IDF took MK Sukkot to West Bank monument he smashed only after he threatened to go alone – report

Soldiers who were with the far-right lawmaker as he took sledgehammer to Palestinian memorial tell Army Radio they’re ‘stuck’ between Jewish and Palestinian terrorism in West Bank

The IDF accompanied far-right MK Zvi Sukkot on his tour of Palestinian towns in the West Bank on Tuesday, where the lawmaker smashed a monument to slain Palestinian “martyrs,” only after he threatened to go by himself if the military did not escort him, Army Radio reported Wednesday.

The Religious Zionism MK was filmed on Tuesday smashing a monument to slain Palestinians, many of them terrorists, with a sledgehammer in the West Bank village of Madama, as soldiers stood by. The incident was widely condemned, drawing denunciations from the army and politicians across the spectrum.

According to the Army Radio report, Sukkot first contacted the IDF several weeks ago about arranging a “tour” of Madama and several other towns with similar monuments. But the report said the IDF initially refused his request, citing lack of manpower amid an ongoing settler siege of Palestinian homes in the nearby town of Qusra.

Sukkot then threatened to go ahead with his visit to the Palestinian villages without an army escort, accompanied by just his Knesset guard detail, the report said. Fearing that such a trip would put him in danger, the IDF relented and said it would schedule an IDF escort for Sukkot once tensions in the area calmed down.

Soldiers from the unit tasked with escorting Sukkot to Madama told Army Radio that the incident was a waste of time and manpower, and that commanders were “shocked” when Sukkot took a sledgehammer out of his vehicle and started smashing the monument.

“We are stuck here between terrorism from Jews and terrorism from Palestinians,” one told the news station.

People look at a damaged “Martyrs Monument” in the West Bank village of Madama after far-right Religious Zionism MK Zvi Sukkot smashed it, August 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

The incident on Tuesday was first reported by Palestinian media, which published a video of a soldier standing behind Sukkot and several of his aides as they struck the monument, while other troops stood slightly further away beside an army vehicle.

Sukkot later published his own footage of the destruction of the “Martyrs’ Monument,” which lists the names of 10 Palestinians from the village with death dates ranging from 1930 to 2004. Faded letters on the bottom read: “Presented by the comrades in the Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine],” a Palestinian terror group responsible for numerous lethal attacks.

Photos published by Palestinian media after the incident showed that the monument remained standing but had been significantly damaged.

The military said on Tuesday that it had indeed authorized the West Bank tour, but that Sukkot and his aides had acted “deceptively and manipulatively” when they smashed the monument.

It did not explain at the time why it had approved the tour to begin with, and did not comment on the Army Radio report on Wednesday.

عضو كنيست الاحتلال تسبي سوكوت يقتحم بحماية جيش الاحتلال قرية مادما جنوب نابلس ويحطم صرح الشهداء pic.twitter.com/2CblqYtLau

— شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) August 25, 2026

Sukkot said he had acted to destroy the monument because the IDF had failed to accede to any of his requests to remove it and others like it from across the West Bank.

“We will not lend a hand to a situation in which those who harmed Jews and IDF soldiers are commemorated as heroes,” he said, calling on the military to remove what he described as “all monuments to terrorism” across the West Bank.

Sukkot has previously attracted controversy over similar actions.

In July, Sukkot, who chairs the Knesset’s Education Committee, filmed himself smashing the sign of a Palestinian school in the Old City of Jerusalem, pledging to shut down the institution over its use of a Palestinian Authority curriculum.

A month earlier, he toured the Arab city of Umm al-Fahm in northern Israel and hung an Israeli flag outside one of its schools amid a strike by the city’s education system against his visit.

Sukkot was also among far-right protesters who rioted outside and then stormed the IDF’s Sde Teiman military base in July 2024, demanding that the Military Police free reservists arrested on suspicion of severely abusing a Gazan detainee held there.

Shortly after the incident, Sukkot told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, “I was doing my job,” adding to The Times of Israel that his accreditation as a Knesset member “gives me the right to enter any place in the State of Israel.”

He was questioned under caution by police last November over his role in the break-in.