The Forward: “Israel’s reputation is in free fall. One radical change could help”

The following is an excerpt, the full article is published here

By Sruli Fruchter | Published November 18, 2025

Israeli settlers spent months ramping up a campaign of terror against Palestinians in the West Bank — torching mosques, Qurans and farmland; attacking innocent civilians; and defacing IDF bases — before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even weakly condemned these “riots” for violating Israeli law. And that statement, issued on Sunday, only came because of international outrage.

If you want to understand why Americans are abandoning Israel, that long silence is your answer. Israel’s opponents frame the state as hell-bent on ridding the land of Palestinians by any means necessary, and the American public increasingly believe them. When Israel’s leaders and supporters turn a blind eye to lawless settlers, and the Palestinian suffering they create, that belief is reinforced.

Photo by Mosab Shawer/Middle East Images via AFP

For that to change, the response to settler violence has to change. Israel and its supporters must try to expunge this extremism from its circles.

That will not be easy, because settler violence is not a new phenomenon.

For the last 50 years, a radical ideology preaching Israeli dominance, and advocating Palestinian expulsion, has spread among settlers’ ranks. And they have come to expect impunity for extremist acts, because for much of that time, Israeli leadership failed to impose strict or meaningful consequences.

The attacks hit a fever pitch in the last two years, reaching an all-time high this October. In one notable example from two years ago, swaths of settlers rampaged through the Palestinian village of Huwara, leaving one Palestinian dead, about 100 injured and the entire town ablaze. The Israeli army did not intervene, and hardly anyone was punished.