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Why the Double Standard on West Bank Violence?

(Israel Hayom-JNS) Jonathan S. Tobin - Some news outlets are describing a surge in settler violence against Palestinians. The question we should be asking is not whether it's true that a small percentage of residents in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria have engaged in confrontations with Palestinians or that some have broken the law by committing violence. It's why the focus is almost always bereft of the broader context of what is going on in the West Bank on a far more frequent basis: daily attacks on Jews by Arabs, including murder. While Arab violence doesn't justify gratuitous Jewish responses or reprisals, there is something wrong if a few Jews throwing stones is considered far more important than the fact that attacks on Jews in the same areas is more or less the national sport of Palestinians. Many of the incidents occur over disputed property when Palestinians seek to cultivate land to which they have no legal title, often adjacent to Jewish communities. The assumption that the Jews are always in the wrong is unjustified. Exponentially greater volumes of Palestinian violence are considered either unremarkable or somehow justified. Why is it that relatively rare incidents of Jewish misbehavior, including vandalism, which number a few hundred over the course of a year, are considered more newsworthy than Palestinian attacks of all kinds on Israelis, which are a daily occurrence and likely number more than a few hundred every month? Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett spoke the truth when he tweeted that "the settlers in Judea and Samaria have been suffering from violence and terrorism every day for decades." Palestinian Arabs are always judged by a lower standard. Giving them a pass for their far more frequent practice of terrorism speaks to a kind of racist condescension, rather than respect or concern for their well-being.
2021-12-20 00:00:00
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