How the media gets Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria wrong
News coverage of Israeli settlers in Judea and Samaria is another where media bias provides a complete distortion of the truth. It is time for a look at reality.
There are certain general truths. The sun rises in the East, the moon orbits the Earth, and the international media will grossly misreport everything Israel does in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).
The latest example is the media’s hysteria over Israel’s recent decision to turn 1,270 hectares (3,138 acres) in Judea and Samaria into state land for development and settlement. This is the biggest such move since the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, which the Palestinians rejected in favor of violence.
I have been waiting for Israel to make such a move so that I could write this piece on how poorly the international media would report it. I have not been disappointed. Coverage has been biased, misrepresentative, and dishonest. I wish this made me a great soothsayer, but it was all too predictable.
CNN described it as a “large land seizure in the occupied West Bank”. As I have explained in great detail, Judea and Samaria is not occupied; it is disputed. CNN stating it as a matter of fact reveals its bias. It then built its story entirely on this false premise, without which it is hard to find any legal reason why Israel should not develop its own land. It is not even clear that the settlements would be illegal if Judea and Samaria were occupied.
In a dazzling display of ignorance, mainstream media almost uniformly asserted that Israel approving more settlements would make it harder for Palestinians to build a state. This is nonsense and deceitful.
It is deceitful because the Palestinians do not want a state next to Israel. They want one in place of it. The Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas want to wipe the Jewish state and people out of existence. Polling from the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research shows only 32 percent of Palestinians support a two-state solution, with 63 percent supporting “armed intifada.”
Given that most Palestinians do not want a two-state solution, what difference does it make if Jewish settlements are an obstacle to that outcome?
It is also nonsense that Jewish settlements make it harder or impossible to create a Palestinian state if, against all odds, some kind of agreement was reached. Land can be swapped. Settlements can be torn down. Israel has shown its willingness to remove settlements in Gaza in 2005 and the Sinai in Egypt in 1982.
Jewish settlements are problematic only because the Palestinians insist that any state they have be free of Jews. The PA is adamant about this. If the Palestinians were willing to have Jews and Jewish settlements in their state, agreeing on a border would be relatively easy. Jewish villages in a Palestinian state would be just like the many Arab villages and cities in Israel. Many countries have minorities. It is not the settlements or “land seizures” that are the obstacle to peace; it is Islamism and Jew hatred.
The international media also rarely reports the nuances around settlements, such as there being different categories of them, and the complexity of other interactions between Jewish settlers and Palestinians.
There are settlements in Israel “proper”, settlements on disputed territory, and then there are outposts on privately owned Palestinian land. The first category is entirely lawful. The second is disputed, and the third is illegal under Israeli law.
With regard to settlements on disputed land, the media often gives the false impression that they are displacing Palestinians. This is incorrect. They are on undeveloped land as pictures of the areas earmarked for development show.
The media also does not portray how close many of these settlements are to Israel proper. They are often just down the road, not on some distant frontier that the term settlement conjures up.
It is the last category of illegal outposts that gets reported especially poorly. What journalists leave out is just as important as what they choose to report.
Israel has just recognized five illegal outposts on the edge of established settlements. This made global headlines. In part, this was because it was punitive for Spain, South Africa, and Ireland unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian state. It is poor policy and poor politics - at least as far as international diplomacy is concerned - to reward the building of illegal settlements.
Yet, Israel also just did something else. It sent 500 police to tear down illegal Jewish outposts in Tzur Harel for being built on Palestinian land. Police clashed with the settlers, who threw rocks and Molotov cocktails. Almost no international news outlet covered it despite the Israeli press reporting on it extensively and footage easily available on social media.
For the global media, it is news only when Israel builds settlements, but not when it destroys them. This spreads the false idea that Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria is a free-for-all. As the police tearing down illegal outposts shows, the situation is far more complex.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Moral Clarity: Truths in Politics and Culture to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.