West Bank Terror: Mainstream Media Discovers 'Settlers'
The New Arab highlights a surge in settler attacks in the occupied West Bank, using terms like "terror" and "violence." This marks a notable shift from the sanitized language often deployed—a "clash" here, a "dispute" there—by many mainstream outlets. But let's be clear: this isn't sudden. This is the predictable outcome of decades of illegal settlement expansion, backed by a government that
actively arms and protects these settlers. Netanyahu's current government includes ministers like Bezalel Smotrich, who openly advocates for further annexation and whose party, Religious Zionism, received nearly $200,000 from US-based donors in the 2022 election cycle alone (source: OpenSecrets). While outlets slowly catch up to describing settler actions as 'terror,' they often omit the context
of state-sanctioned impunity. When will the 'terror' applied by the Israeli military in support of these settlers also be afforded the same terminology? One might wonder how many more 'unprecedented' acts of violence it will take for the media to call state-backed land theft what it is: occupation and ethnic cleansing.