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israeli settler violence
Violent Riot by Israeli Settlers Prevents Return of Displaced Palestinian Family
"Israeli officials are now condemning settler terror, but the state itself is backing this violence."
Sep 29, 2026
More than 100 Israeli settlers in the illegally occupied West Bank rioted in the early hours of Tuesday morning to prevent the return of a Palestinian family that was driven from its home in the village of Jalud.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which was forced by a court ruling to facilitate the Tubasi family's return, said in a statement that rioting settlers "blocked roads," "set fires" to structures and vehicles, and hurled rocks at security forces as they tried to escort the Tubasis. Haaretz reported that after IDF forces failed to prevent rampaging Israeli settlers from storming the family's homes, "they put the family members into an armored military vehicle and evacuated them from the scene."
One family member told Haaretz that "half an hour later, smoke began to rise from the homes." The IDF said that three Israelis were detained for taking part in the riots.
Hordes of settlers rioted overnight into Tuesday in the West Bank village of Jalud as Israeli forces failed to secure the return of a Palestinian family to its home, the IDF said this morning, despite a court ruling ordering that the family be allowed to return to their home… pic.twitter.com/U1Q26usZZY
— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) September 29, 2026
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government has been accused of "actively enabling" mass violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, issued a statement early Tuesday condemning the attacks while downplaying them as the work of a "handful of rioters."
The Jerusalem Post reported that the Tubasi family's return "had been coordinated after they were previously forced to evacuate following attacks by extremist settlers."
"The attempted return followed a September 6 High Court of Justice order requiring Israeli authorities to arrange within 14 days for three Palestinian petitioners and their families to return to their homes in Jalud," the outlet added. "The court ordered the IDF and police to protect the families during the return and allow them to bring in supplies needed to repair the homes and restore water and electricity."
Tuesday's riots were just the latest eruption of violence in the West Bank, where Israeli settlers are committing attacks on Palestinians at an unprecedented rate, according to data from the United Nations.
"Israeli officials are now condemning settler terror, but the state itself is backing this violence," said Breaking the Silence, an Israeli advocacy organization. "The Tubasi family had been expelled because the IDF backed terrorists who besieged their house for weeks. They allowed terrorists to roam free while barring journalists and solidarity activists from accessing them."
"Even after committing a pogrom, the vast majority of them, if not all, will never be held accountable and will continue to terrorize Palestinians," the group added. "Why? Because the state backs it."
The settler attack came days after the leading Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem published a report characterizing the Israeli government's actions in the West Bank, including large-scale land seizures, as "an elimination project," noting that Israel has "sharply escalated longstanding policies of control, violence, and dispossession, implementing them more openly, more violently, and at a faster pace."
“What Palestinians are living through in the West Bank is not a series of separate incidents," said Yuli Novak, B'Tselem's executive director. "It is a single political project that reaches into every part of life. Communities are being expelled, the economy is being pushed toward collapse, and millions are living in constant fear of Israeli military or settler violence."
"These mechanisms work together to dismantle Palestinian collective life while entrenching a permanent system of Jewish supremacy across the West Bank," Novak added. "The world is watching and still failing to respond with anything close to the urgency this demands."
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Netanyahu Government 'Actively Enabling' Deadly Settler Rampages in West Bank: Report
"Settlers shoot, attack, and expel Palestinians from their land, and the state provides the weapons, the legal cover, and the budget to do it."
Aug 20, 2026
Intensifying violence by government-backed Israeli settlers in the illegally occupied West Bank is fueling the mass displacement and erasure of entire Palestinian communities, according to a report published Thursday by Human Rights Watch.
HRW pointed with alarm to United Nations data showing that the average number of settler attacks per day in the West Bank has risen to the highest level on record as the far-right Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, continues to expand settlements in open defiance of international law.
The leading human rights group's new report estimates that Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank has "fully or partially displaced 107 communities," comprised of nearly 6,000 Palestinians, since January 2023. The escalating displacement in the West Bank comes amid Israel's ongoing genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip.
“The Israeli government and the settlers share the same goal of maximum land and minimum Palestinians, with the authorities not only failing to stop settler violence, but actively enabling it,” Sarah Sanbar, acting Israel and Palestine researcher at HRW, said in a statement. “Settlers shoot, attack, and expel Palestinians from their land, and the state provides the weapons, the legal cover, and the budget to do it."
HRW's report was released days after the Israeli government published a new tender for the construction of more than 1,200 housing units in the West Bank. The anti-occupation group Peace Now noted that the bidding period for companies to build the units closes a week before Israel's elections.
