Everybody in the world, and just about everybody in Israel, appropriately is condemning the vigilante rampage through Huwara this week, in which dozens of cars, businesses, and homes were torched following the Palestinian terrorist murder of two Israeli brothers in that terrible town.
Obviously, I share these sentiments. Not only is such vigilante action immoral and unwise, but it mars Israel’s reputation around the world. And it risks further escalation of terrorism.
It is, of course, professional IDF soldiers, not overheated settler youth, who should be plowing through Huwara, arresting and interrogating terrorist suspects and bulldozing every building from which Israeli Jews have been shot at.
(Huwara long has been one of the most dangerous towns in Samaria. Almost every building along its main north-south street has served as a hideout for terrorists, forcing Israelis to run a daily gauntlet of boulders, Molotov cocktails, and rifle fire.)
But this is where I part ways with distraught condemners of the riot in Huwara. I certainly do not agree with the top IDF general in Judea and Samaria, Central Command GOC Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs, who this week termed the attack a “pogrom.”
One of the weakest pogroms
Compared to the ongoing Palestinian terrorist mega-pogrom against Israeli Jews, the Huwara rampage must rank as one the weakest pogroms in the ugly history of pogroms. In 2022, there were more than 5,000 Palestinian terror attacks against Israeli Jews, including car rammings, shootings, stabbings and bombings of innocent men, women and children.
These attacks included more than 500 Molotov cocktail attacks (firebombs), leading to the injury of more than 150 Israelis. There was a 210% rise in rock-throwing incidents in 2021 over 2020, and a 156% rise in bomb-throwing incidents in 2021. The comparative statistics for 2022 (not yet fully tabulated) are even worse. Over the past month alone, Palestinian terrorists have slaughtered 15 Israelis.
These murderous attacks constitute a continuing Palestinian mega-pogrom against Israel. By contrast, nobody was raped, kidnapped or murdered this week in Huwara (although it could yet come to that if the IDF does not diligently pursue and prosecute the perpetrators).
Col. (res.) Amir Avivi, CEO of Israel’s Defense and Security Forum (IDSF: Habithonistim), argues that the entire issue of “settler violence” has been blown out of proportion.
“Without meaning to diminish the ugliness of extremist attacks on Palestinians,” he says, “300 or so attacks a year against Palestinian property and 100 attacks against individuals – these are the UN figures – pales in comparison to 5,000 Palestinian boulder, bomb, and shooting attacks a year aimed at killing Israeli civilians! Certainly, events on the scale of the riot in Huwara are almost unknown.”
“And 300 attacks on property and 100 attacks against individuals committed by a few extremists at the fringes of a half-million-person strong and peaceful community of Israelis who live over the Green Line calculates to a level of violence that is lower than the level of violence (by Israelis against Israelis) that afflicts greater Tel Aviv.”
He further argues that Palestinian terrorist acts are no longer just a tactical nuisance. “They have become a strategic challenge for Israel. They are a street-level expression of a broader Palestinian and Islamist attack against Israel led by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, who provide a political tailwind to it.”
Worse yet still – according to a new study by Lt. Col. (res.) Yaron Buskila and Lt. Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch of the IDSF – is that Israeli courts have done much too little to deter and punish Palestinian perpetrators of violence.
In 95% of the rock and bomb-throwing cases brought before Israeli civilian and military courts in 2019-2020, the sentences handed down against perpetrators were far below the maximum sentences possible in Israeli law. Some sentences were miniscule, amounting only to days of incarceration.
The average prison term assessed for serious rock-throwing attacks was 8.3 months, and the average prison term assessed for murderous bomb-throwing attacks was 13 months – when the law allows for 10-25 years in prison for these offenses. In 11% of the rock and bomb-throwing cases, no penalties were imposed at all.
In fact, not all Palestinian attackers were prosecuted. In 2020, only 21% of rock throwers (in reported and documented incidents) were indicted and prosecuted, and only 33% of bomb throwers were indicted and prosecuted.
“These attacks, the lax Israeli operational and legal response to them, and the world’s equanimity in the face of such, sap the sense of personal security for Israeli civilians, and reinforce the sense of ‘successful jihad’ against Israel for Palestinian extremists,” warn Buskila and Hirsch.
Hirsch, who was head of IDF military prosecution in Judea and Samaria until 2016, adds that Palestinian terrorists are thrice incentivized to commit acts of violence: Once by weak Israeli prosecution, once by international stillness, and once again by the Palestinian Authority’s terrorist reimbursement and reward program, which provides NIS 600 million a year in salaries for jailed terrorists and their families.
Condemnations of the Huwara attack
WHICH BRINGS me back to anguished condemnations of the Huwara attack this week. (“Shame!” opined the international association of Conservative/Masorti rabbis. “The Holy One created all of humanity in the divine image, and every person must act to increase the divine presence in our world.”)
Given the dangerous and escalating Palestinian violence detailed above, and the weak world (and Israeli government) response to such violence, one would also expect to hear calls from liberal Jewish organizations and Israelis of the Left for a crackdown on Palestinian terrorists and their Palestinian government supporters.
Alas, it seems that the focus on sporadic settler violence (and yes, in the grand scheme of things, we are speaking of isolated incidents) obscures the far greater violence perpetrated in the West Bank every single day by extremist Palestinians against non-violent Israelis.
Without in any way diminishing the need to condemn the torchings in Huwara, one must ask: Where have all the sorrowful Jewish organizations been over the past year, and especially over the past month, as Israeli Jews living in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem have been picked off by Palestinian terrorists like ducks in a shooting gallery?
Would it have been too much for any of the liberal Jewish organizations abroad and multiple Israeli associations of the Left to issue a public call, at any time over the past year, that evinces a little more concern for the lives of Israeli civilians caught in the slingshots and gun-sights of Palestinian terrorists?
Might they have launched crowd-funding campaigns for Israeli victims of Palestinian terror, not just for Palestinian villagers targeted by Israeli extremists? (And yes, it bears repeating: Even one such extremist is too many.)
Might they vociferously have condemned the pay-for-slay Palestinian political culture that perpetuates terrorism and makes peace impossible, and marched on Washington to ensure that the US government truly pressures Ramallah to end this revolting policy?
Apparently, they need reminding that there is no moral equivalence whatsoever between Palestinian terrorists and Israeli settlers, even the most violent among them. Terrorism against Jews and Israelis is widely supported by Palestinian Arabs and their political parties. Whereas in Israel, support for vigilante violence against Arabs is limited to the tiniest of tiny segments of Israeli opinion; and those who engage in it are subject to denunciation and prosecution.
Perhaps some people need reminding (and that includes some foreign governments who profess to be friends of Israel) that the enemies of peace are Palestinian terrorists, the type of people who this week murdered Elan Ganeles, and Hallel and Yagel Yaniv; not the overwhelmingly peaceful and law-abiding Israeli residents of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.
The writer is a senior fellow at The Kohelet Forum and at Israel’s Defense and Security Forum (Habithonistim). The views expressed here are his own. His diplomatic, defense, political and Jewish world columns over the past 26 years are archived at davidmweinberg.com.