Peloni: I am reposting this article which includes a vital interview with Regavim’s Naomi Kahn in response to the recent statements made by Ambassador Leiter and IDF Chief of Stafff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, supporting the blood libel of Settler Violence . The intention of this campaign against Israel which is being supported by Israel’s own top diplomat and head of the IDF is to support the equivalate crime with terrorism, and to do so it employs Fake Data provided by UN and Leftist NGOs to inflate crime statistics, which in any event should never be considered equivalent to terrorist activities. Please also see the recent comment on this topic raised by Tablet’s Liel Leibovitz. See also Regavim’s report on Settler Violence which Israel’s own leadership seems to have ignored HERE.
How a flawed narrative about Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria became a global campaign—and a weapon against Israel
by Gadi Taub | Tablet | First published on July 3, 2025
Click photo below to revisit Naomi Kahn’s important discussion on the ruse of Settler Violence.
In the popular imagination, Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria are armed gangs rampaging through Palestinian villages and towns and terrorizing the Arab population with impunity. The coverage of the recent clashes in and around the town of Kafr Malik provides a good case in point. “Police free all settlers detained in Wednesday’s deadly rampage of Palestinian village,” read a headline in The Times of Israel last week. “Settler attacks on Palestinians throughout the West Bank have been taking place on a near-daily basis with almost complete impunity, in what has sparked mounting sanctions from Western governments,” the report added, with palpable outrage. How could these perpetrators of a “deadly rampage,” which resulted in the death of three Palestinians, be set free?
Left out of this neat tale is that the three Palestinians weren’t killed by “violent settlers.” Rather, they were shot by the IDF, which was returning fire as it came under attack by gunmen in the village of al-Mughayyir. But this example of media coverage has long been the norm. And now that sectarian agitprop is mainstream in the United States, activists have started to frame their stories accordingly for a specific U.S. audience on the right, emphasizing that the settlers were persecuting Palestinian Christians. Hence, one such activist posted a video on X claiming that “settlers” were “attacking the Christian village of Taybeh … setting homes on fire and shooting at residents.”
That none of this happened doesn’t matter, clearly. What the world sees, over and over—and is then understandably outraged by—are settlers killing Palestinians with no punitive action by the Israeli government. Instead, the takeaway is that the authorities are either turning a blind eye or, worse, encouraging the violence with nods and winks.
Except that’s a manufactured fiction. A recent Israeli study explains how in detail.
The report, published in April by the Regavim Movement, an Israeli NGO (cofounded by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich long before he entered politics) that focuses on land allocation, is a 125-page deep dive into the extent of the settler violence phenomenon.
Even as it acknowledges that some violence by settlers—at times animated by nationalistic passions—the report shows that in contrast to the cartoonish public image, there is, in fact, very little such violence. Moreover, whatever violence exists, the report goes on to say, it is actively and effectively handled by law enforcement. The reason we do not know this, the report contends, is because of a well-orchestrated and lavishly funded information campaign, which has blown a marginal phenomenon out of proportion to advance a political agenda: the two-state solution. By framing the problem as one of “extremist” settlers victimizing the Palestinians, the solution seems self-evident: Remove the settlers to make room for a Palestinian state.
This campaign brought together a broad coalition of actors, foreign and domestic: boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) supporters, Palestinian politicians, peace processors, left-wing Israeli members of Knesset, protesters opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a host of “human rights” NGOs, several foreign governments, the Biden administration, the European Union, and the United Nations. The left-leaning press within and outside Israel played an important role, too, in keeping the topic on the agenda, as did some in Israel’s security establishment.
The way the op generally works is that human-rights organizations collect “evidence,” which the United Nations then compiles. Politicians repeat the “evidence” laundered by the United Nations, and the press disseminates it. Then, if there’s still any doubt, videos on social media “prove” it, showing settlers looting, harassing, and assaulting the local Palestinian population—sometimes lethally.
