by Melanie Phillips
“Settler violence” is a malevolently distorted canard.
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| American photojournalist Heidi Levine receives medical treatment at a hospital in Ramallah after being injured in an attack by extremist Jewish settlers during the annual olive harvest in the village of Abu Falah near Ramallah, Oct. 16, 2026. Photo by Flash90. |
The complexity of “settler violence” received dramatic illustration over the past week.
Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine was injured on Oct. 16 during a violent confrontation between Jewish residents and local Arabs near Ramallah.
It was reported that dozens of masked Israeli settlers had attacked local Arabs harvesting their olives, during which the settlers knocked Levine to the ground, kicked her repeatedly, and seized her camera and phone.
The following day, a European delegation visited the area near the Arab town of Taybeh without coordinating the trip in advance with the Israel Defense Forces as required. The diplomats allegedly came under attack by masked Jewish settlers.
These incidents have attracted worldwide media attention and political condemnation.
On Sunday, a group of social-media influencers and others touring these “West Bank” areas of Judea and Samaria came under attack near the village of Turnus Ayaa when Arabs hurled rocks at their vehicles.
The attack was captured on video. One member of the group, former deputy mayor of Jerusalem Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, who is standing for the People of Israel party in the Israeli general election on Oct. 27, was filmed talking to other occupants of her car when a rock shattered the window and lightly wounded a woman sitting in the back.
At the time of writing, no Western outlet has reported this attack.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, apologized to Levine. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, however, said the facts of that incident “remain unclear and are under investigation,” with reports indicating that some 200 Arabs and far-left activists had confronted approximately 40 Israeli youths. “Footage shows masked individuals on both sides hurling objects amid reports of fireworks fired at Jewish youths,” it said.
Levine, however, denounced her attackers as “Jewish terrorists” and “not even humans.” Would she strip any other group of their very humanity?
As for the Europeans, Israeli TV’s Channel 14 reported claims from local Jewish residents that the diplomats had staged or faked the incident. Subsequently, the diplomats refused to co-operate with the Israeli investigation, failing to provide, as requested, detailed witness statements or video footage.
Yet Western media outlets have chosen not to report the doubts raised about these alleged “settler attacks” on Arabs and others, while also omitting to report the filmed attack by Arabs.
Even if the claims by Levine and the diplomats are true, the reporting of this “settler violence” issue is malevolently skewed.
No one denies there’s a problem, but it’s very small. There are about 500,000 Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria. Estimates of the number of young hoodlums carrying out unprovoked attacks on Arabs range from 95 to 300 youths.
The vast majority of “settlers” are law-abiding citizens. And they are under constant attack by local Arabs.
Dozens of such attacks—some clearly provoked, and filmed by foreign and Israeli activists—are being reported on social media almost every day.
On Monday, 10 Arabs and Israeli far-left activists ambushed a Jewish resident riding an ATV off-road and threw stones at him. When he dismounted, the attackers tried to run him over with a tractor.
On Tuesday, around 15 Israeli activists, photographers and Arabs blocked security roads with stones and boulders.
On Wednesday night, there were at least two Arab stone-throwing attacks on Israeli cars. On Thursday, Arabs and Israeli activists armed with clubs threw stones at Jewish shepherds.
Last Shabbat, multiple attacks were reported by the Judea and Samaria situation room. When a Jewish resident was out for a run, Arabs tried to hit him with their vehicle.
Two attacks with Molotov cocktails were reported, and one with pipe bombs. Sheep were stolen (a regular event) from a Jewish farm. Jewish shepherds were wounded by Arab gunfire; two more Jewish locals were fired at; and there was another attempted attack on Jews with guns and clubs.
On the same day, a Jewish resident reported on X that Arabs began hurling stones at a Jewish shepherd while anarchist activists at their side documented the incident.
“The shepherd called for IDF forces, but they, too, were attacked,” he wrote. “In footage from the event, masked Arabs are seen throwing stones at the soldiers and the shepherd, with anarchists spotted among them who ignore the Arab violence and wait with cameras for an opportune moment to capture a biased, one-sided image.”
Every year, the olive harvest attracts activists to “help the Palestinians pick their olives,” and every year there are confrontations.
Naomi Linder Kahn, director of the international division at the Judea and Samaria monitoring group Regavim, says some foreign-funded groups use the olive harvest to provoke confrontations.
“They don’t give activists buckets for harvesting olives,” she said. “What they give them is video cameras, and they give them lessons in social media and … how to provoke a confrontation, how to present yourself when you’re trying to get into Israel, to misrepresent what you’re coming for and where you’re going to be.”
Brad Lander, the Democratic nominee for a congressional seat in New York, was among a group of around 80 Americans and others detained for some hours by the IDF this week after the group arrived “to harvest olives” alongside Arab farmers without requesting Israeli permission.
“The plot in question requires only a small number of harvesters to collect its produce,” an Israeli military official told JNS. “The security establishment views the arrival of dozens of activists as an act intended solely to provoke, which undermines the harvesting process.”
Lander is Jewish, but he is no friend of Israel. He has accused the country of “genocide” and has called Israel’s occupation of the West Bank “a crime under international law.” These claims are lies designed to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state in the eyes of the world.
Earlier this week, Lander said he was visiting to help Arab farmers harvest olives “in the face of state-sanctioned settler terrorism” and to “shed a light on the reality of the occupation.” If anyone thinks this group wasn’t there to foment trouble for the Israelis, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
It’s difficult to discover what truly happens in many of these incidents, so an open mind is necessary. There is indeed a problem of Jewish attacks on Arabs that have not been stopped; they are disgraceful, and the Israelis need to shut them down.
But there can be no justification for Western media and politicians failing to acknowledge this Arab terrorist war being waged against Jewish residents in Judea and Samaria. Such radically skewed reporting has turned half a million overwhelmingly upstanding and besieged Jews into enemies of humanity—just as Israel has been treated in its war against Iran.
However, in addition to failing to deal adequately with the problem of delinquent “hilltop youth” or the provocateurs, the Israelis themselves hardly ever mention this Arab onslaught in Judea and Samaria.
There are various possible reasons for this. First, the degree of truth in the “settler violence” claims puts them on the back foot.
Second, they are under huge pressure over this from the Trump administration and don’t want to irritate it further by introducing the inconvenient complexity of Jewish victimization.
Third, among the Israeli top brass, there are some who even now hanker for a “two-state solution” and view the settlers as the obstacle.
Last, but not least, the Israelis want to brush this issue away as of no real consequence. As ever, they dismiss Western public opinion as irredeemably hateful toward the Jewish people and so think myopically that trying to appease it is a waste of time.
They believe that they have more urgent issues to deal with, including the renewed threats from Iran, Gaza and Lebanon. They also fear that a third and even more terrible intifada is being plotted by the Arabs of Judea and Samaria, along with the Palestinian Authority’s force of 60,000 armed men.
If that fearsome threat were to be realized, the combination of Western malice toward the “settlers” and Israel’s negligence in how it presents itself to the world means that once again, the Jews of Israel would be blamed for their own destruction.
Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, broadcaster and author, writes a weekly column for JNS. Currently a columnist for The Times of London, her new book, Fighting the Hate: A Handbook for Jews Under Siege, has just been published by Wicked Son. Her previous book, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West and Why Only They Can Save It, was published in 2025. Access her work at: melaniephillips.substack.com.
Source: https://www.jns.org/opinion/column/melanie-phillips/the-war-against-the-jews-in-judea-and-samaria
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