"Building in E1 will ruin the possibility of reaching an end to the conflict and a peace arrangement based on two states," said Peace Now. "The government is trying to sign contracts with contractors before the elections so that it will be much harder for the next government to cancel the construction.”
HRW warned that companies seeking a role in constructing the new housing units are "bidding on complicity in a war crime."
"The impunity Israeli authorities accord settlers stems directly from the free pass Israel’s allies and donors have granted it."
For its report on settler violence, HRW interviewed 20 witnesses and reviewed video footage of attacks, which have included physical assaults, sexual violence, property destruction, theft, and killings—often carried out alongside Israeli soldiers. HRW noted that Israel's National Security Ministry has "formed civilian 'rapid response squads' in settlements" and given them "special policing powers, uniforms, and weapons."
“I have known war in this region for all my life, but never like this,” said Um Muhammad Muammar, a 72-year-old resident of Qaryut whose two sons were killed by Israeli settlers. “My sons’ children are now fatherless; their wives are now widows. What more can we say?"
With the support of Israel's government, settlers have established 65 new outposts in the West Bank this year alone. "Israeli organizations Kerem Navot and PeaceNow reported in July that these outposts currently effectively control more than 1 million dunams (100,000 hectares) of land—approximately 18% of the West Bank—four times what they controlled before the current government took office," HRW observed.
"The impunity Israeli authorities accord settlers stems directly from the free pass Israel’s allies and donors have granted it,” said Sanbar. “Accountability starts with the settlers committing crimes but doesn’t end there. Israel and the governments that give it a blank check share responsibility and should be held to account.”
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Israel Revokes Entry Permits For Jewish Americans Who Protected Palestinians From Settler Violence
"Israeli-occupied territory is not a 'safe place' for all Jews," said one Jewish American activist.
Aug 08, 2026
The Israeli government is closing its doors to some Jewish Americans. Their crime? Volunteering to protect Palestinians in the occupied West Bank from violence by illegal settlers.
The Forward reported on Friday that at least seven young American Jews have had their electronic travel authorization (ETA) revoked over their involvement with activist groups involved with "protective presence." This practice involves unarmed nonviolent activists, often Israelis or other Jewish volunteers from abroad, accompanying Palestinians at risk of being attacked by Israeli settlers.
None of the seven Americans who spoke with The Forward had been arrested or charged with crimes.
One activist from New York, Sam Sherman, said he and some other volunteers received emails informing them that their status had been revoked while they were in the West Bank with a program known as Hineinu, started by the Center for Jewish Nonviolence in 2021.
The program places Jewish volunteers within Palestinian communities for around three months, where they participate in protective presence, accompany Palestinians at risk of attack, and document human rights abuses with the hope of deterring them.
Sherman said that while he was volunteering in Masafer Yatta in the Southern West Bank, he was harassed by a group of soldiers, police, and armed settlers who photographed his passports.
“We were just there hanging out with people, essentially,” he said. “But we were treated as if it was almost criminal for us to be there.”
Other activists explained that once Sherman left, he likely would not be allowed to return unless he immigrated there permanently.
"If I’m the wrong kind of Jew for Israel,” he said, “Sure. Great.”
Increasingly, the Israeli government seems to believe that people like Sherman are the wrong kinds of Jews for Israel.
In April 2024, Israel's far-right national security minister created a police task force aimed at handling foreign and Israeli left-wing activists. He has taken credit for having dozens of activists deported from the country.
As +972 Magazine reported back in October 2024, the task force was set up after the Biden administration began imposing sanctions on violent Israeli settlers and settler organizations.
Activists detained and deported by the task force have described being threatened, intimidated, and falsely accused of crimes like terrorism during interrogations by soldiers.
According to the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, dozens of its foreign volunteers in Hineinu and other protective-presence initiatives have had their entry permits revoked over the past two years.
News of Israel's efforts to keep out Jewish American activists comes amid an extraordinary surge of settler violence in the West Bank that the United Nations recently said had reached an “all-time high."
As of Late July, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that 18 Palestinians have been killed this year in incidents involving settler attacks, already surpassing the total killed all of last year. About 900 Palestinians have been injured this year in settler attacks, representing more than half of all the Palestinian injuries documented in the West Bank this year.
Cameron Kasky, a Jewish American activist who was recently detained by armed settlers in the West Bank while visiting with US Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), said Israel's treatment of Jews who show solidarity with Palestinians calls into question its purported commitment to Jewish safety.