By any measure, the campaign has been successful: Settlers are known the world over as a violent, extremist group who are responsible for keeping the conflict festering. More importantly, the Biden administration weaponized the op to set up a sanctions machine against Israel. Other states have since followed suit. Most recently, on June 10, the foreign ministers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom imposed sanctions on two Israeli cabinet ministers, Smotrich and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, for “inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.”
The Regavim report uncovers the reality distorted by years of propaganda.
Where does the data come from? Anecdotal evidence aside, the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) maintains an online database of incidents involving settler violence. The database is based on an updated Excel sheet that is not publicly available on the site, but was obtained by Regavim. The Excel sheet “includes 8,332 ‘incidents involving Israeli settlers and other Israeli civilians’ that occurred in the West Bank or Israel (not in Gaza) between January 11, 2016, and April 30, 2023.”
The description creates the impression that there were 8,332 incidents of settler violence in that period, when in fact, 2,047 of those incidents involve settlers as victims of violence—although this number, too, is misleading, as it is nowhere near the number of Palestinian attacks on Jews in Judea and Samaria. Of the remaining 6,285 incidents, about 20 percent did not take place in Judea and Samaria and are therefore, strictly speaking, not “settler” violence. In fact, many of them also have nothing to do with violence of any sort. For example, OCHA counts any Jewish pilgrimage to the Temple Mount, no matter how peaceful, as “settler violence.” It also classifies as settler violence clashes between Israeli security forces and rioting Muslims on the Mount, even when no Israeli civilians are involved. Also listed as violence are “tourists visiting archaeological sites, infrastructure work carried out legally by the State of Israel itself, traffic accidents,” and other common activities that in no way can be categorized as “settler” related or “violent.” For instance, 1,613 cases (about 19% of the total) include “general complaints such as ‘trespassing’ that refer to the presence of Israeli tourists and hikers, which did not include assault or damage to property or individuals.” A further 2,039 (24%) mention no injury to persons.
“After filtering out thousands of irrelevant cases,” the report says, “only 833 incidents remain over a seven-and-a-half-year period—a mere 10 percent of the original list.”
Even then, many of the remaining cases raise serious questions about reliability. OCHA boasts that it cross-verifies each incident with at least one more source, but many of its listed incidents mention only a single source. In addition, these sources are often personally involved and have agendas and so are hardly to be trusted blindly. Therefore, even the 833 figure is likely inflated.
There are further grounds for skepticism. Since 404 cases (48%) simply cite “involvement in clashes,” it is impossible to determine which side initiated the violence. Moreover, in 117 cases, the perpetrators are listed as “security forces,” not settlers, while another 59 cite “security forces and settler civilians.” Other cases are flat-out misclassified. On closer reading, the report says “at least 96 additional incidents were identified where complainants noted they were harmed by security forces,” not by settlers.
Most alarming about the data compilation is that Palestinian terrorists killed in self-defense by armed civilians while carrying out attacks on Jews are also counted as victims of settler violence.
The details of such cases reveal how the compilers purposefully mislead their readers. For example, here’s how the OCHA file describes an incident that resulted in one Palestinian casualty on May 18, 2017:
A 21-year-old Palestinian man was shot and killed by an Israeli settler, who also injured another Palestinian. The incident occurred during a demonstration in solidarity with Palestinians prisoners, in a section of Road 60, crossing the built-up area of Huwwara village (Nablus). Video footage indicates that the settler ran over demonstrators who blocked his vehicle, following which, Palestinians threw stones at the vehicle and the settler opened fire. The Israeli Police announced that no investigation will be opened into this case.
Meanwhile, here is what happened, according to the Regavim report:
Arab rioters blocked the vehicle of an Israeli traveling on the main road in Samaria, attacked the car, and smashed its windshield. The Israeli, whose vehicle was also blocked by a Palestinian ambulance, had no choice but to shoot in self-defense. One of the rioters was killed by the gunfire.
