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In the West Bank, spiking violence and an idle economy spur fears of a broadening conflict
DEIR ISTIYA, West Bank (JTA) — The video, making the rounds in this northern West Bank Palestinian village, showed an Israeli settler firing a rifle in the air above a group of Palestinians harvesting olives in a field not far from an Israeli settlement.
Standing in a small olive grove, the settler told the Palestinians that he would “put a bullet in their head” if they return. Later in the day, anonymous flyers were found on cars elsewhere in the village, warning its residents of a coming “forced expulsion” or “Nakba,” the Arabic word for “catastrophe” that Palestinians use to describe the dispersion and expulsion of Palestinians during Israel’s 1948 War of independence.
The incident last week comes amid an escalation in violence in the West Bank following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s ensuing war against the terror group in Gaza. The eruption of West Bank clashes has been dwarfed in attention by the war, in which thousands have been killed and wounded and an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza is ongoing.
But this year is already the bloodiest in the West Bank in nearly two decades, and fears are compounding of the situation escalating further amid a dangerous mix of dynamics, including, since Oct. 7, economic insecurity after Israel suspended the permits that some 140,000 West Bank Palestinians rely on to work.
Since Oct. 7, according to the Times of Israel, more than 130 West Bank Palestinians, including dozens of children, have been killed by Israeli forces, and a number by settlers, while one Israeli soldier has been killed by Palestinians.
The past three weeks have also seen more than 100 incidents of violence toward Palestinians by Israeli settlers, according to the Israeli legal rights group Yesh Din, which said more than 800 West Bank Palestinians have been forced from their homes during that period.
Meanwhile, more than 1,200 Palestinians from the West Bank have been arrested, a majority of them affiliated with Hamas, according to the Israel Defense Forces. And on Thursday, an Israeli man was shot to death in the West Bank as he drove home from his army reserve duty.
Palestinians mourn Nasser Barghouti during his funeral in the West Bank village of Beit Rima, northwest of Ramallah, Sunday, Oct. 29, 2023. (Flash90)
The spike in West Bank violence has led to differing and at times contradictory responses from Israeli officials. One lawmaker in the country’s right-wing government has called for “a Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of ’48,” while another far-right lawmaker was recently appointed to head a subcommittee focusing on the West Bank. The army is also planning to train and arm residents of Orthodox settlements without army experience to guard their settlements, according to a report Thursday in Haaretz.
Local leaders and those tasked with security, meanwhile, have condemned vigilante attacks and urged residents to leave law enforcement to Israeli troops.
“There is a big difference between a feeling of security and security,” Oded Revivi, the mayor of the West Bank settlement of Efrat, posted on Facebook on Wednesday praising the IDF brigade that protects the settlement. “A feeling of security is a very important feeling, but sometimes it turns out that the action that led to the feeling did not contribute to security. Conversely, actual security always brings a sense of security.”
The rising tide of West Bank settler attacks has led Israel to begin taking active measures to respond, placing extremist Israeli settler Ariel Danino in a four-month period of administrative detention, a term that signifies arrest without charges and is largely used for Palestinian detainees. On Monday, an off-duty IDF soldier from a unit of Orthodox soldiers was arrested for involvement in the killing of a 40-year-old Palestinian, Bilal Muhammed Saleh, who was shot dead on Saturday while harvesting olives near the village of As-Sawiya in the northern West Bank.
“We absolutely condemn any form of violence, whether it is against Jews or Palestinian civilians,” Betty Ilovici, the media and foreign affairs adviser for Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Administrative detention is used as a tool to stop anyone that poses an imminent threat to civilians.”
She added, “The military is doing everything in its power to maintain this arena as stable as possible, and again we condemn any form of violence and will do what is necessary to prevent it or stop it if necessary.”