"Israeli-occupied territory is not a 'safe place' for all Jews," Kasky said. "Jewish American, Israeli, and European activists are frequently brutalized by Jewish settlers and soldiers."
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A US Passport Should Not Shield Violence in the West Bank
If an American participates in organized violence against civilians abroad, that person should be investigated. If evidence supports it, they should be prosecuted under applicable US law.
Aug 04, 2026
In a rare quiet moment inside the resuscitation room at Nasser Hospital in Gaza, I stood beside a young Palestinian man helping us treat waves of wounded children. He worked with calm precision. Focused. Unflinching.
Then he told me about his brother. Beaten nearly to death by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Not once. Repeatedly. Ribs broken. Face shattered. The attacks ended only when his family fled the land they had farmed for generations.
“They wanted us gone,” he said. Some of the men who carry out this violence hold United States passports.
They live under American law. They vote in American elections. Then they travel abroad and take part in acts that, in any other context, would be recognized without hesitation: assault, arson, organized racial violence. Homes burned. Crops destroyed. Families driven off land.
An American who beats a man because of his ethnicity, drives him from his home, and destroys the means by which his family survives is not transformed into something else by crossing a border.
And then they return. They pass through US customs. They resume their lives. No charges. No investigation. No meaningful consequence.
This is not an abstraction. Human rights organizations, Israeli and international alike, have documented repeated incidents of settler violence in the West Bank: physical attacks on civilians, destruction of agricultural land, the burning of homes and olive groves, often carried out with little immediate accountability.
Some of those involved are Americans. Under US law, citizenship is extraordinarily difficult to revoke. The Supreme Court has made that clear. But citizenship is not the only instrument of accountability, and treating it as such allows something far worse to persist: impunity.
If an American participates in organized violence against civilians abroad, that person should be investigated. If evidence supports it, they should be prosecuted under applicable US law. If their actions meet the threshold of coordinated or systematic violence, then sanctions, asset restrictions, and limits on international travel should follow.
A passport should not function as a safe harbor.
In 2024, the United States took limited steps to sanction individuals and entities linked to settler violence. It was an acknowledgment, however modest, that this problem exists. In early 2025, that framework was dismantled.
The message was clear. Even minimal accountability was negotiable.
Meanwhile, the violence continues. This is where the question becomes unavoidable.
What does it mean for Israel, a country that defines itself as a democracy under law, to tolerate or fail to prevent organized violence by settlers against civilians in the West Bank?
And what does it mean for the United States to allow its own citizens to participate in that violence and return home untouched?
These are not separate questions. They are reflections of the same failure.
An American who beats a man because of his ethnicity, drives him from his home, and destroys the means by which his family survives is not transformed into something else by crossing a border. Geography does not dilute the crime. It only obscures it.
If that same act occurred in the United States, there would be no ambiguity in how it is described or prosecuted.
When it occurs in the West Bank as part of a broader pattern of displacement, it demands the same clarity.
The tools for accountability already exist. Federal statutes governing violent crime, conspiracy, and, in certain cases, war crimes. Sanctions authorities. Civil liability. Immigration and travel restrictions.
What is missing is not law. It is willingness.
Impunity is not an accident here. It is a decision, made repeatedly, on both sides of the ocean.
The man I met in Gaza was not asking for revenge. He was asking for the violence to stop. He was asking for a form of justice that does not end at a checkpoint or a border crossing.
A United States passport should carry weight. It should represent a commitment to law, not an escape from it.
Right now, in too many cases, it does the opposite. And everyone involved knows it.
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How Village Resistance Disrupted Israel’s West Bank Strategy
The explosion in Tell proved that the status quo of total encirclement, daily humiliation, and existential dispossession is inherently unsustainable.
Jul 28, 2026
During a military raid on the small town of Tell, southwest of Nablus, a moment of direct defiance shattered the illusion of total Palestinian submission.
Faced with relentless military incursions, land confiscation, and settler harassment and violence, local villagers and farmers refused to retreat.
In the confrontation that followed, a single Palestinian disarmed an Israeli soldier and opened fire on the invading forces near the illegal Havat Gilad settlement outpost, killing two soldiers and wounding three others.
What followed was the predictable, unyielding fury of the occupation: Israeli forces and state-backed armed settlers immediately launched a series of raids across Tell and neighboring communities, killing four Palestinians, setting fire to homes, and converting residential buildings into field interrogation centers.
The rebellion did not start where standard military analysts expected it to—it ignited in a small farming town among people who decided that fighting back was the only response left to quiet, gradual annihilation.
