in the Old City, from which Palestinians had been recently evicted. “Once there is a family that wants to move in, I’ll move out. My job is complete,” Sam Goodman was quoted as saying in the piece. At the time, Goodman was a Yeshiva (Jewish religious school) student in the Old City.
TNA contacted Mark about the information contained in his post. He responded that “Sam [Goodman] was a student at the time and was helping in a volunteer capacity in helping [sic] to guard and renovate the property [mentioned] in the article.”
Goodman was also seen in another Israel Rising post from 2017, this time celebrating the eviction of the Shamasneh family from their home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. Arieh King was standing next to Goodman only three years before being appointed as a deputy mayor of Jerusalem.
According to Haaretz, the Israel Land Fund assisted in this eviction by tracking down the heir of the pre-1948 Jewish owners of the land on which the home is built, and providing her with legal representation to reclaim the building.
Israeli law allows Jews, but not Palestinians, to reclaim ownership of properties they left as part of the 1948 war.
Goodman was part of the group of individuals “who were there to help move out the arabs' [sic] stuff and are now helping to guard the property”, according to a post by one of the Rabbis present at the celebration.
TNA contacted Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Arieh King to seek comments regarding his presence alongside Goodman at the Shamasneh family home following their eviction. King responded by saying he was “busy” and currently “deployed with the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces]”.
"According to Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Arieh King, 'by building new Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem we can fight the influence of Muslim and Christian culture on the images of Israel.'"
Most recently, pictures taken by Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency showed Sam Goodman as part of a group of “more than 160 settlers” storming the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in Jerusalem on 29 May 2022.
Goodman was seen again in pictures taken by Israeli news site Kipa during the August 2022 storming of the mosque, this time with “2,000 settlers”, among them Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s minister of national security.
Radicalised as a teenager
Goodman’s radicalisation seems to have started upon his arrival in Israel, and accelerated after he got involved with the Jerusalem Heritage House.
Based on a post on the Facebook page of the Jerusalem Heritage House, he seems to have arrived in Israel around 2011. Reportedly, Goodman stayed as a guest at the house before working there as a Madrich (Hebrew for “youth leader”).
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The Heritage House is a non-profit youth hostel in East Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter, founded in 1985. It offers free accommodation to “young Jewish travelers and students in Jerusalem so that they can best experience and develop their connection with Israel, Judaism, and the Jewish People”.
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.
In October 2013, a teenage Sam Goodman was filmed alongside Packer, King, and other Heritage House guests, while vehemently protesting against an Israeli-Palestinian peace event in Jerusalem.
One of these guests, besides Goodman, was present at the confrontations in the Armenian Quarter on November 4-5.
The Yeshiva student and the Rabbi
Rabbi Ben Packer seems to have played an outsize role in Goodman’s radicalisation.
The New Arab (TNA) contacted Rabbi Ben Packer, asking about his relation to Goodman and his role in evicting Palestinians from East Jerusalem. He did not answer our repeated attempts to seek comment over email and instant messaging.
In November 2017, Haaretz revealed that Rabbi Ben Packer had reportedly “lured” hundreds, if not thousands, of “Birthright extenders” to stay for free at the Heritage House. Some of these youth, mostly from the US, had no idea of the radical ideology of Packer and his followers.
Birthright is a programme, partly subsidised by the Israeli government, that offers young people with recognised Jewish heritage a free ten-day trip to Israel. If travellers wish to extend their stay, however, they need to arrange for accommodation on their own.
According to Haaretz, the Heritage House encouraged its guests to “volunteer at illegal West Bank outposts”, without offering a single volunteering activity inside Israel’s internationally recognised borders.
As a youth leader at the Heritage House at the time, Sam Goodman was involved in many of these activities. This was evident from the pictures that the Rabbi regularly shared on the Heritage House’s Facebook page.
"Goodman was part of the group of individuals 'who were there to help move out the arabs' [sic] stuff and are now helping to guard the property', according to a post by one of the Rabbis present at the celebration."
‘Fight the influence of Muslim and Christian culture’
At the end of his time at the Heritage House, Sam Goodman reportedly finished top of his draft class and joined the Israeli border police in 2019. According to his LinkedIn profile, he worked there until December 2021.
Goodman and Packer have remained in touch, as late as May 2022. After Goodman’s marriage that month, Rabbi Packer invited him to the Heritage House to perform wedding blessings.
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Meanwhile, Rabbi Ben Packer’s role in settler activities has continued to grow.
He is now the chairman of the Israel Land Fund, replacing Arieh King after the latter became Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem in April 2020.
Packer and King were seen together in January 2023 in California, speaking to local outlet Hillygram Los Angeles about how to strengthen the weakened Jewish presence in East Jerusalem. According to King, “by building new Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem we can fight the influence of Muslim and Christian culture on the images of Israel.” Asked whether this quote was accurate and if he would stand by it today, King told TNA: “I don’t remember. I am now busy fighting Muslim Natzis [sic] as part of the IDF efforts against Hamas.”
Such an aversion to Christian heritage is probably the last thing the Armenian community in East Jerusalem, and the Christian community at large, would have liked to hear.
On November 18, the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem issued a “Statement on the recent events in the Armenian Quarter”, “urgently appeal[ing] all relevant governmental and non-governmental bodies able to assist in this matter to help us restore the former peace and harmony enjoyed by all those who have used this land in the Armenian Quarter”.
For questions, comments and complaints please email Andrea Glioti (head of TNA investigative unit) andrea.glioti@newarab.com or Anas Ambri (TNA investigative researcher) anas.ambri@newarab.com.
Sensitive info and tips are to be sent via encrypted email to thenewarab@tutanota.com.