This Sept. 13, 2026, Op-Ed by CAMERA’s Darcie Grunblatt appeared in Jerusalem News Syndicate.
The Wall Street Journal corporate headquarters in New York City (Photo by John Wisniewski/Flickr CC BY-ND 2.0)
The Wall Street Journal published a detailed investigation on Sept. 25, “The Violent Israeli Nomads Who Defy Law and Order in the Name of God.” The article probed the motives, tactics and ideological underpinnings of Israel’s most extreme Jews following a reported 63% increase in attacks against Palestinians from the same period in 2025.
What is striking about the piece is the Journal’s decision to examine the perpetrators’ ideology in such depth. Reporters Feliz Solomon and Shoshanna Solomon profiled current and former Hilltop Youth members, explaining how their interpretation of sacred texts informs their actions and citing the book of Numbers to show how the group uses biblical passages to justify revenge and violence.
To illustrate the human impact of this ideology, the article opens with Loui Ridi, a Palestinian American whose own house in Qusra has been the center of an Israeli extremist pressure campaign. The reporters detail how the presence of these extremists outside his home has stolen Ridi’s “sleep, privacy and sense of security.” In short, the Journal provided readers with more than an account of violent acts; it offered a comprehensive explanation of the worldview driving them.
The Journal has not done the same for Palestinian terrorist organizations. That disparity raises a straightforward journalistic question: Why does the Journal examine the theological worldview of Israeli extremists while ignoring or sanitizing the ideology of Palestinian terrorist organizations?
Read the rest of CAMERA’s Op-Ed at JNS.