In a swift collective punishment campaign, Israeli occupation troops detained over 70 Palestinians—including more than 40 in Tell alone—while expanding military incursions into Jenin, Tubas, Tulkarm, Ramallah, Hebron (Al-Khalil), Bethlehem, and Jericho.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz promptly ordered a "wide-scale military operation," while United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese unequivocally condemned the combined army-settler assaults as "pogroms against defenseless civilians," reiterating calls for an immediate arms embargo and trade sanctions against Israel.
Yet to understand the spark in Tell, one must understand the explosive pressure cooker that the occupied West Bank has become.
Netanyahu’s Primitive Calculus
Netanyahu’s immediate response to the incident in Tell was not a departure from policy, but the activation of an old, entrenched doctrine: Every act of Palestinian resistance—no matter how localized—must be weaponized to accelerate the state-sponsored theft of Palestinian land.
For decades, Israel’s security apparatus has used local resistance as cover to achieve long-standing demographic and territorial ambitions. Under the current far-right coalition, this strategy has reached unprecedented levels of speed and brutality.
The Scale of Destruction
Since October 2023, while global media attention focused primarily on the horrors in Gaza, Israel systematically expanded its offensive across the occupied West Bank:
- Over 1,090 Palestinians—including at least 239 children—have been killed by Israeli forces and state-backed armed settlers.
- Over 6,800 Palestinians have been injured by live ammunition, shrapnel, and physical assaults, with settler attacks alone accounting for a surging majority of recent civilian injuries.
- More than 10,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced due to home demolitions, violent settler rampages, and severe access restrictions. Entire Bedouin and rural communities across the South Hebron Hills and the Jordan Valley have been systematically depopulated and cleansed.
- Over 11,000 Palestinians have been swept into detention through military night raids, held under arbitrary administrative detention without charge or trial.
- Under Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—who was granted official authority over civilian affairs in the West Bank—the Israeli government declared tens of thousands of dunams of Palestinian territory as "state land," marking the largest continuous land grabs since the Oslo Accords. Concurrently, dozens of illegal settler outposts were retroactively legalized, and thousands of new settlement housing units were advanced.
Strategic Purpose Behind the Escalation
Israel’s systematic campaign in the West Bank serves three distinct political and military objectives for Netanyahu and his cabinet:
- Preempting a Second Front: Israel recognized that if the West Bank rose up in full-scale, organized rebellion while its military was locked in a grueling, unending genocidal campaign in Gaza, containing both entities would prove virtually impossible. Having failed to crush the Palestinian resistance in Gaza despite its overwhelming military force, Israel applied heavy-handed, preemptive violence in the West Bank to terrorize the population into total submission.
- Shielding Netanyahu Through Far-Right Leverage: To survive the internal political fallout of October 7 and his military's failure to achieve its stated war aims, Netanyahu needed to keep his coalition intact. He granted far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir absolute freedom to execute their ideological agenda: expanding illegal settlements, annexing Area C, arming settler militias, and repeatedly invading and altering the status quo at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem.
- Masking Failure with Offensive Posturing: Desperate to avoid appearing as a helpless leader trapped in a multi-front war of attrition, Netanyahu used military raids, aerial drone strikes, and armored incursions into West Bank refugee camps (from Jenin and Tulkarm to Nablus) to project an image of strength and control to his right-wing domestic constituency.
Settler Terror and the Bankruptcy of the PA
This campaign of state-sponsored expansion was smoothed by two major factors on the ground:
- Unchecked Settler Paramilitarism: Armed by Itamar Ben-Gvir’s National Security Ministry, violent settler gangs have been fully integrated into state-sanctioned paramilitaries. Settlers launch routine, organized pogroms against Palestinian villages—burning homes, destroying olive groves, stealing livestock, and firing live ammunition at civilians—with the direct protection and active participation of the Israeli military.
- The Subjugation and Inaction of the PA: The Palestinian Authority (PA) has completely abandoned its fundamental duty to protect its people. Rather than formulating a national defense strategy or providing at least symbolic leadership to resist land theft, the PA security forces continued security coordination with the occupation. The PA actively cracked down on local resistance fighters, confiscated weapons, and suppressed public demonstrations, acting as a sub-contracted administrative force managing Palestinian subjugation on Israel's behalf.
Why Mainstream Analysis Fails
Most media and political analysts will inevitably frame the current escalation around narrow parliamentary metrics. They will point to upcoming Israeli elections, arguing that Netanyahu is provoking violence purely to consolidate the far-right vote, satisfy Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, and outflank his political rivals.
