Over the past two weeks, as Israel continued its military operations against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip, the international media were busy revisiting an old angle to attack the Jewish state: the supposed escalation in violence against Palestinians by settlers in the West Bank.
On December 6, the BBC published a piece by its international affairs editor Jeremy Bowen that sounded the alarm on the alleged Israeli settler violence that is bringing “destruction and fear to [the] West Bank as war rages.”
“Violent attacks, including fatal shootings of Palestinians by armed Jewish settlers in the West Bank have risen sharply,” Bowen claims. “So many attacks are happening that Israel’s closest allies, including the United States and the United Kingdom, have condemned violence by extremist settlers and demanded that those guilty of crimes should be prosecuted.”
Meanwhile, a segment that aired on ABC News saw correspondent Patrick Reevell walk through the Palestinian village of Khirbat Zanuta, which he reported was abandoned by residents who fled as a result of attacks by settlers.
In the 9-minute package, Reevell interviews numerous Palestinians who allege they were subjected to horrific violence at the hands of extremist Israelis, including a man who claims his nine-year-old son was beaten and threatened with being shot.
Reevell states that a “surge of threats and violence from settlers” has led to 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank leaving their homes and the evacuation of more than a dozen Palestinian villages.
Reevell also takes the time to interview professional Palestinian provocateur Issa Amro, who has been convicted of numerous offenses, including attacking soldiers and civilians, and claims he has faced near-daily harassment from the IDF and settlers since the October 7 Hamas massacre.
An article published by Vox on December 2 similarly warned that while the “world focused on Gaza, Israeli settlers and soldiers are increasing attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank,” adding that “the rate of violence has significantly increased.”
And a piece in the Daily Beast this week claimed “hundreds of peaceful Palestinian civilians” have been killed as a result of “Jewish settler rampages [that] have metastasized since Oct. 7… Settlers have attacked Palestinian villages in the south Hebron hills with the explicit purpose of ethnic cleansing.”
But there is a serious problem with all these pieces: there has not been an explosion in settler violence or a spike in Palestinian deaths at the hands of settlers in the West Bank.
Indeed, figures compiled by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) paint a different story.
According to the UN agency, a total of eight Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers — and not “hundreds” as has been suggested.
At least seven Israelis have been killed in attacks by Palestinians during the same period.
Breaking down casualty figures in the West Bank compared to last year in Israel Hayom, David Weinberg, the Israel Office Director of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, pointed out that this year has also not been uniquely bad in terms of general violence in the West Bank:
From the detailed and precise statistics I received, it is crystal clear that there has not been a significant increase in right-wing Israeli-Jewish violence against Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria since the beginning of the current Gaza war compared to the period of January-July 2023. There certainly has been no uptick or ‘surge’ in settler violence in October-November as compared to the same period in 2022 […]
Overall, the level of friction/violence in 2023 is about the same as that of 2022, totaling about 1,000 incidences of violence of all types over the course of the full year.”
Of course, none of this is to say that settler violence has not been an issue over the years.
Attacks by a minority group of Israeli extremists against Palestinians, such as the assault on Huwara in February, are despicable and must be punished to the full extent of the law.
However, claims of “unprecedented” settler attacks in the West Bank following October 7 are simply not supported by data.
UCLA academic claims “Jewish settler rampages” in the West Bank have left “hundreds of peaceful Palestinian civilians dead” since Oct. 7.
“Hundreds?!”
Even the UN’s figures, however, allege settlers were responsible for 8 deaths & another 2 either by Israeli forces or settlers.… https://t.co/eER65KuOXQ
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) December 13, 2023
And while the media was busy imagining this recent off-the-scale settler violence, it continued to ignore a festering problem whose existence is supported by real evidence — namely, the terrorism that has long emanated from Palestinian West Bank communities and that necessitates the ongoing IDF counterterror operations in the territory.
But when have the media ever let facts get in the way of a good story?
As Palestinian prisoners were released in exchange for Israeli hostages, there were a couple of misleading narratives doing the rounds.
We explain exactly what you’ve missed. pic.twitter.com/uqEagyzJv0
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) December 8, 2023
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Photo credit: Nasser Ishtayeh via Flash90
