Key Takeaways:
- B’Tselem’s latest report, “The Elimination Project,” accuses Israel of working to undermine Palestinian collective life in the West Bank.
- The report misleads readers by turning Israel’s legitimate security-based actions into evidence for this nefarious plan.
- Despite the issues with the report and its conclusions, it has been spread uncritically by mainstream media outlets, anti-Israel personalities, and NGOs.
What do a terror-affiliated NGO, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and several mainstream media organizations all have in common?
Over the past few days, each of these actors has uncritically spread to their respective audiences the latest anti-Israel report put out by the Israeli NGO B’Tselem.
This new report, entitled “The Elimination Project,” posits that, for years, Israel has undertaken a program of undermining Palestinian collective life in the West Bank and that this project has gone into overdrive over the past few years (particularly following the terrorist invasion of southern Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023).
However, like much of B’Tselem’s previous publications, this report is based on distortions and manipulations meant to ascribe nefarious intentions to every Israeli action in order to allege the most heinous crimes against the Jewish state.
What Is B’Tselem?
Before getting to the issues found in B’Tselem’s latest report, it is important to first understand what the organization is and its history of anti-Israel activism.
While B’Tselem presents itself to the international community as a neutral “human rights organization,” it is known within Israel as a fringe voice that is primarily active in disseminating false accusations against the Jewish state both domestically and globally.
Over the past few years, B’Tselem has:
- Accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza (only after broadening the legal term so as to make it applicable to Israel’s fight against Hamas);
- Alleged that Israel is an apartheid regime (again, after altering the definition of the term);
- Supported international sanctions against the Jewish state;
- Campaigned against the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism;
- Publicly turned to international institutions (e.g. the United Nations and the International Criminal Court) to offer its services in investigations of Israeli activities.
Despite its blatantly biased approach to the Jewish state, B’Tselem is treated as an authority by the international media and Western governments due to its self-identification as a “human rights NGO” and its claim to speak as an Israeli organization.
This extension of the “halo effect” to B’Tselem has allowed it to negatively influence the international discussion of Israel’s activities, with the organization serving as a primary source for those who seek to harm the interests of the Jewish state.
The Distortions Behind “The Elimination Project”
The heart of “The Elimination Project” is the claim that the actions of Israel, the IDF, and Israeli civilians inside the West Bank are not independent actions but are part of a greater plan to destroy the collective existence of Palestinians in the West Bank.
However, for B’Tselem to reach this conclusion, it has to attach a nefarious motive to all of Israel’s actions in the disputed territory and downplay the security and political rationale for many of these actions.
For example, the report points to the Security Barrier, checkpoints, and gates in front of Palestinian communities as evidence for Israel’s use of arbitrary collective punishment and efforts to hamper the mobility of the West Bank’s Palestinians. However, to make such a case, B’Tselem has to downplay the security considerations that made these steps necessary decades ago and that continue to be relevant to the safety of Israeli civilians.
While the Security Barrier and checkpoints may be inconvenient, they are also necessary to stymie the movement of Palestinian terrorists within the territory and between the territory and Israel’s large civilian centers.
Similarly, B’Tselem points to the killings of over 1,000 Palestinians between October 2023 and the present day, presenting them as evidence for indiscriminate killings and settler violence.
However, this is a distortion of reality. In December 2025, an HonestReporting analysis found that nearly half of those Palestinians killed in the West Bank over the past two years had been affiliated with terrorist organizations. This does not even include those who were killed while committing lone wolf attacks or other unaffiliated acts of violence.
B’Tselem knows this as part of the analysis was conducted using the NGO’s own numbers.
While violence in the West Bank is not to be taken lightly, it is deceitful for B’Tselem to misrepresent these killings as being driven by a grand anti-Palestinian plan and not immediate security concerns.
Another focus of the report is B’Tselem’s assertion that Israel is deliberately “strangling” the West Bank economy as a means of disrupting Palestinian society. To back up this claim, the NGO points to Israel’s withdrawal of work permits from West Bank Palestinians following October 7 and the withholding of revenue from the Palestinian Authority.
These actions do seem arbitrary and harmful when the rationales behind them are not presented: Israel withdrew work permits following a tightening of security regulations in the wake of October 7 and Israel withholds this revenue due to the Palestinian Authority’s continued misappropriation of funds for the financing of imprisoned Palestinian terrorists, as well as the families of killed Palestinian terrorists.
While it is legitimate to question and debate the efficacy of Israel’s security policy, it is inappropriate to misrepresent Israel’s actions as evidence for a nefarious overarching plan, which is exactly what B’Tselem has done with this report.
The World Accepts B’Tselem’s Grift
It is no surprise that, following the publication of “The Elimination Project” and the public relations campaign by B’Tselem that ensued, that it has garnered much attention around the world.
Mainstream media organizations like The New York Times, The Guardian, Reuters, and FRANCE24 all uncritically published coverage of the report, with headlines blaring the news that an Israeli organization had accused the Israeli government (and the Israeli state, by extension) of undertaking a nefarious project of destroying Palestinian collective life in the West Bank.
This message was also spread by such anti-Israel luminaries as Francesca Albanese, New York Times’ columnist Nicholas Kristof (who has no problem believing any allegation about Israel, no matter how absurd), and Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi.
Even the Palestinian Authority and Al-Haq (a Palestinian NGO accused of ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror organization) shared their support for this report.
Why?
It’s simple. B’Tselem’s report reinforces the anti-Israel narratives that are promoted by the international media, public personalities, and global NGOs. The fact that it’s an Israeli organization providing this ammunition makes it all the better as they can claim that it’s not them saying such nasty things about the Jewish state, but Israelis themselves.
Thus, while B’Tselem’s report may be based on fabrications and distortions, the threat that it poses to Israel’s standing in the international arena and in the court of public opinion is very real.
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© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
