Israelis go to the polls today for their first elections since Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing wars in Gaza and Iran. The election may change the composition of the government, but the haggling inherent in a multi-party coalition system should temper expectations for any radical shift in government policy.
It remains an open question whether any new government will forcefully stamp out the alarming uptick in what can only be described as “pogroms” perpetrated by Israeli mobs against Palestinians on the West Bank.
Recent horrifying events in the West Bank demand that we revise the language to describe what has transpired. The nomenclature for radical Israeli Jews who are engaged in murder and mayhem against Palestinians must reflect the real, horrifying conditions on the ground. The benign use of “settler” soft-pedals the depravity of those trying to drive Palestinians from the region in an effort to ethnically cleanse the territory.
Consider this from the New York Times describing the murder of Ali Al-Bazari, a Palestinian off-duty police officer harvesting olives: “Clad in all black, bearing metal batons and guns, Israeli settlers materialized without warning.” Are these “settlers” or “terrorists”? The Times account continues:
Mr. Al-Bazari, 44, died on Oct. 7, the first person killed in this year’s harvest — the most violent olive season in recent history, still weeks from ending. The Israeli military did not respond to requests for comment about Mr. Al-Bazari’s case or other incidents described by Palestinians or seen by journalists from The New York Times. . . .
The violence of this year’s harvest is a distillation of the turmoil upending Palestinian life in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, which killed as many as 1,200 Israelis. As the country plunged into war in Gaza, Israeli settler expansion sharply accelerated in the West Bank, as extremist settlers — Jewish Israelis living in areas that Israel occupied in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war — push Palestinians off the land by intimidation and force.
The insistence on using the term “settler” is peculiar, in the extreme. Notice the difference in how two groups are described. On one hand, we read that “armed Israeli settlers have launched hundreds of attacks… Settlers have lit trees ablaze, shot farmers and bludgeoned men, women and children.” In response, we read that “Palestinian gunmen opened fire on Israelis: The Israeli military said that two soldiers and two Palestinian assailants were killed.” (Emphasis added.) We don’t know where the Palestinians live, but plainly their residence is irrelevant; their actions are the focus of the report. That standard should be applied to both sides.
“We need to stop sanitizing our discussions of what’s happening on the West Bank,” Jeremy Ben Ami, executive of J Street, tells me. “When masked extremists organize by the dozens and hundreds to terrorize Palestinian communities, attack people in their homes and drive them off their land, that is terrorism — and we should call it what it is: terror.”
Affording rampaging terrorists who kill innocents and destroy property the label “settlers” both minimizes the evil of their actions and, frankly, smears others who manage to reside there without engaging in murder and mayhem. As Ben Ami explains, “This is not about Israelis who are living peacefully — if illegally — in settlements. It is about those who use violence to terrorize their Palestinian neighbors. When scores of masked men wearing kippot and tzitzit participate in attacks like the one that injured photojournalist Heidi Levine, it is a desecration of Judaism and a betrayal of the values we teach our children.”
Likewise, news accounts should avoid euphemisms that underplay the horror. Instead of the bland term “violence” (which, for some, might conjure up scenes of sporadic rock throwing), accuracy requires that reporters use precise language (murder, arson, etc.) to describe the conduct.
Accurate language would help reset the terms of debate concerning proper U.S. policy in response to West Bank terrorism. Once we are clear that terrorism is the issue, the discussion about readjusting U.S. policy can begin from a shared set of facts. Veteran Middle East diplomat Phil Gordon tells me that at “a minimum, the restoration of the kinds of sanctions in the 2024 Biden Executive Order that Trump repealed on his first day in office” is in order. “That was a good tool because it applied not only to individuals using violence but to anyone ‘undermining peace, security, and stability in the West Bank,’ as well as to entities supporting them.”
In addition, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) has introduced legislation imposing sanctions against anyone “looking to take Palestinian land in the West Bank or Gaza.” As he recently posted on X, his sanctions aim to stop the “violent land grab” underway.
Gordon commented on that measure:
Castro’s bill is a smart first step towards finally curbing Israeli settlement expansion. It would require sanctions on new settlements like E1 [described here], which is designed to prevent the existence of a future Palestinian state, and give the president the authority to impose sanctions on existing settlements—and the infrastructure they rely on—if Israel refuses to work towards Palestinian statehood.
The bill would also prohibit Americans from importing goods produced in Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, as some European countries have done.
While Trump will almost certainly veto it, its passage (especially with Republican votes) would communicate that Israel cannot count on a blank check and, as Gordon observed, would provide “a useful framework for a future Democratic administration to put obstacles in the way of ongoing de facto annexation.”
Other members of Congress and veterans of Middle East diplomacy have offered various proposals to recalibrate the U.S.-Israel relationship, starting with Democratic presidential candidates’ pledge to end U.S. military aid beyond expiration of the current deal in 2028.
Center for American Progress’s Jon Finer urges we distinguish between “occupied territory and Israel proper”:
This could mean no longer treating products imported from Israeli settlements in the West Bank as protected by trade agreements between our countries, or even barring such imports entirely, as some European countries recently have. It could mean barring Israeli settlers from the visa-free travel to the United States that their compatriots otherwise enjoy. . . . [and] imposing travel bans and financial sanctions against the individuals, businesses and other organizations that undergird the settlement enterprise.
Such actions are not “economic warfare,” as Israel’s defenders hyperbolically label them. They are expressions of opposition to Israeli actions that Americans increasingly see not just in geopolitical but also moral terms.
In sum, dispensing with euphemisms (e.g., “settler,” or “settler violence”) can help jumpstart an essential shift in U.S. policy. With poll after poll showing that Americans reject our current Israel policy, the new Congress can begin to align U.S. policy with our values and security interests. Greater candor about Israeli West Bank terrorists is in order, irrespective of the Israeli election results.