Given the intensity of Palestinian terrorism and the inadequate protection Israel’s security services can offer, the behavior of the overwhelming majority of settlers is, if anything, notably restrained. Matan Peleg’s 2022 book, A State for Sale: How Foreign Countries Interfere with Israeli Policy (Hebrew), cites an IDF report that tallies 6,633 incidents of Palestinian terrorism against Jews in 2021; that’s roughly 24 times the yearly average documented in the OCHA data, which listed 2,047 cases over seven and a half years. If we accept the 833 figure the Regavim report arrives at and divide it by the number of years, we get an average of 110 cases of settler violence a year—a fraction of yearly Palestinian violent attacks. The Regavim report cites Shin Bet data from around the same time that counts 6,068 cases of serious Palestinian terrorism in 2020 through 2022, which notes only attacks that result in serious injuries and death. The IDF includes less serious cases and has the number at 20,582.
Aside from being a useful political instrument, the campaign against “settler violence” is also a business. Money from foreign governments and international bodies, such as the European Union and the United Nations, as well as from private donors (the New Israel Fund and The ?Rockefeller Foundation, among others), flows to Palestinian and leftist Israeli NGOs, sometimes, as the report details, explicitly earmarked for gathering evidence of human-rights infringements by settlers.
As the Regavim report explains, some of these organizations manufacture the evidence they purport to document by provoking soldiers and settlers and recording the reaction, editing it later to omit the context.
Once the initial shock of the massacre receded, to be replaced by media images of destruction and death in Gaza, the press amplified the administration’s “settler violence” narrative, often relying on the same people and organizations that furnished OCHA with its faulty information.
“Settlers killed a Palestinian teen. Israeli forces didn’t stop it,” read the title of a Washington Post exclusive on Jan. 9, 2024, in the lead-up to then President Biden’s executive order. The following month, shortly after the White House’s action, The New Yorker got in on the play with a piece about how, “with the world’s focus on Gaza, settlers have used wartime chaos as cover for violence and dispossession.” The beat went on steadily through the end of the year. In September, The Atlantic published a long essay by Israeli radical leftist author Assaf Gavron that cited a letter to the prime minister written by Ronen Bar, the controversial anti-Netanyahu director of the Shin Bet who was fired in March (but refused to resign until June 15), accusing Israel’s police of possibly being “secretly supportive” of violent settlers, who cause “indescribable” damage to Israel.
Perhaps most notable was a 14,000-word piece in The New York Times Magazine by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman and Times investigative journalist Mark Mazzetti, published on May 16. The piece turned reality on its head: What most threatens Israel, it suggested, is not Palestinian terrorism, but rather the “long history of crime” by violent settlers, which has gone “without punishment.” This piece had a particular role in the info op, as International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan referenced it in a CNN interview while he justified his application for arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
By December, the White House-driven narrative shift from Oct. 7 to the supposed victimization of the Palestinians had long been complete. Right before Christmas, CBS ran a story marking the turn: “Since October 7th last year, the U.N. figures there have been more than 1,400 attacks by extremist settlers against Palestinians or their property.”
The Regavim report also debunks the charge that Israel under the Netanyahu government fails to enforce the law on wild settlers or, worse, encourages their violence. In fact, it shows that Israel treats cases of Jewish nationalist violence very seriously; if anything, it hyper-enforces the law. Moreover, contrary to the settler-violence campaign messaging, the evidence shows that enforcement is effective. This is not just because Israeli authorities are proactive but also because settler violence is documented more than any other type of crime.
The conviction rate in Israel for nationalist violence is 56 percent for Arabs and 36 percent for Jews. It is lower for Jews in Judea and Samaria, at 31 percent. The lower rate of convictions for Judea and Samaria Jews may seem at first to point to lax enforcement. But, as the report points out, the “indictment rate against Jewish Israelis for nationalist violence offenses throughout Israel is three times higher than the indictment rate against Arab Israelis for the same types of offenses.” What explains this discrepancy is that authorities are quick to investigate settlers and quick to indict them, sending to court many cases that then get dismissed. The report adds, “The overwhelming majority of complaints received by police against Jewish violence in Judea and Samaria turn out to be false, submitted by left-wing movements and anarchist elements whose aim is to inflame the area.”
