A new report published by Israel’s Regavim Movement NGO on Sunday has found that some 90% of incidents of “violence” attributed to Judea and Samaria Jews in recent years by the United Nations were fabricated.
Regavim’s 128-page research report in English, titled “False Flags and Real Agendas,” scrutinized a database maintained by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which claims to have documented thousands of alleged incidents of Israeli “settler violence” against Palestinian Arabs from January 2016 through April 2023.
An analysis of the 6,285 incidents documented by the U.N. showed that some 90% of the alleged acts in Judea and Samaria did not take place in the disputed territory but in eastern Jerusalem, or were entirely peaceful, such as visits by Israeli Jews to the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, as well as legal activities such as civilian hikes or infrastructure work.
Filtered for verified incidents of physical violence by Israeli Jews against Palestinians, the list shrinks to just 833 cases over a period of seven and a half years, averaging fewer than 10 incidents per month, according to Regavim.
In addition, the Regavim report found that many of these confirmed cases were also misclassified or involved anti-Israel provocations orchestrated by Palestinian and foreign left-wing activist groups.
Examination of the reports also revealed that “in many of them, it is not settler violence of one kind or another, but rather the opposite: these are terror attacks by Arabs against settlers that ended with the injury or elimination of the attacker,” according to the research document.
Regavim said that the term “settler violence” has been used by global bodies, media outlets and left-wing activists to draw a false moral equivalence between Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria and Palestinian terrorism.
“For years, we have been told about a ‘serious phenomenon’ of settler violence, but we have never been shown the data that proves that it exists,” Meir Deutsch, Regavim’s director-general, said in a statement.
“After years in which there was no pushback whatsoever against this false narrative, Regavim is presenting the facts, and they must be seen, heard and internalized in Israel and around the world,” Deutsch stated.
The Israel Defense Forces recorded 663 instances of violence by Jews against Palestinians in Judea and Samaria last year, a 34% decrease compared to 2023, when 1,005 incidents were recorded by the IDF.
Meanwhile, Jerusalem recorded thousands of Palestinian terrorist attacks against Jews in 2024, including many in Judea and Samaria.
Palestinian terrorists targeted Israeli Jews in Judea and Samaria at least 6,343 times last year, according to figures published by the Rescuers Without Borders (Hatzalah Judea and Samaria) NGO on Feb. 17.
Twenty-seven Israelis were murdered in Judea and Samaria in 2024, and more than 300 others were wounded, the group said in its annual report.
Source: JNS
