Elder of Ziyon gives us the facts about the “settler violence” in Israel that has angered UK Foreign Minister David Lammy and many others, here: “According to the UN, I – an American – am a ‘violent Jewish settler,'” Elder of Ziyon, June 12, 2025:
“Settler violence” is in the news again.
The UK and others have sanctioned two Israeli ministers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, for “inciting violence” by settlers, citing UN statistics on violent incidents in the West Bank.
What is considered “settler violence,” according to the UN?
The Israeli NGO Regavim issued a report last April that examined a UN database of 6,285 incidents of alleged violence against Palestinians that reportedly occurred between January 2016 and the end of April 2023.
It included every single time Jews were allowed to visit the Temple Mount – 1,361 “incidents.”
Well, my wife and I ascended to the Temple Mount in March 2019. We got a personal tour from Rabbi Chaim Richman of the Temple Institute. We even prayed there.
According to the UN, my wife and I – Americans – are violent Jewish West Bank settlers, and we are statistics in the UN database that “prove” how violent Jewish “settlers” are. And the same methodology is used by the UK, today, to support their contention that Jewish settler violence is a huge problem now….
And this is the problem we have seen for decades. The media, the UN and NGOs can easily make any party look bad by choosing their own definitions, their own framing, their own context, and also what to omit from their reporting. So while there are dozens of wars happening now, tens of millions of refugees, and real starvation with thousands dying, the media and UN and even Israel’s “allies” twist the data to make it appear to casual consumers of news that there is only one conflict (OK, two, if you include Ukraine), only one set of victims, only one set of displaced persons and only one (wholly fake) “famine” in the world.
And an examination of even the most extreme of statements by Ben Gvir and Smotrich indicate that while they support tough action against Palestinian terrorists, they do not incite violence from Jewish settlers, at least not directly. In 2023, Ben Gvir told settlers directly, “We must not take the law into our own hands. The one who needs to deal with terrorism and deter it is the Israeli government and not the citizens.” And even at the very same time that Smotrich said his widely condemned statement that the village of Huwara should be wiped out – a statement he later apologized for – he said “We shouldn’t be dragged into anarchy in which civilians take the law into their own hands.”
The inflated numbers of “settler violence” include every visit by a Jew — not necessarily a “settler” nor even necessarily an Israeli — to the Temple Mount. Archeological trips to Jewish sites are considered “settler violence,” despite being peaceful, because they help to strengthen the Jewish claim to the land, especially in Judea and Samaria. An accident that leaves an Israeli car on Arab land is claimed to be “settler “ violence, and so is a bike ridden by an Israeli that is ridden by mistake onto Arab land. Road and bridge work by the Israelis in Judea and Samaria is also counted by the UN as “settler violence” because on completion, these projects may make it easier for “settlers” to move around in territory to which, much of the world wants us to believe, they have no title. Apparently the 3500-year history of Jews living in that territory is not enough to give them a legitimate claim, nor is the fact that all of the land “between the river and the sea” was intended by the League of Nations to be part of the territory assigned to Mandatory Palestine, which was ultimately to be become the State of Israel.
The UN has claimed that there have been “6,285 incidents of alleged violence against Palestinians in Judea and Samaria that reportedly occurred between January 2016 and the end of April 2023.” Subtract from that total the number of Jewish visits to Temple Mount (hardly “acts of settler violence), the visits by Jews to archaeological sites (which strengthen the Jewish claim to the land in Judea and Samaria, the infrastructure buildup, the car accidents that leave an Israeli car on Arab land, the Israeli hikers who by mistake trespass on Arab land — all of which the UN wrongly counts as “settler attacks” — we are left with a total of 833 acts of “settler violence” over close to eight years, or about 100 a year. The UN includes in that number of alleged acts of “settler violence” by Israelis those where Palestinians were wounded or killed while they were engaged in acts of terrorism. Does that make sense?
Once we examine those 833 alleged acts of “settler violence,” we find that only about half did not involve Palestinian terrorism against those “settlers.” So instead of 6,285 acts of “settler violence” over seven and a half years, which is the figure provided by UN, we in fact arrive at a very different figure: about 416 such acts, not 6,285, over 7 ½ years.
Finally, Israel’s Shin Bet records 6,068 serious attacks by Palestinians (shootings, stabbings, suicide bombings, etc.) against Israeli civilians over only two years, 2020-22. That is, there are fifteen times as many Palestinian attacks in just two years as the number of “violent settler attacks” in 7 ½ years.
The UN does not release any figures on Palestinian violence against Israelis. I wonder why?
Cynthia says
The UN is completely biased as is the media.
Oil money goes far to grease palms and indoctrinate our young people.
The West has lost its moral compass.