Sorry but Israeli settlers are not the main problem.
Focusing solely on the Israeli settler movement, while ignoring other pertinent realities, is not just intellectually lazy. It is a double standard creatively disguised as antisemitism.
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Two weeks ago, just before the much-hyped U.S. presidential election, President Joe Biden’s administration quietly waived mandatory sanctions for terrorism on the embattled Palestinian government — even as it determined that the government’s leaders are paying imprisoned terrorists and fomenting violence in breach of U.S. law.
The State Department determined that the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization are not complying with agreements to curb terrorism against Israel and end the “pay-to-slay” program, which rewards imprisoned terrorists for committing acts of violence (mainly against Israeli civilians).
Those violations should trigger U.S. sanctions, barring members of the Palestinian government from obtaining U.S. visas. The Biden-Harris administration nonetheless used its executive power to waive the sanctions.
Unfortunately for those of us with a head on our shoulders, the Biden-Harris administration is desperately using its last days in the White House to appease its far-Left “progressive” base. On Monday, they sanctioned Amana, the Israeli settlement movement’s main development organization. In total, 17 individuals and 16 entities have been sanctioned through an executive order signed by Biden last February, which allowed the U.S. to target those “destabilizing the West Bank.”
While it is true that some Israeli settlers are evil, most are not. They are ordinary people like you and I who choose to live in Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank) precisely because it is disputed (not occupied) land.
“We ‘settlers’ are Israelis, and we enjoy the democratic support of our country,” wrote Malkah Fleisher, an Israel rights activist who lives in Judea. “Our residents are Israeli doctors, lawyers, rabbis, army officers, teachers, politicians, engineers, shop owners — everything you can think of.”
“Contrary to what detractors would have you believe,” added Fleisher, “we don’t actually run around booting Palestinian grandmothers out of their orchards or holding guns to the heads of Arab children. In fact, it is we who find ourselves constantly under attack. We have bad-faith actors masquerading as human rights defenders … Do you know what it feels like to send your kids on a walk out in nature, and harbor a fear that they will be massacred? To stand at a bus stop and worry that you’ll be knifed in the chest during your morning commute? We are on constant alert, and can never let our guard down — not the women, not the children, not the infirm. This is our reality.”
“Part of loving peace is protecting peace,” she concluded. “We’re peaceful. But we’re not pacifists. Know the distinction.”1
If we want to have a respectable conversation about Israeli settlements, we first and foremost ought to start off by being intellectually honest: The area of Judea and Samaria — where Jews have lived for 3,000 years, and where 90 percent of the towns cited in the Bible are situated — was outlined as an independent Arab state by the “United” Nations in its 1947 Partition Plan (an attempt to establish a peaceful compromise) to exist alongside the area outlined for an independent Jewish state.
In its plan, the UN ignored the legal, historical, moral, and religious rights of the Jews to the region. The assumption that Jews have no association or history in the region was an ignorant mistake — one that much of the world believed.
As Eugene Kontorovich, a professor and the director of its Center on the Middle East and International Law, put it:
“… one cannot occupy one’s own territory: If Ukraine retakes Crimea from Russia, it will not be an occupation just because it had long been administered by Moscow. … under general rules of international law applicable around the world, Israel would have a sovereign claim to the West Bank from 1948 (not so for the Golan Heights). That is because newly created states inherit the borders of the prior administrative units in the territory, in this case, British Mandate Palestine.”
“Demonstrating that Israeli settlements are illegal cannot be done simply by citing what is said about Israeli settlements. To prove the point, one needs to show that comparable conduct by other countries has been regarded as illegal. In other words, if you’re arguing in front of the Supreme Court, you can’t cite the decision of the judge under review as proof for the rule — you need to show it applied in other cases.”
“When we look for the alleged rule applied elsewhere, we find — nothing.”2
Even then, the Palestinians outright rejected the UN’s 1947 Partition Plan and chose war as a means to resolve the dispute, but they kept losing. I am not familiar with a nation or people who rejects peaceful means of resolution designed to grant them statehood, instead proceeds to start and lose war after war, and still makes claims to lands that they themselves rejected from a third-party arbitrator.
As Reuben Salsa, editor of the “Judean People’s Front,” put it: “Palestinians seem to be under the impression their wars don’t count because they feel oppressed.”3
Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, added: “Only Israel can be attacked by terrorist armies on seven fronts and be labeled by the UN as the aggressor.”4
And this is just a reminder that:
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was long considered an obstacle to a hostage-released deal, has been dead for over a month.
Israel has offered immunity and safe passage to any Gazan who helps release a hostage.
The CEO of SodaStream (an Israeli company) has offered $100,000 for the release of each living hostage.
Not a single hostage has been released by the “innocent civilians” in Gaza.