Palestinians inspect the demolished family home of Saleh al-Arouri, in the West Bank village of Arura, near Ramallah, on October 31, 2023.(FLASH90)
That posture has come as the violence and string of evictions has increased. A Haaretz report said that in one instance, several Palestinians were stripped and tortured by soldiers and settlers. And in recent days, human rights groups have reported that two communities in the South Hebron Hills were evacuated following continued harassment from Israeli settlers. According to Comet-ME, an Israeli-Palestinian organization providing basic energy and clean-water services to Palestinians living off the grid in the West Bank, since Oct. 7 there have been 12 reported incidents of vandalism on energy and water infrastructure.
“Palestinian herding communities and farmers throughout Area C are being forced off their land and forcibly transferred into the enclaves of area A and B,” said activist Yehuda Shaul, co-director of the human rights organization Ofek, referring to farmers being forced from Israeli-governed areas into Palestinian-run districts. Shaul said the number of Palestinians displaced during the first three weeks of the war is approaching the 1,100 who were displaced in all of 2022.
The violence has converged with rising economic insecurity in the West Bank, which is currently at the peak of the olive harvest, an annual tradition at the heart of the Palestinian identity in villages such as Deir Istiya, which are surrounded by thousands of olive trees. This year, in addition to a poor overall crop of olives, the increase in settler attacks has scared some farmers from harvesting their crop.
“Palestinian farmers are particularly vulnerable at this time, during the annual olive harvest season, because if they are unable to pick their olives they will lose a year’s income,” reads a recent statement signed by 30 Israeli human rights organizations urging the international community to intervene.
Adding to the peril to the area’s economy is the status of 140,000 Palestinians who have had their Israeli work permit suspended. For the past three weeks, following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s ensuing war against the terror group in Gaza, they have largely sat idle at home.
Within Israel, townships across the country have frozen construction projects that rely heavily on Palestinian as well as Arab-Israeli workers. Israeli settlements across the West Bank have likewise issued bans on Palestinian entry.
“As of today, there are no Palestinian workers entering Efrat,” Efrat announced on Oct. 27. Regarding Israeli Arabs, the announcement said, “Although we are aware of the feelings and concerns of the residents, at this time, we do not have the authority to prevent their entry.”
The work permit system has existed for decades, since the 1993 Oslo Accords led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority, which governs daily life in some Palestinian areas of the West Bank. The permits are managed by Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, which oversees civilian life in the West Bank, and are given to a predetermined number of workers who pass a security screening.
The permits give their holders access to work opportunities in Israel and the relatively higher salaries that come with them. They are also one of the only ways most Palestinians and Israelis encounter each other outside the context of military engagements. In addition to the West Bank permits, before the war more than 15,000 Gaza Palestinians had authorization to work in Israel. Now, that system is in limbo as Israel prosecutes a war in Gaza and killings and arrests have escalated in the West Bank.
“My permit is finished,” said Jamal, a construction worker from Deir Istiya who works with contractors across Israel and declined to share his full name out of concern for his physical safety. He displays the COGAT application on his phone: The screen for his work permit is now blank; applications to enter Israel, it says, are only available for “medical” or “travel” purposes.
A representative from COGAT told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that while all entry into Israel for work is temporarily illegal, Palestinian laborers in the West Bank are permitted to continue working in Israeli West Bank factories for “essential purposes” related to the war effort.
But cracks in the ban have begun to appear, demonstrating the extent to which both Palestinians and Israelis rely on the permit system. This week, a temporary exemption was granted for 8,000 workers to enter Israel due to a labor shortage.
Israeli security forces in the Barkan industrial zone in the West Bank, Oct. 7, 2018. (Flash90)
Meanwhile, Palestinians employed at Israeli companies are figuring out how to get through this period. In Deir Istiya, the economic impact of the war is already being felt, Jamal said. He said a local shopkeeper has allowed him to run up a tab, and that as long as he has “oil, pita and zaatar,” he can survive many months without work. He lamented that the Palestinian Authority has not provided assistance to workers in his position.
