TEL AVIV — Shocking settler violence against West Bank Palestinians has polarized Israeli society and antagonized an already exasperated Biden administration.
Israel’s top three security officials issued a joint communique on Saturday condemning the recent rampaging by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank. “These attacks go against every moral and Jewish value and are nationalist terrorism in the full sense of the term, and we are obliged to fight them,” wrote Israel’s top soldier Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, Shin Bet security agency head Ronen Bar, and Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai.
Their use of the term "nationalist terrorism," almost always reserved for Palestinian violence against Israelis, found widespread condemnation among settlers and the government ministers who back them.
“It is as if the government supports the settlers rather than the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet,” a former senior defense official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity.
