Some Settlers Are Violent but Charging ‘Settler Violence’ Demonizes Israel

Two realities coexist today: some settlers are violent – but crying “Settler Violence” distorts, weaponizes and essentializes. The charge slurs all settlers to question Israel’s legitimacy.

At 11:25 AM on Nov. 15, A., a 65-year-old lawyer serving his 166th day in reserves since Oct. 7, 2023, received a disturbing report. He was running a war room in Benjamin Region, the heart of Biblical Israel, an hour from Jerusalem. “It looks like Arabs spread poison in the grazing area,” a local Jew, who looks like the Settlers’ “Poster Child,” sporting a scraggly beard, big kippah, and bigger gun, texted.  Two goats died. One was saved by an Israeli veterinarian. Experts from the Israel Nature and Park Authority found deadly dates and poisoned bread that turned bluish. An Israeli police forensic team surrounded the planted poisons with red tape featuring black Hebrew letters. A screenshot of WhatsApp on Nov. 15 from al-Mughayyir records villagers celebrating the death of “the settlers’ goats.” Tracking footprints back to Al-Mughayyir, Israeli soldiers arrested a Palestinian. Yet headlines exaggerating “Settler Violence” and forever demonizing Israel, indict the Israelis for crimes committed against them, screaming: “ISRAELI COLONIZERS POISON SHEEP IN AL-MUGHAYYIR, KILLING THREE.”

An AI Gemini analysis of “Arabs poisoning goats West Bank” only reports “incidents of Israeli settlers poisoning Palestinian-owned livestock. … The search results do not contain recent reports of ‘Arabs poisoning goats in the West Bank.’” The Settler Violence was “reported by organizations like B’Tselem, WAFA (Palestinian news agency), and Al Jazeera, often citing Palestinian shepherds and local organizations.”

Weeks earlier, another Arab villager from Abu-Falah claimed “settlers” threw Molotov cocktails through the window, burning his house. “Where’s the broken glass?” the arson investigator asked. “Where did the fire start?” Eventually, he found a faulty fuse box that ignited an electrical fire.

Salem lives. Ours is an age of Manufactured Manias, Evil Essentialism and reputational witch-burnings. In May 2020, anyone who doubted America was systemically racist, was deemed racist. That September, advocates of returning children to school following COVID shutdowns were called child-killers. Across the aisle, too many Republicans blame Jan. 6, 2021 on “the deep state.” 

Predictably, while “everyone” knows that Israel’s supporters are genocidal, racist, settler-colonialist, oppressive Zionists, a new canard emboldens Hamas: Settler Violence.

Manufactured manias take kernels of truth, good values, popular targets, then go all accelerator, no brakes. Especially regarding Israel, many manias essentialize. Wearied by the sustained delegitimization campaign against Israel, even many Israel supporters treat many Israeli failings as immutable. The fury escalates. Random acts become intentional, systemic. And rather than critiquing what Israel does, too many regret that Israel is.

Clearly, violent settlers behaving monstrously should be prosecuted.  And their minimal numbers should make this problem easily solvable.

A fresh IDF report catalogues 867 incidents of “nationalistic crime last year. Approximately 300 extremists have committed these attacks, with 70 “hardcore” offenders  – 39 of whom are under restraining orders.

Still, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has stomached too many thugs and vandals for too long.  As a sovereign state, Israel mustn’t tolerate any violence, especially vigilantes or politically-motivated attacks.

Charging “Settler Violence” casts Israel as oppressive, and Palestinians as the innocent “oppressed.” One libel feeds another. Amnesty International’s website proclaims: “State-backed Settler Violence” highlights “the urgent need” to end “Israel’s system of apartheid.”

Most reports of “Settler Violence” exaggerate. Reporters ignore Palestinian provocations and downplay Palestinian terrorism. Those spins implicate 750,000 overwhelmingly law-abiding Israelis, including 220,000 Jerusalemites. This “Settler Violence” framing perpetuates the Palestinian libel treating Jews as settler-colonialists rather than a people with 3,500-year-old ties to the Jewish homeland – on both sides of the Green Line.

In today’s all-or-nothing debates about Israel, Bash-Israel-Firsters ignore the hyperbole, while Israel’s defenders minimize the problem. OCHA, The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, tracked an admittedly disturbing uptick in anti-Palestinian assaults by Jews in Judaea and Samaria – from 540 incidents in 2021, to 1,500 in the first eleven months of 2025 – injuring over 1,000 Palestinians and harming 4,200 trees or saplings.