International human rights bodies will issue familiar warnings, humanitarian organizations like MSF will voice alarm over raids on medical facilities like Nablus Specialized Hospital, and political blocs like the European Union will issue toothless calls for "all parties to de-escalate."
Meanwhile, the United States government continues to funnel billions of dollars in heavy weaponry to Israel, reinforcing an episode of historical complicity.
What these analyses consistently fail to grasp is the reality of Palestinian agency.
They treat Palestinians as passive victims waiting for international intervention or political shifts in Tel Aviv and Washington. But the explosion in Tell proved that the status quo of total encirclement, daily humiliation, and existential dispossession is inherently unsustainable.
The rebellion did not start where standard military analysts expected it to—it ignited in a small farming town among people who decided that fighting back was the only response left to quiet, gradual annihilation.
The West Bank will not remain silent forever; it will rise at the time and place of its people's choosing, rendering conventional political forecasts useless.
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Despite State-Backed Israeli Settler Violence, the Palestinians Will Persevere
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?
Jul 27, 2026
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.
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'This Is Our Land,' Says the Israeli Settler
Israel has killed at least 26 Palestinians in the West Bank since the beginning of the year, of whom at least eight were murdered by settlers.
Mar 24, 2026
As Muslims around the world celebrated an end to the holy month of Ramadan over the weekend, Palestinian communities across the West Bank were violently assaulted by Israeli settlers in what witnesses describe as coordinated attacks.
Masked settlers—many under military protection—carried out raids in at least 12 locations, according to multiple reports and video footage. They burned cars, homes, and used weapons, including guns, grenades, rocks, live fire, and pepper spray, to inflict pain on Palestinians.
The West Bank is one of two enclosed regions where Palestinians live under Israeli control, the other being the war-torn Gaza Strip. But Israeli settlers, with the support of a far-right government and the silent complicity of many Israelis, have sought to take this land. Israel has killed at least 26 Palestinians in the West Bank since the beginning of the year, of whom at least eight were murdered by settlers.
On Monday, the widespread violence continued. In Hebron, the largest city in the West Bank, Israeli soldiers detained six Palestinians, including a journalist, after raiding and vandalizing their homes. The Israel Defense Forces also set up checkpoints around the city and surrounding villages, “closing multiple main and secondary roads with iron gates, concrete blocks, and earth mounds,” according to the Palestinian News Agency Wafa.
How can Israel dispute the facts of genital mutilation reported in none other than the Times—a paper often accused of holding sympathy for Israel? I guess just like Donald Trump: by doing it.
Attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers have become more brazen since America and Israel escalated their war in the region. The United Nations estimates that Israeli soldiers and settlers have murdered at least 15 Palestinians since the start of the Iran war in late February.
In a brutal report in The New York Times March 18, for example, a Palestinian man had his genitals mutilated—in front of his family—and 400 sheep stolen by some 20 Israeli settlers. The account is almost too harrowing to put to words.
Imagine you are a Bedouin: a nomad, a villager in the Middle East. In Israel, this often means you are looked on as a peasant—and there’s no doubt you are Palestinian. You’re a woman, a mother. You live in a tent. Your life is seen as a threat by men across a border they built—the separation wall enclosing Palestinians in the West Bank.
A group of settlers arrives. Some 20 men beat you, slap your children, pull you out of your tent—your home—by your hair. They demean you for existing. They tie up your husband, strip him naked, cut his boxers with a knife, and tie his penis with a zip tie. Imagine that. Can you?
That’s the story of Suhaib Abualkebash, 29, in the report I mention above in the Times. “This is slow death,” Niama Abualkebash, 28, said of the attack on her husband. “Doing this to a man is to kill him.”
Human rights activists staying in the Bedouin community—a common tactic used to deter settler attacks in the past—were among those beaten by the settlers. Ava Lang, a 24-year-old American activist, recalled what the settlers said: “They were asking our names, where we’re from, saying, ‘We’re going to kill you,’ and ‘This is our land; we’re Jewish.’”
After beating the family, including a 3 year old, the settlers stole family wedding rings, cellphones, cash, and identification papers. The brother of the man who had his penis mutilated, Muhammad Abualkebash, 40, recalls what the settlers said next.
“They said; ‘If you don’t leave, we will burn you. We’ll hit you. We’ll take your children, and we will rape your women,” he said to the Times. “‘Go to America, go to Jordan or anywhere else, but go.’”
Israel has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians—mostly women and children—in Gaza since October 2023. About 1,000 have been killed in the West Bank, where, as the UN has reported, young men and boys are at a higher risk for harassment and mistreatment by Israeli settlers and soldiers.