“For someone who has not put money in the bank, it is problematic,” he said. “I go to the mini-mart and ask for a few things — give me a few weeks or months and I will return to work and pay you the money.”
Some Palestinian workers were in Israel during the attack. Diaa, a 25-year old from the Deir Istiya, recalls working late into the night of Oct. 6, and into the next morning, at an Israeli restaurant in Rishon Lezion, a large coastal city south of Tel Aviv.
“We finished cleaning up around 2 a.m., I remember having a cigarette and falling asleep,” he recalled. “At 6:30 a.m. we woke up to the sound of rockets and ran to the shelter.”
He was able to split a taxi back to Deir Istiya with a friend. Since that day, Diaa, Jamal and others are sitting at home, following the war in Gaza.
“I was very unhappy about Oct. 7 seeing the children dying, people’s bodies being decapitated,” Jamal said, though he acknowledged that other Palestinians in the West Bank had a different reaction. “There were some people that were happy that they broke out of the Gaza jail and are fighting for Allah.”
Jamal said many people have stopped watching TV in order to avoid the graphic wartime images, though most still get updates on the war through their phones. At one point, he opened a post on Telegram, a messaging platform, with videos of Palestinian children lying dead in a Gaza hospital.
Others have attempted to keep working at their jobs, but Jamal said that for some, the situation has grown untenable. His cousin Abu-Ghazal, who works in a steel factory in the northern West Bank’s Barkan industrial area, said he kept going to work “until the police told us to go home.” All his boss could do is promise to call the workers back when they are allowed to return to the factory.
And Jamal added that some of the Palestinian workers who still have permission to work in the Barkan industrial zone have chosen to return home, citing the war climate and changes in Israeli society, where calls for private gun ownership have jumped since Oct. 7.
As of the beginning of the war, he said, “All the owners have weapons, they do not let you move around even to go to the bathroom without supervision.”
He added, “It’s very stressed there. There are people saying, ‘I will go home and wait until this is over, because it is so tense.’”
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The post In the West Bank, spiking violence and an idle economy spur fears of a broadening conflict appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Two Israeli Embassy Staffers Shot Dead in Downtown Washington, Lone Suspect Held
Police officers work at the site where two Israeli embassy staff were shot dead near the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, US May 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Two Israeli embassy staffers, committed to Israeli-Palestinian dialogue and about to get engaged, were killed by a lone gunman in Washington, DC, on Wednesday night and a suspect who chanted pro-Palestinian slogans was in custody, officials said.
The two were shot and killed as they left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum, about 1.3 miles (2 km) from the White House.
Washington Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith said a man shot at a group of four people with a handgun, hitting both the victims. He was seen pacing outside the museum prior to the shooting.
The victims, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, were locally employed staff, the Israeli foreign ministry said. They were trying to promote reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians, separate advocacy groups each belonged to said.
Smith said the single suspect, identified as 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, chanted “Free Palestine, Free Palestine,” after being taken into custody by event security having entered the museum.
“Once in handcuffs, the suspect identified where he discarded the weapon, and that weapon has been recovered, and he implied that he committed the offense,” she said, adding that he had had no previous contact with police.
Witness Katie Kalisher, 29, said she was among people in the museum who were chatting to a man who entered looking very scared after gunshots were heard outside when he suddenly pulled out a keffiyeh scarf.
“He says, ‘I did it. I did it for Gaza, free, free Palestine.’ And he’s chanting this. And then suddenly the police come in and they arrest him,” said Kalisher, a jewelry designer.
“But he didn’t even have the Palestinian keffiyeh. He had the Jordanian keffiyeh. So, I think he’s a really confused person,” she said.
Yechiel Leiter, Israel‘s ambassador to the US, told reporters the young man killed had “purchased a ring this week with the intention of proposing to his girlfriend next week in Jerusalem.”