Palestinian peace activist Hamza Howidy was forced to leave Gaza due to ongoing persecution by Hamas for taking part in the “We Want to Live” protests. He wrote:
“You know what would help the Palestinians in Gaza? Condemning Hamas’ atrocities. Instead, the protesters routinely chant their desire to ‘Globalize the Intifada.’ Apparently, they do not realize that the intifadas were disastrous for both Palestinians and Israelis, just as October 7th has been devastating for the people of Gaza.”5
If the Israeli settler was a publicly traded stock, it would be wildly overvalued — an entity scrutinized, dissected, and blamed for everything from regional instability to climate change. (Give it time.)
In the pantheon of global villains, the Israeli settler occupies a curious position. They are lambasted with vigor unmatched by the criticism directed toward actors who commit outright atrocities. This relentless focus, however, reveals far more about the double standards of international discourse than it does about the settlers themselves.
Let’s begin with the obsession over settlers, often portrayed as ideological zealots parachuting into someone else’s backyard with malicious intent. This caricature dominates media narratives, reducing a complex issue into a morality play. “Settlers are the obstacle to peace,” we are told. The formula is simple: Vilify them, and all other factors — such as Palestinian terrorism, corruption, and entrenched hatred — fade into irrelevance. How convenient.
The fixation on Israeli settlements is not merely disproportionate; it is a deliberate distraction. In Gaza, for instance, there are no Israeli settlers. They all left in 2005 because the Israeli government forced them to. Yet Hamas and other factions transformed that territory into a jihadist fortress designed to indiscriminately launch rockets at Israeli population centers. So much for the theory that removing settlers equals peace.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, settler violence is documented with clinical precision, often over-amplified as proof of systemic oppression. But where is this same microscopic scrutiny for Palestinian leaders’ overt glorification of violence or their squandering of international aid meant to build their society? Why do Palestinians get an eternal “get out of jail free” card while Israelis are held to absurd double standards that would never stand a chance in any other respectable country?
I am not saying that Israeli settlers should not be sanctioned or reprimanded according to Western forms of justice; of course they should be. But so too should Palestinians who actually destabilize the West Bank.
Consider the glorification of terrorists in Palestinian society, where schools, squares, and sports tournaments are named after those who have murdered Israeli civilians simply for being Jewish. Imagine if any Israeli settlement honored individuals who killed Palestinians. The world would erupt, and rightly so. But when this happens in Palestinian territories, it is met with a collective shrug, or worse, rationalized as a response to “occupation” and “refugee” status.
Of the 14 million Palestinians in the world, only 30,000 of them are actual refugees from the 1948 Israeli-Arab war that the Arabs started after refusing to negotiate a two-state solution between the Jews and the local Arabs. (At the time, these Arabs were not called “Palestinians” because everyone living in British Mandate Palestine, including Jews, were known as “Palestinians.”)
Yet the great abomination known as the “United” Nations wants you to believe that there are some 6 million Palestinian refugees because they nefariously changed the definition of a refugee (only for the Palestinians and no other refugee group) to include refugee status for the descendants and their descendants and their descendants of the actual Palestinian refugees. In one example, more than 2 million registered Palestinian refugees live in Jordan; most, but not all, have full citizenship. Fun fact: You are not a refugee if you are a citizen of the country where you live.
But by the Palestinian definition of “refugee,” at least 40 percent of the world are refugees, probably you and I included. And yet, here we are, not queuing for UN aid packets or demanding the right of return to our ancestral lands. Instead, we go about our lives, blissfully unaware that, by the UN’s elastic logic, our mere existence might entitle us to perpetual grievance and international pity.
For the Palestinians, however, this rebranding of forever “refugee” status serves as a political masterstroke — a means of inflating numbers, perpetuating victimhood, and weaponizing the concept of human rights. It is less about solving a problem and more about institutionalizing it, ensuring that a generational grievance remains as permanent and immovable as the proverbial rock in Sisyphus’ path.
Meanwhile, actual refugees from other conflicts — those who have been displaced, resettled, and moved on with their lives — must look at this system and wonder: Where is our multibillion-dollar bureaucracy?
Back in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority refuses to use its considerable international aid to relocate more than 100,000 Palestinians from Palestinian-controlled refugee camps to residential locations in the territories, preferring to leave them confined under extremely unpleasant conditions — and then blame Israel for their self-inflicted unpleasant conditions because, you know, f*ck the Jews.
All this while leaked records from a Panamanian law firm showed that 19-year Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his two sons went on to use power and influence to control the two major Palestinian economic boards and built a West Bank economic empire worth more than $300 million.
And such moral asymmetry extends beyond leadership. The systematic incitement against Jews and Israel in Palestinian education systems fosters a culture that views coexistence as betrayal. Textbooks do not merely erase Israel from maps; they erase the very possibility of peace.
