The title of this blog is the title of Liel Liebovitz’s article for Tablet Magazine.
Here is how it starts:
Jewish extremist terrorism is out of control. “A man linked to pro-Israel terrorist group” was charged “in a plot to assassinate” pro-Hamas activist Nerdeen Kiswani, The New York Times reported on Friday. Mayor Zohran Mamdani was outraged by the news. In a post on X, Mamdani placed the alleged plot in context of “an alarming rise in threats and violence across the country targeting Palestinian human rights advocates.”
As it turned out, this plot did not come from any established “pro-Israel terrorist group.” The “JDL 613 Brotherhood” is the brainchild of one Yisrael Yaacob Ben Avraham, who, according to his bio, is a former drug addict who converted from Catholicism, and set up this group that he titled after an organization whose name he seems to have come across on the Internet.
All of this happened, not coincidentally, after a long week of headlines about Israel’s Very Violent Settlers™. “Settlers Drive a Palestinian Family Off Its Land,” read a typical Times headline last month. A subhead from earlier this month was more specific in lamenting “A rise in settler attacks is terrorizing Palestinians in the occupied territory, at a time when global attention is focused on the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.” Settlers are “strategically consolidating control of Palestinian lands” and “displacing Palestinian communities, sometimes very violently,” CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour told Norway’s foreign minister Espen Barth Eide, who added gravely that settler violence in the West Bank “is going into overdrive; it’s worse than ever … even supported by the Israeli government allowing settlers to take full control of territories that legally is Palestine.”
And lest you think that Israelis are not getting in on the action, a Jerusalem Post editorial this week declared that “extremist violence is eroding Israel’s national security from within.” Opposition politician Yair Lapid meanwhile labeled it “Jewish terrorism” and demanded the government combat it “with every available means.”
It’s an effective fairytale, in large part because the people it cast as its ogres—Jews living in their ancestral homeland of Judea and Samaria—have been derided for decades as bearded zealots committed to nothing but savagery, racism, and violence against their peaceable neighbors. But are the accusations true? And, if not, why are we seeing so many of them pop up?
Does that grab you? It grabbed me, and I read/learned from the rest of Mr. Liebovitz’s article. You should too.
You’ve got the link (here it is again). Please use it. Knowledge is power.