Recently leaked recordings of a conversation between the head of the Jewish Division of the Shin Bet—identified in the media by his first initial, “Aleph”—and the former chief of police in Judea and Samaria, Deputy Commissioner Avishai Muallem, support this conclusion. Aleph demanded that Muallem step up arrests of settlers: “We always want to arrest them for interrogation, as much as possible,” he said. “Look at how the Shin Bet interrogations are conducted with them. We arrest these ‘schmucks’ even without evidence for a few days.” When Muallem raised concerns about such questionable methods, Aleph reassured him: “It’s being handled by the Shin Bet Director’s Office with the defense minister. Break them. Put them in detention cells with rats,” he advised. And, if need be, “create the appearance of an investigation.”
It’s common knowledge in Israel that settlers are often subjected to administrative detention, sometimes for months, with no clear investigative premise or evidence of planned violence. It is therefore hard to tell whether Shin Bet is taken by the settler violence canard or whether it’s been helping construct it, especially as frequent administrative detentions give the impression of a serious threat that in turn justifies the policy. Seen in this light, it’s perhaps not surprising that Ronen Bar, the controversial Shin Bet chief who authorized these administrative detentions, was cited as the conscientious voice by the peddlers of the “settler violence” narrative. Nor is it surprising that Israel’s deep state is furiously trying to block Netanyahu’s pick to replace Bar, especially as he apparently envisions a different way forward in the relationship with the settlers.
In addition to Shin Bet, the policy of the IDF public relations office contributes to the “settler violence” campaign. Early last year, with the war in Gaza still at its peak, the former head of the IDF Central Command (which includes Judea and Samaria), Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fox, conducted a division-wide military exercise that simulated settlers taking a Palestinian hostage following a terror attack that killed a Jewish baby. The soldiers playing the settlers wore red vests labeled with what can be roughly translated as “Red Team-Enemy.” This purely imaginary scenario was especially jarring while Israel was, and still is, convulsing over the real hostages held by Hamas. The timing of the exercise, four months after Oct. 7, was also notable because it coincided with the Biden administration’s February 2024 executive order targeting settlers. Maj. Gen. Fox promoted the “violent settler” campaign on his last day in office. At his farewell ceremony in July 2024, as the Biden administration was imposing new tranches of sanctions against Jews in Judea and Samaria, he launched a tirade against the settlers, accusing them of “adopting the ways of the enemy.” This week’s clash between some settler youths and the IDF is best understood against this background.
A central point of the anti-settler campaign is to invert reality and create a false equivalence between “extremists on both sides,” who are the impediment to peace, which can be achieved only if we curb the settler zealots. But at its core, the op was always about toppling the right-wing government of Israel, using whatever domestic lever available, without regard to the damage. What’s worse for its advocates is that, after four years of the most intense pressure campaign imaginable, they still came up short. A lie may travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. But reality is a stubborn thing.
**This story originally appeared in Tablet magazine, at tabletmag.com, and is reprinted with permission.
https://youtu.be/Tz_APJUhbqw?si=CeAA0bfhCUUzrMuk
https://palwatch.org/page/16402
https://palwatch.org/page/37213
What’s the matter with Huckabee? Just what is he implying?
“US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee says he has asked Israeli authorities to “aggressively investigate” the killing of a Palestinian-American in the occupied West Bank.”
“Sayfollah Musallat, known as Saif – a 20-year-old dual US citizen – was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the town of Sinjil on Friday, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
After an initially muted US reaction, Huckabee – a supporter of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories – described it as a “criminal and terrorist act” on Tuesday.
In a news briefing on Wednesday, US President Donald Trump said a meeting on the killing would be held on Thursday, adding: “They’re going to be reporting that to me”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c75ry4k3nrzo
“The Palestinian Health Ministry?” 😀
From Biden and his goons, I could expect this.
How does he know what kind of
an act it is, if it hasn’t, according to him, been investigated? He’s drawing a false equivalence between the terrorist and Pallywood PA and Israel? Shame on him.
This subject has been discussed in various other articles here on site. The problem with this kind of incitement is that it is here to stay. Maybe the incitors should be charged before the ICJ or similar starting with those from the previous US regime and the commonwealth countries who are still trying to force the Two State Solution down everybody’s throats.