Despite State-Backed Israeli Settler Violence, the Palestinians Will Persevere

It would seem that the Israeli settlers are out of control. Their violent actions have either been encouraged by the Israel Defense Forces or Israeli government, or protected by the former and quietly supported by the latter. This support exists as they set homes on fire, attack Palestinian residents, and destroy their olive trees in the West Bank. Such terrorist activity is rarely penalized in the country’s justice system because the state supports the policy of mass expulsion of the Palestinians from the West Bank.

Last Friday in Tal, four Palestinians and two Israelis were killed after there was an ISIS-like incursion into the Palestinian village. A Palestinian living in one of the attacked homes grabbed a settler’s rifle and shot two Israelis before being killed by the IDF. In response to this act of self-defense, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has advocated for turning the West Bank into Beit Hanoun, a city in Gaza that Israel destroyed during its genocide. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for “intensive counterterrorism operation[s]” and for settler outposts to expand in the West Bank.

The ISIS-KKK-like terrorist settlers reacted by torching mosques and setting fire to homes in villages, attacking an ambulance transporting a patient, and firing live ammunition at Palestinian residents. This comes on the heels of Israeli settlers detaining US Rep. and 2028 presidential hopeful Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) in early July when he visited a Palestinian village that had been destroyed by settlers.

In the wider context, Israeli settlers and the IDF have killed nearly 1,200 Palestinians, including 250 children, in the West Bank since the genocidal war on Gaza after October 7. Making matters worse, Israeli terroristic violence by settlers has increased by 63% in the first half of 2026 compared with the second half of 2025. They may seem unhinged, but it is the far-right government that has fueled this level of violence.

The appearance of the Israeli settlers being out of control is a sleight of hand. They are working, like the KKK did under state governments in the American South, under the auspices of the Israeli government.

With horror, in the ashes of the failed Iraq War, ISIS drove masses of people from their homes across wide swaths of Iraq and Syria during the mid-2010s in the hope of reestablishing an Islamic state that was far more brutal than any Islamic caliphate throughout history. The creation of Israel was similar, in the hope of establishing a long-lost Jewish state in historic Palestine via ethnic cleansing of roughly 750,000 people. Both ISIS and Zionist-Israeli forces and settlers have, over time, driven millions of residents from their homes using genocide, terror, and mass murder to recapture an imagined past. ISIS was defeated thanks to Iran, the United States, Syria, and Iraqi forces working together. After the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Israeli version of ISIS reawakened from its post-Nakba lull, but at a slower pace until the 21st century. It was in this century that we have seen vast, state-backed settler expansion, land theft, and the destruction of Palestinian livelihoods, usually under the approving eyes of the IDF and the Israeli government. We have also seen over 73,000 Gazans killed by the IDF in the past three years during the genocidal war; the dead were mostly civilian, including about 21,000 children. Now the Israeli army, reneging on ceasefire terms, controls 70% of the Gaza Strip and already has plans for three Israeli settlements in Gaza where 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced.

But as Zionists-cum-Israelis have used violence and dispossession for well over a century in attempts to drive Palestinians out of Palestine, do they really think that they will ever fully succeed? They certainly have the US superpower’s blessing.

Yet the people of Palestine have time and perseverance on their side. They have a history that has seen the Assyrian, Babylonian, Roman, and Greek empires come and go. They have seen the uncouth Crusaders’ relatively brief attempt to occupy the Holy Land. They’ve borne witness to the Byzantine, Umayyad, and Abbasid regimes. But they are still resisting in Gaza and the West Bank.

The appearance of the Israeli settlers being out of control is a sleight of hand. They are working, like the KKK did under state governments in the American South, under the auspices of the Israeli government’s goal of annexing and depopulating the West Bank of its Indigenous Palestinians.

However, they will not succeed.

The Palestinians have resilience and justice on their side. They have the support of people around the world, particularly in developing countries, and increasingly in Europe and even the United States. For example, this month Democrats in Congress followed the will of the American people and voted overwhelmingly to block military assistance to Israel.

This is only a start.

Despite the odds, Palestinians have always shown courageous resilience during famine, genocide, and land theft. Having more international support will ensure that they are not removed from their land.