POLITICAL BACKDROP
President Donald Trump condemned the shooting. “These horrible DC killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW!” he said in a message on Truth Social. “Hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his heart ached for the families of the victims, “whose lives were cut short in a moment by an abhorrent antisemitic murderer.”
“We are witness to the terrible cost of the antisemitism and wild incitement against the State of Israel,” he said on X, adding that both “must be fought to the utmost.”
Security would be stepped up at Israeli embassies around the world, he said.
The shootings are likely to fuel polarization in the United States over the war in Gaza between supporters of Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
Deputy FBI Director Don Bongino said the suspect was being interviewed by the police and the FBI, saying on X it appeared to be an act of targeted violence.
“We will get you answers as soon as we can, without compromising additional leads,” he said.
The event at the Capital Jewish Museum was held by the American Jewish Committee, an advocacy group that supports Israel and confronts antisemitism, according to its website.
Called the Young Diplomats Reception, an online invitation described it as bringing together Jewish professionals and the Washington diplomatic community.
The German-Israeli Society said Lischinsky had grown up in Bavaria and spoke fluent German.
“We remember him as an open-minded, intelligent and deeply committed person whose interest in German-Israeli relations and ways to achieve peaceful coexistence in the Middle East brightened the environment around him,” said the society’s president, Volker Beck.
Tech2Peace, an advocacy group training young Palestinians and Israelis and promoting dialogue between them, said Milgrim was an active volunteer who “brought people together with empathy and purpose”.
“Her dedication to building a better future was evident in everything she did,” it said. “Her voice and spirit will be profoundly missed.”
‘WE STAND STRONG’
Hours after the shooting, several people gathered at the scene, in the area of 3rd and F Streets.
Aaron Shemtov, who is studying at a rabbinical college in California, said he came to show support.
“When a member of the community gets murdered and gets killed for who he is, we stand proud, we stand strong, and we never give up,” Shemtov said.
Rabbi Levi Shemtov, who was also at the scene, said the couple had attended his Washington synagogue occasionally.
“It’s very sad to see that instead of these people coming to the ultimate celebration of their life – they were about to get engaged – they get shot dead in the street just because of who they are,” said the rabbi.
The head of the American Jewish Committee, Ted Deutch, told CNN the Jewish community around the world felt under threat. Some Israelis said the shooting made them afraid to go abroad.
Rights advocates have noted both rising antisemitism and anti-Arab hate in the US since then.
Such incidents have included an unsuccessful plot to attack a New York Jewish center, an arson attack on Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s residence, and attacks on Florida businesses perceived as pro-Israel.
The post Two Israeli Embassy Staffers Shot Dead in Downtown Washington, Lone Suspect Held first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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German Intelligence Labels BDS ‘Hostile to Constitution’ Amid Alarming Rise in Antisemitism in Berlin
Anti-Israel demonstration supporting the BDS movement, Paris France, June 8, 2024. Photo: Claire Serie / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
A German intelligence service has condemned the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel as “hostile to the constitution” as a newly released report highlighted a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents across the capital city of Berlin.
On Tuesday, the Berlin Office for the Protection of the Constitution — the agency responsible for monitoring extremist groups and reporting to the German Interior Ministry — released its annual report on threats to Germany’s democratic system and national security.
For the first time, Berlin’s BDS chapter was designated a “proven extremist endeavor hostile to the constitution.” According to the report, the campaign’s “anti-constitutional ideology, which denies Israel’s right to exist,” plays a central role within the city’s anti-Israel movement.
Der Berliner #Verfassungsschutzbericht (VS-Bericht) 2024 zeigt einen Anstieg extremistischer Bedrohungen – von islamistischen Gruppen über rechtsextreme Jugendkulturen bis hin zur israelfeindlichen Boycottbewegung #BDSBerlin, die erstmals als verfassungsfeindliche Bestrebung… pic.twitter.com/6PknYKrBcr
— Senatsverwaltung für Inneres und Sport (@Innensenatorin) May 20, 2025
The study said that BDS supporters in Berlin glorified the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which approximately 1,200 people were murdered and 251 taken hostages, portraying it as a “liberation struggle against settler colonialism” or an escape from the “open-air prison” of Gaza.
