Benajmin Netanyahu visited Donald Trump at the White House this week.Image: keystone
December 31, 2025, 1:05 p.mDecember 31, 2025, 1:05 p.m
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has played down growing settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. In an interview with the US broadcaster Fox News, he said that only a “handful of kids” were responsible for such incidents in the occupied territory. He said there were around 70 teenagers from devastated families who did not come from the West Bank itself.
“They do things like felling olive trees and sometimes try to set a house on fire,” Netanyahu continued. «I can’t accept that. This is vigilante justice.” However, the head of government spoke of a false equation of such attacks with terrorist attacks on Israeli settlers and their families in the West Bank, which he put at more than 1,000.
Criticism from Rabbi for Human Rights
Avi Dabusch, chairman of the Rabbins for Human Rights organization, wrote in a post on Platform Dabusch further wrote: “70 children” from destroyed houses “are said to have carried out 360 Jewish terrorist attacks in a month and a half. Well, really.”
Netanyahu on the “settler” violence in the West Bank:
First of all, I think it’s much bloated.
When people talk about it, they’re talking about a handful of kids — about 70 teenagers, not from the West Bank, who come from broken homes.
They do things like chopping olive trees… pic.twitter.com/JhT0wTPogD
— Clash Report (@clashreport) December 31, 2025
Dabusch further asked himself why “our great army and police cannot stop this ‘children’s militia’.” It is “another blatant lie from the think tank of our Prime Minister” and his office.
Harsh accusation of promoting Jewish terror
Dabusch also accused Netanyahu’s right-wing religious government of “directly promoting and financing Jewish terror.” In this context, he called the right-wing extremist Police Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir a “criminal who was convicted of supporting terrorism and whom Netanyahu has entrusted with the supervision of the police, which is responsible for all of us.” Ben-Gvir is identified with the goals of the settler movement and advocates an annexation of the West Bank.
Numerous settler attacks in the West Bank
According to the UN emergency relief office Ocha, there have been more than 1,700 settler attacks in the West Bank since the beginning of the year. This year, violence in the West Bank left a total of around 240 Palestinians dead, at least nine of whom were killed by settlers.
Israeli deaths in Palestinian attacks
Deadly terrorist attacks by Palestinians on Israelis continue to occur in the West Bank. According to Ocha, 17 Israelis have been killed in the West Bank since the beginning of the year, including six security forces and eleven civilians, seven of them settlers. (sda/dpa)
You will also be interested in: