Israel has a little-noticed, rear-flank menace that’s undermining its war against Hamas.Ironically, this threat comes from a segment of Israel’s Jewish population: settlers in the West Bank who commit violent acts, including murder, against Palestinian civilians.
This mostly overlooked problem represents a two-pronged threat. One, it’s a drain on the Israeli Defense Forces, which already is overextended fighting Hamas terrorists in Gaza, contending with militant threats in the West Bank and holding off Hezbollah on the Lebanese border.
Two, this issue imperils global public support for Israel and the country’s moral high ground in its war — critical factors that affect the Israeli military’s ability to operate unhindered against foes.
These extremist settlers may give off the appearance of being Israeli patriots, with their tzitzit fringes, large yarmulkes, Israeli flags and claims to the mantle of Zionism. But make no mistake about it: They are undermining Israel at one of the most vulnerable moments in its history.
Not all Jewish settlers in the West Bank are extremists. Most are ordinary people drawn to the territory for lifestyle reasons, the relative affordability of West Bank real estate or the belief that occupying those hilltops is critical to holding onto the disputed territory considered part of the biblical Land of Israel. For example, in the two largest Jewish settlements — Modiin Illit and Beitar Illit, ultra-Orthodox cities that are home to 30% of all Jewish settlers — less than 5% of voters cast ballots for Israel’s far-right parties in the last election.
Most settlers do not rampage through Palestinian towns and villages torching homes and cars, uprooting olive trees, and shooting people.
But some do, and they’ve stepped up their violence against Palestinians since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks. On October 11, settlers entered the Palestinian village of Qusra, near Nablus, attacked a home and killed three Palestinians. The next day they attacked the funeral procession, killing two more. In an Oct. 13 video from Al-Tuwani, near Hebron, a settler with a machine gun shoots an unarmed Palestinian standing opposite him while an Israeli soldier looks on. Since Oct. 7, over 550 West Bank Palestinians have left their homes due to settler violence, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.
To be sure, Palestinian assailants from the West Bank also perpetuate frequent attacks against Jews both in the West Bank and Israel, and fatal attacks by Palestinians are more numerous than fatal attacks by Jewish settlers.But the Israeli Army and police pursue Palestinian assailants in the West Bank and protect the settlers. When settlers attack Palestinians, the Israeli Army usually stands by; protecting Palestinians is not part of its mandate.
“Since the war in Gaza began,” B’Tselem reports, “state-backed settler violence against Palestinians has risen in both frequency and intensity, with soldiers and police officers fully backing the assailants and often participating in the attacks. Events on the ground indicate that under cover of war, settlers are carrying out such assaults virtually unchecked, with no one trying to stop them before, during, or after the fact.”
To be clear, these violent settlers aren’t pursuing Hamas terrorists. They’re preying on Palestinian civilians — often in neighboring villages, usually unarmed.
And they’re getting away with murder, literally, thanks in part to a far-right Israeli government that not only casts a blind eye on settler violence but often encourages it.
Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on multiple occasions has whipped out his handgun and threatened to shoot Palestinians to show them who’s boss. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the man in charge of Jewish settlement policy in the West Bank, in March called for “wiping out” the Palestinian city of Huwara following a Palestinian terrorist attack (he later apologized).
Violent Jewish settlers have been attacking Palestinian farms, towns and people for years, but their intensity increased after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power 10 months ago with the most right-wing government in Israel’s history. Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on multiple occasions has whipped out his handgun and threatened to shoot Palestinians to show them who’s boss. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the man in charge of Jewish settlement policy in the West Bank, in March called for “wiping out” the Palestinian city of Huwara following a Palestinian terrorist attack (he later apologized).
Such attacks are morally reprehensible under any circumstance. But even Israelis who don’t care about the plight of Palestinians should oppose these rogue attacks because they’re putting Israel in mortal and moral danger.
They’re fueling tit-for-tat violence that risk further inflaming the West Bank at a time when the IDF already has its hands full, and they undercut Israel’s moral claims in this conflict: If Jews are terrorizing Arabs in the West Bank, how can Israel expect the world to condemn and stand against Arab terror against Jews?
What Hamas did on Oct. 7 — massacring over 1,300 civilians and soldiers, butchering the elderly and children, beheading and torturing victims, taking more than 220 captives — is not the same thing as what’s happening in the West Bank.
But if Jewish settlers are given free rein to wreak mayhem, destruction and death in Palestinian villages, then the difference becomes one of degree and scale.
Violent Jewish settlers don’t care much about how the world views them. They care about how Palestinians view them. They want Palestinians to be afraid, cede their land, and leave.But Israel should care how the world views it, and how it views itself. Israel must be a place of laws and respect for human life, and preserve the IDF as a military force that seeks to minimize casualties of war, not maximize them. This is what sets Israel apart.
Violent settlers are trying to destroy that. Israel should crack down on them before they further deplete the country’s military and moral reserves.