At a recent session, Member of the European Parliament Assita Kanko recently remarked:
“The Palestinian Authority must remove all educational materials and contents that fail to adhere to UNESCO standards — particularly those that contain antisemitism, incitement to violence, hate speech, and glorification of terrorism. It is such deeply concerning content that makes atrocities like October 7th possible.”
“Instead of giving more money, (we) must closely scrutinize to ensure that no European Union funds are allocated, directly or indirectly, to the drafting, teaching, or exposure of such problematic educational materials to Palestinian children, including those provided by UN organizations. Terrorism can never be seen as acceptable because of what people learn in schools with curricula that we fund. We can’t teach our children how to hate and kill. We must teach them how to stop the hatred and embrace life.”
Even in southern Lebanon, where the IDF has been operating to clear threats by Hezbollah, IDF troops said weapons were found in nearly every home: “In almost every home there are weapons and signs of identification with the organization. … “We found they were ready for another October 7th, and we’re very close to the border, so it’s not hard to imagine that they would have done it.” In addition to the weapons, troops found pictures of the Iranian mullahs and even “Nazi flags and Hitler statues.”6
And yet, we are told to believe that Israeli settlements — a symptom of the conflict, not its cause — are the overarching problem, making all others merely pale in comparison.
Why are Palestinian transgressions so readily excused?
The answer lies in a peculiar condescension masquerading as compassion. Palestinians are too often infantilized, their actions framed as inevitable responses to oppression. Terrorism becomes “resistance” and corruption becomes “the challenges of governance under occupation.” This patronizing mindset robs Palestinians of moral agency and feeds into the false narrative that they have no role in the perpetuation of their own struggles.
Meanwhile, Israeli settlers are held to impossibly high standards, as if their existence alone negates any Palestinian responsibility. The contrast is staggering. When settlers build a new community, it is a crisis on par with the Haiti earthquake, the Rwandan Genocide, and the 2008 global financial meltdown.
When Palestinian factions, deliberately aided and abetted by the “United” Nations, launch rockets or carry out murders, the global response is muted or preoccupied with dissecting how Israeli policies might have “provoked” such actions.
For those willing and able to put their mainstream media-induced biases aside, they know that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a fight over settlements; it is a fight over Israel’s very existence. Palestinian leaders have rejected every peace deal (approximately 10 since the 1930s) that includes the reality of a Jewish state.
The infamous three “no’s” of Khartoum — no peace, no recognition, no negotiations — did not hinge on settlements. They were issued long before the first settler ever stepped into the West Bank.
Settlements are a red herring, a convenient scapegoat for those unwilling to confront the deeper issues. The real obstacles to peace are a refusal to recognize Jewish self-determination, a glorification of violence, and an international community that perpetuates Palestinian victimhood at the expense of accountability.
What’s more, the scrutiny of settlers reflects a broader pattern in how the world approaches Israel. Every Jewish reaction is overanalyzed, every Palestinian action excused. It is not that Israeli settlers are beyond criticism; it is that they have become a lightning rod for criticisms that should be directed elsewhere. Settlers are not the problem. They are merely a convenient foil for those unwilling to confront the uncomfortable truths of this conflict.
So, the next time you hear that Israeli settlers are the obstacle to peace, look at the complete picture and ask yourself: What about Hamas, a terrorist organization which combines genocidal and Islamist aspirations? And what about the Palestinian Authority’s glorification of terrorists, or the international community’s enabling of a narrative that absolves Palestinian leaders of responsibility?
Focusing solely on Israeli settlers, while ignoring or glossing over these other realities, is not just intellectually lazy. It is a double standard creatively disguised as antisemitism.
“I Have a Right to Live in Judea and Samaria.” Tablet.
“Israeli Settlements Are Not Illegal.” Tablet.
Reuben Salsa on Substack
Hillel Neuer on X
“Message From a Gazan to Campus Protesters: You're Hurting the Palestinian Cause | Opinion.” Newsweek.
“After clearing Lebanese village, IDF troops say weapons found in nearly every home.” Times of Israel.
Most of the evil in the world against Jews is perpetrated by Muslims and facilitated by corrupt global institutions, like the UN and the ICC. Hopefully, under the incoming Trump administration, he and his cabinet, including jew/israel-supporting, Elise Stefanik, will challenge the status quo and end our involvement with the UN and, thereby UNRWA (which itself should be labeled as a terrorist organization). We need to push the reboot button on all these organizations and stop facilitating this madness. It is disgusting that, in their final days, the Biden/Harris administration and blue-state governors are doing everything they can to subvert the will of the majority of Americans. It is reminiscent of the final days of WWII, where, even though the Reich knew it was losing, they continued to divert manpower and materiale away from the war and toward the effort to murder as many Jews as possible.
Excellent piece. Joshua, you are a gem on this site, and very important for explaining issues clearly and succinctly. I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks this about your writing.