How do Israelis feel about this? From what journalists have observed in the country, only a small portion of Israelis openly oppose violence against Palestinians.
A new poll featured on Israel’s Channel 12 reveals that first-time Jewish Israeli voters, between 18 and 21 years of age, are more right-wing and religious-nationalist in their outlook than older voters. The poll found that 75% of voters described themselves as “right-wing” compared with 68% among older voters. The self-identified “left” accounts for only 5%.
Justice is unlikely for the Abualkebash family—or any of the Palestinians harmed, intimidated, and mutilated by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Let’s not forget: beyond murder, abuse can extend to injuries, displacement, and destruction of Palestinian homes and farmland.
“Most of the international community views Israel’s presence in the West Bank as illegal,” wrote The Times of Israel on March 17, “though the US under President Donald Trump has been more tolerant.”
Also on March 17, the UN unveiled an investigation into settler violence in the West Bank, covering a 12-month period up to November 2025, warning of an “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians at the hands of Israelis. The report denounced the Israeli government’s role in aiding settler expansion in the West Bank.
“The Israeli government has accelerated unlawful settlement expansion and annexation of large parts of the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, forcibly displacing over 36,000 Palestinians and increasing violence by Israeli security forces and settlers,” UN Human Rights spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan said at a briefing in Geneva.
Israel, responding in their usual tone, via the Israeli diplomatic mission in Geneva, accused the UN of being anti-Israel. “It does not function as an impartial and neutral human rights office, but as the epicenter of vile anti-Israel activism,” the mission said in a statement.
How can Israel dispute the facts of genital mutilation reported in none other than the Times—a paper often accused of holding sympathy for Israel? I guess just like Donald Trump: by doing it.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, where it’s been less than six months since the so-called ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was brokered, some 680 Palestinians have been killed.
On Sunday, four Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza. At least 10 others were wounded. And last week, the military killed 12 Palestinians in an urban refugee camp. One family of four was among the slain, including a woman who was pregnant with twins.
“We were sleeping and got up to the strike of a missile. The strike was strong,” said Mahmoud al-Muhtaseb, a neighbor. “There was no prior warning.”
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Huckabee Accused of Inciting Murder After Israeli Settlers Kill Palestinian-American Teen
"The US ambassador to Israel is engaging in empowering and allowing for actions that lead to the targeted lynching and killing of US citizens," said one group.
Feb 23, 2026
Human rights defenders this week accused US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee—who recently endorsed Israel conquering much of the Middle East—of inciting deadly violence after Israeli colonists in the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine fatally shot a Palestinian-American teenager who was trying to stop settlers from stealing livestock.
Nasrallah Abu Siyam, 19, was shot dead last Wednesday by a masked Israeli settler armed with an M-16 rifle in the village of Mukhmas, where the 19-year-old Philadelphia native had been living and helping his father, Mohammed Abu Siyam, tend the family's livestock and cultivate their olive trees.
According to eyewitness accounts as reported by independent New York journalist and Palestine specialist Jasper Diamond Nathaniel:
At least four other local Palestinians were wounded by settler gunfire during the invasion of the village, including another young man whose foot may be amputated. Some were shot while carrying the wounded to safety. Many others were severely beaten with metal rods. Israeli soldiers, who accompanied the settlers into the village, responded to the shooting rampage by firing stun grenades and tear gas into the residential area, burning an elderly man. When it was over, settlers walked off with more than 300 of the village’s sheep and goats under the military’s watch. It was the first full day of Ramadan. As of this writing, no one has been arrested.
While human rights groups and some Democratic US lawmakers have called for a full investigation into Abu Siyam's killing, Huckabee has so far been silent. Last July, Huckabee responded to Israeli settlers' killing of 23-year-old Palestinian-American Sayfollah Musallet, who was beaten to death while visiting relatives in the West Bank, as "a criminal and terrorist act" that Israeli authorities should "aggressively investigate." As is usually the case when Israeli settlers kill Palestinians, no one has been charged for killing Musallet.
Last Friday, Huckabee—who during his ill-fated 2008 presidential campaign denied the very existence of the Palestinian people—sat for an interview with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson during which he backed the realization of a so-called “Greater Israel” stretching from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq, saying that "it would be fine" if Israel "took it all," as many Jews and Evangelical Christians believe their common deity figure "God" intended them to do.
Numerous observers said the envoy's remarks inherently endorsed violence and forced displacement akin to what's happening to Palestinians living under occupation, colonization, ethnic cleansing, apartheid—and in the case of Gaza, genocide.