The report also found that multiple BDS protests across the city featured signs with stereotypical antisemitic imagery, fueling anti-Jewish hatred and even calling for the destruction of the Jewish state.
In 2019, Germany became the first European country to officially declare the BDS movement as antisemitic.
Last year, Germany’s federal domestic intelligence agency, classified BDS as a “suspected extremist case.” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser issued a report by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), which found that the movement has links to “secular Palestinian extremism.” The intelligence agency also said there were “sufficiently strong factual indications” that BDS “violates the idea of international understanding” by challenging Israel’s right to exist.
BDS seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination. Leaders of the movement have repeatedly stated their goal is to destroy the world’s only Jewish state.
This week, the country’s Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS) released its annual report documenting antisemitic incidents in Berlin 2024, revealing an alarming increase in anti-Jewish hatred.
RIAS recorded 2,521 antisemitic incidents in Berlin last year, marking a staggering 98.5 percent increase over 2023 in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught.
According to the study, anti-Jewish hate crimes averaged 210 per month in 2024 — around seven per day — with nearly 44 percent directly linked to the Oct. 7 attacks and the ensuing Israel-Hamas war.
There has also been a sharp rise in attacks against individuals, reaching the highest levels since RIAS began documenting such incidents — often triggered by visible Jewish symbols or the use of Hebrew in public spaces.
In Berlin, public demonstrations have become one of the most visible manifestations of antisemitism. The study argues that these protests go beyond political expression, serving instead as platforms for antisemitic rhetoric, the glorification of terrorism, and acts of violence.
RIAS has documented a significant rise in open calls for violence, Holocaust trivialization, and the justification of Hamas terror attacks permeating mainstream discourse and public spaces, both online and offline.
According to the report, anti-Israel activism was the leading identifiable background for antisemitic incidents for the second consecutive year, with classic antisemitic stereotypes being redirected toward Israel and the term “Zionist” used as a coded way to reintroduce long-standing antisemitic tropes under the guise of legitimate political criticism.
The post German Intelligence Labels BDS ‘Hostile to Constitution’ Amid Alarming Rise in Antisemitism in Berlin first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Antisemitism in K-12 Private Schools a Major Challenge Across the US, New ADL Report Finds
Pro-Hamas activists calling themselves the United Front for Liberation lead march through Valley Plaza Mall. The ‘Ceasefire’ rally began at Wilson Park in Bakersfield, California, on Dec. 16, 2023. Photo: Jacob Lee Green via REUTERS CONNECT
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has launched a new initiative to reduce antisemitism in K-12 schools, a growing problem that has, since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, prompted a slew of lawsuits and federal civil rights complaints.
Announced on Wednesday, the effort has its roots in new ADL research — produced by its Ratings & Assessment Institute and the Center to Combat Antisemitism in Education — showing a surge of antisemitic incidents on K-12 campuses in recent years. As mentioned in the organization’s annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, 1,162 such incidents occurred in 2023 and 860 occurred in 2024. Since 2020, antisemitic outrages at K-12 schools have increased by 434 percent.
As parts of its research, the ADL conducted surveys and focus groups to get a better sense of the problem in K-12 private/independent schools, which are the main focus of the civil rights group’s new initiative because they “operate outside of the direct oversight of public education systems, meaning they typically have greater autonomy in shaping their curricula, policies, and disciplinary procedures, which can lead to inconsistent responses to antisemitism.”
Among surveyed school parents, 25.2 percent said their children had experienced or witnessed antisemitic symbols in school since Oct. 7, 2023, according to the ADL’s newly unveiled findings. Perhaps more striking, 45.3 percent of surveyed parents reported that their children had experienced or witnessed some form of antisemitism since the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, and 31.7 percent said their children had “experienced or witnessed problematic school curricula or classroom content related to Jews or Israel.”
