The Hilltop Youth are a "loosely organized, anarchy-minded group", of some several hundred youths around a hard core of scores of violent activists often noted for establishing illegal/disputed outposts outside existing settlements.[1][14] Their numbers (2009) are estimated to be around 800, with approximately 5,000 others who share their ideological outlook.[3] They completely dissociate themselves from Israeli institutions, and identify themselves with the Land of Israel.[11] They settle on hilltops in areas densely crowded by Palestinians.[3] Members linked to the group have been accused of engaging in Israeli settler violence, including vandalism of Palestinian schools[15] and mosques,[16] the rustling of sheep from Palestinian flocks and the extirpation of their centuries-old olive groves, or stealing their olive harvests.[3][17][18] This last practice was endorsed by Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu on a visit to a hilltop outpost, Havat Gilad, where he issued a rabbinical ruling that, "The ground on which the trees are planted is the inheritance of the Jewish people, and the fruit of the plantings was seeded by the goyim in land that is not theirs."[19] They seize land not by any official method: they claim a hilltop by setting up an encampment, and then claim the land nearby, whether under Palestinian cultivation or not, or by uprooting Palestinian trees and shooting in the air if any Palestinian comes near to the new outpost.[20]