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UN Fudges the Data on West Bank Violence
(Wall Street Journal) Editorial - Who's terrorizing whom in the West Bank? President Biden, backed by UN data, built an unprecedented sanctions regime to address Israeli "settler violence," a suddenly ubiquitous term. But the data doesn't stand up to scrutiny. A new report by Regavim, an Israeli NGO, scrutinizes the statistics from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), on which the Biden case relied. It found that of 6,285 violent incidents by "settlers" from January 2016 through April 2023 listed by the UN, "The UN database includes thousands of clearly non-violent incidents in its count of violent events." Every visit by Jews to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Judaism's holiest site, is counted as settler violence. So are class trips to archaeological sites, traffic accidents, state infrastructure work and trespassing by hikers. Other incidents are in Jerusalem, which isn't a "settlement." Filtering out the thousands of such cases leaves 833 alleged incidents of nationalist violence resulting in bodily harm - a definition the UN claims to apply - over the 7-year period. But these include Palestinians harmed in the process of committing terrorist attacks who are listed as victims of settler violence. In about half the 833 cases, the UN also records the victim's "involvement in clashes," leaving it unclear who started it. In 117 of the cases, the UN says Israeli security forces, not settlers, are to blame. Meanwhile, the Israel Security Agency records 6,068 serious attacks by Palestinians (shootings, stabbings, suicide bombings, etc.) against Israeli civilians over only two years, 2020-22. The picture of the West Bank of wanton violence by Israeli civilians against peaceful Palestinians is an inversion of the daily reality.