http://New report debunks ‘settler violence’ narrative https://www.jns.org/new-report-debunks-settler-violence-narrative/ David Isaac
The “settler violence” campaign, which claims that violence against Arabs by Jewish “settlers” spiked post-Oct. 7, 2023, is based on fraudulent numbers, according to a report published on Sunday.
The campaign’s goal, according to the report, is to defame not merely the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria, but the Israeli army and by extension the entire State of Israel.
The 125-page report, “False Flags and Real Agendas,” produced by Israeli NGO Regavim, describes the “settler violence” smear as a “modern-day blood libel.”
The report dissects the narrative and the numbers behind the slander, which went into overdrive following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack. A flurry of news items appeared in the liberal mainstream press in the United States and elsewhere about escalating “settler violence” in Judea and Samaria.
These reports claimed that Jewish violence had increased in retaliation for the Hamas massacre. “The breadth and intensity of the violence has revived memories of the ‘nakba,’ or catastrophe, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes, never to return,” reported The Washington Post on Nov. 9, 2023.
In February 2024, the Biden administration, for the first time, sanctioned Israelis it claimed had engaged in violence against Arab civilians, citing “high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages and property destruction.” It would sanction more Israelis in subsequent months, along with certain pro-Israel NGOs, including Regavim.
The Biden White House justified its interference in another country’s internal affairs by claiming that Israel’s government had not done enough to “hold accountable extremist settlers who commit acts of violence,” in the words of then-State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.