Amit Segal
Ynet News, Feb. 3, 2024
“After filtering all of these, we’re left with about 20 violent incidents in a month, most of them being cases of mutual violence, and some reported only by Palestinian sources without being verified.”
My friend and his children recently visited his sister at her home. “Would you like some chocolate milk?” the aunt asked, and the kids, of course, said yes. “Okay, just so you know, the cocoa powder is a substitute, we use soy milk, and we drink it without sugar.”
This “chocolate-less chocolate milk” came to mind while I was at the UN’s data on Israeli settler violence. This was the most significant issue between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea in the eyes of the world and has since moved to second place following the start of the war in Gaza.
However, when the details on settler violence are examined thoroughly it seems like there isn’t much violence, nor much settlers. Dr. Michael Wolfowicz, a criminology researcher at the Hebrew University’s Faculty of Law, received the data from the UN.
At first glance, it’s horrifying: between 2016 and 2022, there were no less than 5,656 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians. But delving into the numbers reveals that 1,600 of them took place in Jerusalem, with almost all of them involving Jews entering the Temple Mount or clashes between the police and Muslims who acted violently in the area. … [To read the full article, click here]