The Rise of Settler Terrorism in the West Bank

John Glaser, August 16, 2012

From Foreign Affairs:

According to UN investigations, in 2011, extremist settlers launched almost 300 attacks on Palestinian property, causing over 100 Palestinian casualties and destroying or damaging about 10,000 trees of Palestinian farmers. The UN has also reported that violent incidents against Palestinians have proliferated, rising from 200 attacks in 2009 to over 400 in 2011. The spike in assaults on Palestinians by settlers has come despite the fact that over the same period, Palestinian terrorism fell dramatically.

…The Israeli government does not support or condone settler violence, but it has failed to adequately combat it. Soldiers have been known to look on as violence occurs, and they sometimes do not aggressively seek the perpetrators after the fact. According to Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization, of 781 incidents of settler abuse monitored since 2005, Israeli authorities closed the cases on over 90 percent of them without indictment.

Perhaps there is an argument to be made that the fact that Israeli authorities systematically ignore and pardon settler violence doesn’t necessarily equate “support” for it. But that is a weak argument. And it’s even weaker when you consider that Israeli policy purposely incentivizes Israelis to live in the West Bank. Under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ‘s policies over the last three years tens of thousands more Israelis have moved into the West Bank, causing the Jewish population in Palestinian territory to increase by 18 percent to more than 342,000 at the end of 2011. Israeli spending on these illegal settlements has hit a two-decade high of $1.1 billion. This, while Tel Aviv is well aware of the rise in settler violence.

That certainly sounds like support to me.



12 Responses to “The Rise of Settler Terrorism in the West Bank”

  1. Fredericka Wheaton
    August 17th, 2012 at 2:26 am

    Israeli authorities closed the cases on over 90 percent of them without indictment.

  2. chill1184
    August 17th, 2012 at 7:05 am

    I'm honestly not surprised but you'll never see this in the MSM and if does the calls of anti-semite come right afterward.

  3. Roger Lafontaine
    August 19th, 2012 at 7:46 pm

    Nope. What happens in Israel stays in Israel. That's the MSM policy. Unless the victim is an Israeli. Then we get an earful of Holocaust hysteria for days on end.

  4. GeriatrikSk8r
    August 19th, 2012 at 10:54 pm

    And yet, even in criticism the Empire frames the discussion. They are "settlers". Brave people establishing an outpost in a wild, uncivilized place. Pioneers and homesteaders, bringing humanity to the wilderness.
    Thus the thinking becomes so entrenched, the label itself so firmly settled, that if we call them what they actually are – thieves or carpetbaggers, plunderers or muggers, no one would know to whom it is we refer.

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