"Shortly after the lynching murder of an American citizen, footage aired of the US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee justifying the very structure of occupation, and rhetoric of ethnic cleansing, that led to the murder and continuing attacks on the occupied West Bank," the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) said in a statement Monday.
ADC said Huckabee's endorsement of Greater Israel "signals permission and the green light for Israeli forces to use violence and empower settlers for further annexation and dispossession."
The group continued:
The United States continues to fund, shield, and excuse Israeli violence, forced displacement, and mass atrocity across Palestine. Now the US ambassador to Israel is engaging in empowering and allowing for actions that lead to the targeted lynching and killing of US citizens. At the same time, Congress continues to put Israel first by sending American taxpayer dollars to Israel.
Israeli settlers and soldiers have killed at least a dozen Americans since 2022. Time and again, our government refuses to defend the rights, dignity, and safety of its own citizens simply to appease the demands of a foreign government and give impunity to Israel.
"The impunity cannot continue," ADC added.
Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a fugitive from the International Criminal Court wanted for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—have publicly declared their support for Greater Israel, sparking widespread condemnation throughout the Arab world and beyond.
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Mourning a Friend Killed by the Israeli Occupation
Awdah Hathaleen and his community faced injustices and violence all the time, but simply because he was my friend, I never thought that he would die.
Aug 11, 2025
I saw Awdah's text in the morning of July 28. He said that settlers are in his village, Umm Al Khair, and they are trying to cut the main water pipe. "If they cut [it] the community here will literally be without any drop of water," he wrote in his text. Accompanying it was a picture showing settlers armed with rifles, a banal sight.
He often sent updates like these from his Palestinian village in the West Bank to activists and his friends across the world. He would inform us of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) raids, arrests, and demolitions. Or that settlers, who typically came from the flourishing settlement of Carmel next door, were harassing and attacking residents. Over time, I found myself running out of ways to respond meaningfully to such updates, especially as now I was far away in the U.S. I would reply, "This is terrible" or "Stay strong," and each time I felt helpless and thought that my responses were useless.
I did not get the chance to respond to his text that morning. A few hours later, Awdah Hathaleen was dead, shot by a settler.
The lives of Palestinians are extremely precarious. I grasped the gravity of this fact during my time in Israel-Palestine, but subconsciously, I made myself forget it: Awdah and his community faced injustices and violence all the time, but simply because he was my friend, I never thought that he would die.
The heartbreak from this single death, in other words, puts into perspective how the scale of atrocity in Palestine is truly unfathomable.
When I first met Awdah, he was describing life under the Israeli occupation to our group, which was mostly comprised of Jews from the U.S. who were visiting Umm Al Khair. He shared in vivid detail his first sighting of a demolition by the IDF when he was in the fourth grade—how he ran from school, stood shivering in the cold, and watched multiple homes being reduced to rubble, his relatives screaming and weeping. He explained how his uncle Haj Suleiman was run over and killed with a vehicle by the IDF in 2022. The Haj, an elderly man at the time, was a revered figure of nonviolent resistance and a community leader, and thousands came to his funeral. As Awdah spoke that night, the settlement of Carmel was visible behind him, and a mural commemorating the Haj was on the left.
Over time, I noticed that Awdah had unlimited energy to share his stories and political vision with visitors. I also felt that in these conversations, his childhood trauma from the demolition and the recent loss of his uncle always surfaced in one way or another, like wounds that would not heal.
That first night, Awdah shared something that he would say often, "To survive under the occupation, you need two things: patience and hope." Patience because justice would be very slow, and hope because without it, "There is no light." We were sitting on a small basketball court, where perhaps only football was ever played. Awdah would eventually be killed right there.
Alaa Hathaleen, Awdah's cousin, mourns at the spot where Awdah was shot by the settler Yinon Levi in Umm Al Khair, the Occupied West Bank, on July 29, 2025. (Photo: Oren Ziv)
Although Awdah introduced himself as an English teacher and an activist, I also saw in him a remarkable political educator who helped countless visitors understand the occupation. Awdah would say that he wants all humans to have dignity and live in peace; he wants Palestinians to be equal with others; and he wants his three young children to have a better life than his own, free from fear and violence. His words and hospitality helped make his village one of the centers for anti-occupation activism in the region. International and Israeli anti-occupation activists regularly pass through, volunteer, intervene during the incursions from settlers and the IDF, rest, share Iftar meals, and play with children.
