Amid a rising spate of Jewish extremist violence in Israel and the occupied West Bank, two prominent US Middle East scholars are urging the United States to officially designate as terrorists those Israeli extremists who perpetrate terrorist violence against Palestinian civilians, Israeli citizens and even moderate elements of the settler movement.

The US, “much like Israel…, should consider designating individuals involved in acts of violence against Palestinians as terrorists,” Daniel Byman and Natan Sachs, researchers at the Brookings Institution Saban Center, wrote in the current issue of Foreign Afffairs.

“Such a designation would allow US authorities to prevent Americans from sending them funding and would be a way to support those Israelis seeking to combat the rise of extremism,” they continue.

Israeli leaders unusually forcefully condemned “as hate crimes” and "terror” an attempted lynching of Palestinian youths by a mob of Israeli teenagers in West Jerusalem’s Zion Square last week. Israeli authorities arrested seven Israeli teenagers suspected in the attack, which came on the same day a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a Palestinian taxi near the West Bank settlement of Bat Ayin, in which five members of a Palestinian family and the driver were burned.