A recent New York Times article paints a dire picture of Jewish life in Judea and Samaria — the biblical heartland of Israel — portraying Jewish residents almost exclusively as aggressors and Palestinians as passive victims. While it’s true that criminal acts by anyone, Jew or Arab, should be condemned and prosecuted, the article omits critical facts that change the entire narrative.
The term “settler violence” has become a media shorthand that obscures the real context: an ongoing wave of Palestinian terrorism targeting Jews in these same communities. This year alone, dozens of Israelis have been murdered or injured in shootings, stabbings, car-rammings, and bombings originating from the West Bank. Jewish residents live under constant threat — attacks that rarely make global headlines but are daily reality.
Selective Outrage and Missing Context
The Times notes the rise in so-called “settler attacks” but glosses over the surge in Palestinian terrorism since Hamas’s October 7th massacre. According to Israel’s Shin Bet security service, there have been thousands of attempted and successful terror attacks in the West Bank in the past 18 months. This includes organized terror cells operating from Palestinian Authority–controlled cities, many funded and armed by Iran through Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Where are the articles about Israelis firebombed in their cars? About Jewish families shot at on the roads between communities? About teenagers ambushed on their way home from school?
The Legal and Historical Realities
Calling the West Bank “occupied” and Jewish communities “illegal” is not a legal consensus but a political position. International law, including the Mandate for Palestine (1922), recognizes the Jewish right to settle in all parts of the Land of Israel. The claim that Jews are “taking Palestinian land” ignores that much of this territory was barren or state-owned before Israel’s defensive war in 1967, when it liberated Judea and Samaria from Jordanian occupation.
Israel’s Accountability vs. Palestinian Impunity
The article accuses Israel of failing to prosecute Jews while ignoring the Palestinian Authority’s policy of pay-for-slay — financially rewarding convicted terrorists and their families. Israeli democracy has mechanisms to investigate and prosecute crimes by anyone, including Jews. In contrast, the Palestinian Authority glorifies those who murder Jews, names streets and schools after them, and teaches children to aspire to martyrdom.
Moral Clarity in a Time of War
CJUI has always maintained that violence against innocents is wrong, whether committed by Jews or Arabs. But moral clarity demands recognizing that the vast majority of Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria are law-abiding citizens raising families, farming the land, and contributing to Israel’s economy — not torching cars in the middle of the night. They are targeted not because of anything they’ve done, but because they are Jews living in their ancestral homeland.
When media outlets fail to report the full context — the terror threat, the legal history, and the moral distinctions — they perpetuate a distorted, one-sided narrative that fuels anti-Israel sentiment worldwide.
The real “new normal” in the West Bank is not Jewish aggression. It’s a battle for survival against those who want to erase any Jewish presence there at all. The Jewish people have returned to their homeland to stay — in Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem, and yes, in Judea and Samaria.