Discussions about “the day after” arise from all directions, as the international community pushes towards a renewed Palestinian union between the Gaza Strip and Judea and Samaria.
Certainly, the realization of a Palestinian state entails the deportation of about half a million Jews from Judea and Samaria. For the public to be mentally prepared for such a mass deportation, they must be convinced that the “settlers” are not worthy of compassion, that they are truly the obstacle to peace and therefore need to be moved.
This is the rationale underlying the imagined issue called “settler violence,” which continues in parallel with the fighting in the Gaza Strip. This is targeted defamation of an entire population to create a wedge between it and the rest of the public, while also creating the false idea that the only way to promote peace is if it is removed from its home.
Two and a half days after the most horrific massacre known to the Jewish people since the Holocaust, the Yesh Din organization accused that “under the auspices of the war and the atrocities in the south – and far from the public eye – Israeli soldiers and settlers are acting with deadly violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.”
Really? And is this the correct timing to deal with these alleged injustices? On October 12, the Personal Protection Center contacted the Minister of Defense with a demand to resume the flow of electricity and water to the Gaza Strip. The X-account of B’Tselem denounced the war in Gaza, claiming that the Gazans are not guilty of Hamas’s actions, and on the 13th of October, they announced concerns about so-called “settler violence.”
This is not the first time that these organizations have led this charge. Immediately after the “Guardian of the Walls” operation in 2021, they promoted the lie of settler violence. But the police data reveal this trend is a fabrication. On November 9, the Police Operations Division presented the Commissioner with a document that showed that there was a decrease in incidents of nationalist crime in Judea and Samaria in October of 2023 compared to the previous year.
This is not the first time that reality has had a hard time supporting this imagined issue. During the previous campaign against so-called “settler violence” that accompanied the May 2021 “Guardian of the Walls” operation, there was similar conduct. At that time, organizations like Breaking the Silence, B’Tselem, and dozens of other far-left organizations led a public campaign that included billboards, signs on buses, intense activity on public TV networks and in the Knesset, against the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.
However, the reality that year was that the spike in violence in Judea and Samaria was on the Palestinian side, as over 6,000 terror or terror-involved incidents were counted that year.
After the 2021 campaign, it was revealed that Breaking the Silence received nearly a quarter of a million shekels from the European Union for its defamation activities. B’Tselem also received in the first quarter of 2020 a sum of 233,000 shekels for the fight against “settler violence,” and in the last quarter of 2021 another 267,000 shekels from the European Union as well as 741,000 shekels from the Norwegian embassy for documentation and research projects on the settlements.
It is hard not to assume that even now, while the IDF is busy restoring security to the residents of Israel, those “human rights” organizations are engaged in falsely defaming the settlers of Judea and Samaria, if only because they make a living from the defamation.
And if we are dealing with money, then we must follow it if only to understand the map of pressures and their causes. Europe, which has always opposed the existence of the Zionist enterprise in Judea and Samaria, has for years been funding, internally and externally, legal propaganda and Palestinian-settlement arms to stifle Jewish life in the area.
Just this week, EU Foreign Minister Joseph Burrell announced that he would pressure EU member states “to impose sanctions on extremist settlers who practice violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.” This statement came in conjunction with the European Union delegation that visited the village of Hawara, where the representatives spoke against Israel and stated that “the settlements are illegal according to international law and are a major obstacle to the establishment of a future Palestinian state.”
Many government officials in the US see eye to eye with the Europeans on the issue. In the last decade, the US transferred over 70 million shekels to extreme leftist organizations including B’Tselem, The Association for Civil Rights, “Ir Amim”, Doctors for Human Rights, and the like. Among the governmental organizations that transferred the money are the US Embassy in Israel, the US State Department (DRL), the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, USAID, and more.
Last week the campaign matured into actual sanctions on “extremist settlers” who were involved in violence against Palestinians. Beyond the alarming statements, can these people be found? Who are they? Where do they live?
Many disagreements in Israeli society must be put aside for now, if only to stay focused on the nation’s main goal – victory in the war. But imagined “settler violence” is not one of them. The public in Israel must respond and must reject and repudiate the daily manipulation and lies imposed on Israel by foreign powers and money.
At the political level, Israel must pressure the Europeans and the Americans not to fund organizations in Israel that seek to demonize the Jews of Judea and Samaria.
Historically, Europeans have played populations off against each other for their own purposes. The damage that the Europeans caused throughout history between these populations is so great that to this day rivers of blood are spilled because of them. It happened in Africa, India, and Sri Lanka. In the Sykes-Picot agreements, in the Oslo agreements and more.
Israel should clearly and strongly stand up for herself and remind the world that it is a sovereign state. It is her duty to do so.