Note the gap between these numbers and the IDF’s. Trusting the U.N. to track Palestinian claims is like trusting Iran to chair Human Rights Watch. In Tablet, Hebrew University’s Gadi Taub publicized a Regavim study analyzing 8,332 reports of “Settler Violence,” from 2016 and 2023. The number included 2,047 times settlers were “victims of violence.” Outrageously, “OCHA counts any Jewish pilgrimage to the Temple Mount, no matter how peaceful, as ‘settler violence.’” OCHA lists “tourists visiting archaeological sites,” contested infrastructure work, “traffic accidents,” and Jews defending themselves against Palestinian terrorism. Regavim, a pro-settler NGO, claimed less than 10 percent of the 8,332 incidents involved Jews attacking innocent Palestinians.

Reports of “Settler Violence” blossom with biased descriptions and without context. Reporters rarely mention that from Oct. 7, 2023 through April 2025, Palestinians launched 8,670 terror attacks in Judea and Samaria – killing 86 Israelis. Security forces thwarted thousands more. Videos online showing aggressive settlers attacking often skip the preceding provocations.

I recently visited “A.” and his unit, reservists patrolling a tinderbox sector – with the instigators living cheek-by-jowl. “Hilltop youth” with long side-curls and super-sized skullcaps roam freely with goat herds, grazing ever-closer to al-Mughayyir – dominated by a Hamas-loving clan. International observers and left-wing Israelis visit, calling themselves a “protective presence.” Occasionally, they discourage violent Jews. But theirs is often a “provocative presence” – yelling in settlers’ faces, as others film, trying to provoke violent reactions to go viral. Amid it all, these mostly middle-aged reservists try keeping order, staying safe and getting home to the wife and kids.

My reservist host logged some Jewish attacks, but registered many more Arab assaults. Palestinian villagers rolled burning tires down from their hilltop homes, threw stones, and threatened to mob the young shepherds approaching their home turf – other sectors experienced shootings and bombings.

Stunned to see Jews blamed for Palestinian crimes he documented, this senior lawyer marveled: “It’s classic projection” – accusations in a mirror. “The Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels vowed: ‘we’ll find you guilty of the crimes we commit.’”

The first field where the Palestinians poisoned the sheep illustrates another under-reported story. The IDF chopped down the trees, fueling charges of Israelis harassing Palestinian farmers. But a memorial Israeli flag, roadside, marks where Palestinian terrorists ambushed two Jews. Until the IDF operation, Palestinians used the trees for cover to bombard passing drivers with rocks and Molotov cocktails.

Biblical or Messianic claims motivate some settlers. But many more emphasize security, explaining that expanding their presence by roads, on hilltops, saves lives by discouraging attacks. Still, altogether, the built-up areas of Israeli settlements barely cover 2% of the sparsely-populated West Bank.

The resulting news coverage exaggerates “Settler Violence” while minimizing “Palestinian Terrorism.” Gemini’s AI reports “that while Palestinian attacks occur at a higher frequency and are more lethal … the term ‘settler violence’ receives disproportionately higher engagement and attention.” Posts emphasizing “settler violence, especially those with video clips showing property damage, injury, or confrontation” generate “high impression counts (up to 1.2 million impressions in the first week for some clips).” This makes “Settler Violence” a “high-impact narrative.” A Jewish People Policy Institute analysis found over 5,500 media mentions of “Settler Violence” in August 2025 versus 1,500 mentions of Palestinian violence.

This is churnalism not journalism – pushing an agenda to agitate.

Exaggerating “Settler Violence” advances Palestinians’ narrative denying Jews’ ties to their Biblical homeland. British and Jordanian diplomats defined the Jordan River’s “West Bank” – ad-Diffah l-Garbiyyah – geopolitically only in 1949. It’s been the Jewish tribal area of Judea and Samaria for millennia.

The “West Bank” describes the territories Jordan snatched after invading Israel during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence – defined by “the Green Line,” recalling the colored pencil used to draw the armistice lines. The U.N. never recognized these territories as Jordanian from 1949 through 1967. After Israel won them in its 1967 war of self-defense, U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 endorsed returning some “territories” not all “the territories,” in exchange for peace.

Whatever endgame one endorses, rejecting Jewish ties to that territory negates Jews’ historic ties to their homeland.

Today’s Middle East is complicated. Fanatics from both side instigate. But concluding “they’re equally violent” or “everyone lies” is morally obtuse. Like every country, Israel has violent criminals; but as a democracy, Israel prosecutes them, and has a citizenry that mostly denounces them – as do most Jews worldwide. Alas, too many Palestinians celebrate their terrorists, spreading their lies worldwide.

Exposing “violent settlers” highlights criminal behavior that should be controlled. Lying about “Settler Violence” unfairly demonizes Israel, again.

Gil Troy is an American presidential historian and a Senior Fellow at the JPPI, the Global Thinktank of the Jewish People. His latest E-book, “The Essential Guide to Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism and Jew-hatred” was just published and can be downloaded on the JPPI  – Jewish People Policy Institute – Website.