Parents are displeased with schools’ handling of the issue, the ADL said. Focus groups told its experts that schools decline to denounce antisemitism or resort to denying altogether that it is fostering a negative learning environment which causes student discomfort and precipitous declines in academic performance. In a poll, over a third of parents have said their local school’s response “was either somewhat or very inadequate.”
Moreover, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, which were purportedly meant to improve race relations, abstain from recognizing antisemitism as a form of hatred meriting a focused response from administrators. The Algemeiner has previously reported that many of those programs also ignore antisemitism because they actively contribute to spreading it. Due to this, schools lack authority figures who understand antisemitism, its subtle and overt variations, leaving Jewish students with no recourse when they become victims of hate.
The ADL said on Wednesday that it will address K-12 antisemitism by expanding its offering of “parent advocacy resources,” which include forging networks of advocacy the ADL calls Jewish Leaders in Schools (JLS), counseling parents on methods for combating antisemitism in their home districts, and even providing them free legal counsel through the K-12 Antisemitism Legal Line.
“These independent schools are failing to support Jewish families. By tolerating — or in some cases, propagating — antisemitism in their classrooms, too many independent schools in cities across the country are sending a message that Jewish students are not welcome. It’s wrong. It’s hateful. And it must stop,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “ADL is partnering with parents to demand change.”
ADL vice president of advocacy, Shira Goodman, added: “School administrators and faculty have a duty to ensure safe, inclusive environments for all. ADL will fully invest in bolstering the families who are demanding that their schools meet this obligation.”
Antisemitism in K-12 schools is receiving increased attention, notably in California, after years of falling under the radar.
In April, a civil rights complaint filed by StandWithUs and the Bay Area Jewish Coalition alleged that the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) in California allows Jewish students to be subjected to unconscionable levels of antisemitic bullying in and outside of the classroom.
The 27-page complaint, filed with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), describes a slew of incidents that allegedly fostered a hostile environment for Jewish students after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel set off a wave of anti-Jewish hatred across the US. SCUSD students, it says, graffitied antisemitic hate speech in the bathrooms, vandalized Jewish-themed posters displayed in schools, and distributed stickers which said, “F—k Zionism.” All the while, district officials enabled the behavior by refusing to investigate it and blaming victims who came forward to report their experiences, according to the complaint.
“SCUSD has allowed an egregiously hostile environment to fester for its Jewish and Israeli students in violation of its federal obligations and ethnical responsibility to create a safe educational space for all students,” Jenna Statfeld Harris, senior counsel and K-12 specialist at StandWithUs Saidoff Legal, said in a statement at the time. “SCUSD leadership repeatedly disregards the rights of their Jewish and Israeli students. We implore the Office for Civil Rights to step in and uphold the right of these students to an inclusive education free from hostility toward their protected identity.”
In March, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed a civil rights complaint which recounted the experience of a 12-year-old Jewish girl who was allegedly assaulted on grounds of the Etiwanda School District in San Bernardino California — being beaten with a stick — told to “shut your Jewish ass up,” and teased with jokes about Hitler. According to the court filings, one student admitted that the behavior was motivated by the victim’s being Jewish. Despite receiving several complaints about the treatment, a substantial amount of which occurred in the classroom, school officials allegedly declined to punish her tormentors.
“While an increasing number of schools recognize that their Jewish students are being targeted both for their religious beliefs and due to their ancestral connection to Israel, and are taking necessary steps to address both classic and contemporary forms of antisemitism, some shamefully continue to turn a blind eye,” Brandeis Center founder and chairman Kenneth Marcus said in a statement at the time of the filing.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Antisemitism in K-12 Private Schools a Major Challenge Across the US, New ADL Report Finds first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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