He created a community as he resisted. His friends are scattered across the world and are mourning on video calls and group chats. It is difficult to believe that when we visit Umm Al Khair next, Awdah will not be there, saying, "welcome, welcome," addressing us as "friend" or "habibi," and chastising us for visiting Umm Al Khair after so long.
Awdah's death pierces the hearts of so many of us because it is layered with atrocities. First, this is a quintessential case of settler violence and there is unlikely to be justice. Yinon Levi, the settler who killed Awdah, was immediately released on house arrest by Israeli authorities, despite many witnesses and the shooting being filmed. In fact, Levi was telling IDF soldiers who to arrest right after he killed Awdah. Within a week, Levi returned to the village to intimidate residents. The reason for all this is simple: Israel does not prosecute settler violence because it serves the official policy of removing Palestinians from their land.
Further, there was no opportunity to grieve following Awdah's killing. The IDF raided Umm Al Khair over the following days and detained about 15 Palestinians, assaulting many of them. Then, the Israeli authorities refused to return Awdah's body unless the funeral was limited to 15 people and the body was buried miles from the village. In response, around 60 women in Umm Al Khair went on a hunger strike, and there were demonstrations across cities including New York, Boston, Chicago, Toronto, London, and Chicago. Ten days after the killing, the authorities finally felt pressured to return Awdah's body, allow the burial in the village, and release the Palestinian detainees. But many people were still prevented from attending the funeral.
There is nothing unusual about Awdah's killing or how his village was targeted; such incidents occur regularly in the Occupied West Bank. The heartbreak from this single death, in other words, puts into perspective how the scale of atrocity in Palestine is truly unfathomable. After all, he is but one among the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed since the beginning of the live-streamed genocide.
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Family Demands US Probe Into Israeli Settlers' 'Lynching' of American Citizen
The family of Sayfollah Musallet called his killing by Israeli settlers "an unimaginable nightmare and an injustice that no family should ever have to face."
Jul 14, 2025
The family of 20-year-old U.S. citizen Sayfollah Musallet is being joined by a number of advocacy groups in demanding a full U.S.-led investigation into the young man's fatal beating by Israeli settlers in the West Bank last week—and pushing back against the corporate media's characterization of the brutal attack.
"We demand the U.S. State Department lead an immediate investigation and hold the Israeli settlers who killed Saif accountable for their crimes," said the family in a statement, referring to Musallet by his nickname.
The family described how Israeli settlers "surrounded Saif for over three hours as paramedics attempted to reach him, but the mob of settlers blocked the ambulance and paramedics from providing life-saving aid."
Musallet's brother finally was able to retrieve him and bring him to a nearby hospital, but he died from his injuries before arriving there.
The State Department has said little about the killing of Musallet, who was a 20-year-old Palestinian-American with dual citizenship who was born in Florida, where he was still living when he traveled to the West Bank to visit family for the summer.
The Trump administration told Al Jazeera late Friday that the department "has no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas," and said it was "aware of reports of the death of a U.S. citizen in the West Bank," but did not provide further details about how it was proceeding following Musallet's killing.
Meanwhile, rights advocates condemned The New York Times' reporting on the attack, which it called "a clash." It cited the Israeli government's claim that "the violence began when Palestinians threw stones at Israeli civilians."
"This was a lynching, not a 'clash,'" said Imraan Siddiqi, executive director of the Washington State office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Musallet is at least the ninth U.S. citizen to be killed by Israeli forces or settlers since 2022. The U.S. government has historically accepted the results of Israel's investigations into killings like those of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi.
Under pressure, the Department of Justice finally opened a probe into the 2022 fatal shooting of Abu Akleh, but more than three years after her killing it has not released its findings.
None of the Israeli killings of U.S. citizens have resulted in criminal charges.
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee told Al Jazeera Saturday that the U.S. "must stop treating Palestinian American lives as expendable."
"Israeli settlers lynched 20-year-old Palestinian American Sayfollah Musallet, while U.S. officials stayed silent," the group said. "Sayfollah was born and raised in Florida. He was visiting family for the summer in the West Bank when settlers beat him to death while he protested illegal land seizures."
Musallet's family said his killing is "an unimaginable nightmare and an injustice that no family should ever have to face."
"We demand justice," they said.
Zeteo journalist Mehdi Hasan noted that along with the Trump administration near-silence, Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has so far said nothing publicly about the killing of the Tampa resident.
"Why do Israelis keep murdering Americans?" said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now. "Perhaps it's because they know our government will never do a damn thing about it?"
"Not even a word of condolence offered to his family, not from 'America First' President Trump, not from the Florida governor, not from the State Department," she said. "Seems it's always just really Israel First for these folks."
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