Israeli settler terrorism against Palestinian civilians is on the rise again, with the full support of the Zionist Entity’s far-right coalition. The blatant acts of unjustifiable racist violence are now posing an optics challenge to Western backers of “Israel”, however, it is in fact the West that supported the rise of this kind of fascist terrorism in the occupied West Bank.

Over the past weeks, Israeli settler violence against Palestinians has risen exponentially and has drawn criticism from nations around the world, including representatives from the EU, UN, and the US. One of the recent terrorist attacks was committed against the village of Turmusaya, where over 300 armed Jewish extremists raided the area, burning 30 homes, 60 cars and killing a 27-year-old man, as well as injuring upwards of 100 people. However, these events did not happen in a vacuum and were preceded in a steady rise of settler violence over the past three years.

In 2021, the United Nations says that the average number of settler attacks in the West Bank was 1 per day. This then rose to 2 per day in 2022 and this year that figure has risen again to an average of 3 attacks per day, constituting the highest daily attack rate since 2006 in the occupied territory. Even according to the publicly stated positions of the Zionist regime’s top backers, the US, EU, and UK, Israeli West Bank settlements are considered to be an impediment to peace and illegal. It is the majority position held at the UN General Assembly that the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip are all illegally occupied also.

Over the past few years the world's top human rights organizations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have both released lengthy reports that provide arguments to justify their declaration that “Israel” is an Apartheid regime. The Crime of Apartheid is tantamount to a crime against humanity under international law. Just this past week, a notorious spineless fence-sitter on the question of Palestine, the former UN secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, even came out to say that the Zionist entity is verging on being an Apartheid regime.

How The West Created The Settler Fascist Problem

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Despite offering the occasional verbal disapproval of illegal Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied territories, the Western backers of the Zionist regime have repeatedly allowed for these settlements to expand regardless. Every Israeli coalition, whether it has been headed by the Israeli Labour party or Likud, has continuously advanced further settlement expansion, all as the US government, along with the EU, backed the Israelis diplomatically and financially in allowing for these very settlements to be expanded.

Although there may not be a direct financial link between the US government and Israeli settlements - like this is between former US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and the Beit El settlement - the continued financing of the so-called “security” situation inside the West Bank, made it clear that Washington was perfectly fine with protecting those Israeli settlers who were actively participating in a war crime by living on stolen land. The US, EU, and UK all talk about the so-called “Two State solution” as the only way forward, but then commit themselves entirely to the Zionist regime’s desires and offer unconditional support, no matter how many settlements are constructed.

The light condemnation of settlement expansion has never materialized into any action to prevent the Israeli regime from violating the West’s alleged red-line on such expansionism. For quite a while, the system inside of the West Bank did stabilize however, after the Second Intifada ended in 2006, with settlements continuing to expand while there was relative calm inside the territory. What the West did not see coming, or simply ignored, was the growing fascist movements and tendencies that were emerging inside these illegal settlements, allowing for extremist settler fanatics to expand their influence.

As the illegal settler population now continues to grow, nearing a million, this has come at a great cost to the status quo in Israeli politics. In the past, the Israeli political scene was dominated by figures and political parties that, despite their cruelty towards Palestinians, sought to go about their oppressive ways quietly, to cover it up and to move strategically towards their goals. Today, the Zionist public are voting for extremist right-wing representatives that not only openly speak of ethnic cleansing, mass murder and use racial slurs, but also act based upon emotionally charged extremist dogma. This era in Israeli politics is one of outright extremism and has come to this point with the backing of groups that were once thought to be on the fringes of Zionist politics, even banned. 

The Religious Zionism alliance, whose two leading figures are Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, are quite literally West Bank settler extremists. They now occupy some of the most prominent positions in the Zionist leadership and hold the power - as the largest political group in the ruling coalition after the Likud party - to influence most facets of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy decisions. This is something that the Western allies of the Zionist regime are clearly unhappy about, yet these settlers would not exist as they are today if it wasn’t for the West allowing them to.

The US government has never even stepped in to tell the regime that its occupation forces should not protect and permit their settlers to commit terrorist attacks against innocent Palestinians. One of the reasons why the extremist settlers are emboldened to behave so atrociously, is due to the fact that the occupation forces protect them while they commit their attacks. If this protection was taken away from the settler extremists, it would alone prevent many violent incidents, as the extremist settlers are afraid of confronting Palestinians who are capable of defending themselves. 

At no point has any Western nation placed any significant pressure on the Zionist entity to simply prevent the rise of settler fascism, even at the point that it began to rear its head in mainstream Israeli politics. Therefore, it is the fault of the supporters of this Apartheid settler project that have caused the current situation of today. The West cannot simply pretend that it opposes such settler terrorism, or play mental gymnastics so that it somehow dissociates the settler extremists with the Israeli regime itself. The Israeli coalition is literally a collection of fascistic racists, many of whom are themselves from illegal West Bank settlements. There is no difference between the settlers the West is now condemning and the members of the Israeli far-right coalition. The only thing that really separates them is that the settlers burning down villages are wearing Jewish religious clothing and the regime members are in suites and ties.