By now, millions around the world have seen the video of four masked men getting out of a car with Israeli license plates and brutally beating a 51-year-old Palestinian woman, Aida Ahmed Abdullah, and an NBC news crew near her home in the West Bank village of Jalud.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after a painfully long silence on such attacks, condemned this one as “criminal acts of violence” – he’s right, so far – but then he tried to downplay it as the work of “a handful of rioters” from “outside” (outside the West Bank or outside Israel? Maybe Iranian commandos?).
Sounding like Casablanca’s Captain Renault giving the dismissive order to “roundup the usual suspects,” he has consistently shrugged off such violence as “blown up beyond belief” and the work of a few “juvenile delinquents.”
Any honest observer knows damn well that if the attackers were Arabs and their victims Jews, he’d be the first to order a massive manhunt and crackdown. But not in cases like this. That’s because Netanyahu’s Israel has a double standard of justice.
Defense Minister Israel Katz has suspended administrative detention before trial for Jews but not Arabs, and the Knesset, at the urging of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir – who wears a lapel pin shaped like a noose – has enacted the death penalty but only for Arab terrorists, not Jewish terrorists.
Ben-Gvir, the man Netanyahu put in charge of the police, knows something about terrorism: he has a criminal record of his own for supporting a terrorist organization, inciting racism, rioting, and property destruction. As a lawyer, he has defended many violent extremists.
The two ministers, along with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who says the Palestinian people are “an invention,” and Netanyahu stridently oppose Palestinian statehood and instead want to see Israel annex the West Bank and Gaza; to many, the widening campaign of terrorist violence is a means to that end.
Former prime minister Ehud Olmert believes “the State of Israel is conducting an organized, systematic, state-funded campaign of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity” in the West Bank under the control of the state security apparatus. Their goal is annexation and “expulsion of Palestinian residents.”
US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, an avid supporter of the settler movement, rightly called the Jalud attack “terrorism,” a rare concession for the Trump administration. The ambassador, a Southern Baptist pastor, said the assault was a “violation of God’s law” and “bad for the Jews.”
Netanyahu’s condemnations of the violence ring hollow. He knows it is more than some boisterous teenagers killing, maiming, and damaging property and that his own security forces and the army too often side with the Jewish terrorists; some have even been filmed attacking and praying together.
Yes, there is Palestinian terrorism against Jews, and it is a very serious problem, and the anger and pain of the Hamas-led October 7 massacre still burns, but it must not be used to justify the reign of anti-Palestinian terrorism.
Unnamed “security sources” have reportedly told the media that some IDF commanders are reluctant to pursue violent settlers for fear it will damage their careers. That’s understandable when you can’t be sure which side your government is on.
'Great international damage to Israel'
Netanyahu admits Jewish terrorism “causes great international damage to Israel.” He inexplicably insists the terrorists are just wayward teens and “not from the settler community.” Not that he believes it, but because that community and the religious and nationalist extremists are more critical to his reelection in October than any international outrage.
The Netanyahu government’s failure to confront these terrorists is reverberating around the world, with governments and institutions threatening trade, travel, and other sanctions.
Settler violence and the government’s failure to take it seriously are bolstering Israel’s status as a pariah state and offending even its best friends. Human rights have never been a high priority for the Trump administration, and Huckabee’s condemnation may be a one-off, but severe damage already has been done in Washington, and the outrage is bipartisan.
The Jerusalem Post’s Herb Keinon called the settler violence “morally reprehensible” and a “strategic disaster.” It diverts manpower and resources away from fighting terrorism, casts Israel “in a horrible light,” is used to justify sanctions against Israel, and creates a false moral equivalence when terrorists attack Jews.
Trump, upon taking office in January 2025, immediately revoked the Biden administration’s sanctions on violent settlers and, until Huckabee’s recent comments, seemed largely unperturbed by their actions. Of course, the president has been preoccupied by his partnership with Netanyahu in their bungled war on Iran, which is winning friends for neither man in Washington.
When Congress reconvenes this month in a last burst of pre-election pontification and legislative grandstanding, efforts will be made to restrict or even cut aid to an increasingly unpopular Israel and limit the weapons and technology that can be shared.
Netanyahu, like someone else we know, takes credit for everything and responsibility for nothing. That’s why he must worry about two elections this fall, one week apart. Both will help define the future of the US-Israel alliance.
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and former legislative director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.