The Economist invited Nimrod Novik, a former senior adviser to the late Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres, to address the root cause of Palestinian terror, where he presents Palestinians as completely lacking moral agency (“How Israeli terror begets Palestinian terror,” May 12).
Novik begins his column by devoting several paragraphs to an anonymous West Bank (Judea and Samaria) Palestinian resident who he calls “Ali.”
Ali, readers are told, “never concerned himself with politics, never joined any organisation, never demonstrated for national rights, never held a weapon”, but, because of Israel, is “now on the verge of becoming a fighter, perhaps even a shahid (martyr).”
Since Novik fails to provide any details about his Palestinian protagonist, it’s impossible to fact-check his story.
In fact, the columnist himself admits that the tale he tells could be apocryphal. “During the visit [to the West Bank], he wrote, “I met others as well,” and so “it is quite possible that some of what I attribute to Ali, I heard from them.” Therefore, he adds, “Ali is merely a parable for what is unfolding a 40-minute drive from home.”
Novik describes the Palestinian man he may or may not have be accurately quoting as having a “direct gaze and neither arrogance nor submissiveness,” and “someone who’s straightforward.” The moment he opened his mouth, Novik explains, “it became clear that he was also articulate, intelligent and sober-minded.”
Novik then writes that Ali was named after his 13-year-old brother who was shot and killed by Israeli forces – a claim, like the others about the pseudonymous Palestinian, can’t be verified or disproven.
Nor do we have any information by which to refute the charge that the tale’s villain, an (unnamed) Israeli settler, “raised a proud blue-and-white flag, established an ‘outpost’ just dozens of meters from Ali’s house, and settled himself like a hand on their throat.” From that moment on, Novik reports, the armed Israeli “has made Ali’s family’s lives miserable in every possible way.”
Could Ali’s specific story be more or less accurate? Possibly. There has been a significant increase in attacks and intimidation against Palestinians in the West Bank.
However, Novik then provides context to support his broader narrative of Israeli villainy radicalizing otherwise peaceful Palestinians – the veracity of which we were able to examine, uncovering the usual elements of media bias when reporting on West Bank violence: selective reporting, lies by omission and a misrepresentation of the data on violence in the territory.
For instance, he writes that “Hundreds of West Bank Palestinians have died at the hands of settlers or Israeli soldiers since the attacks by Hamas on October 7th 2023,” omitting the vital fact that the overwhelming number of West Bank Palestinians killed since Oct. 7 were reportedly either terrorists or those involved in violent clashes with soldiers.
Even a United Nation report late last year acknowledged that 54 percent of the Palestinian fatalities were armed at the time of their deaths.
Further, despite the spike in settler violence, a very small number of slain Palestinians have been killed by Jewish residents of the West Bank. For instance, as our colleague demonstrated in June, 2024, around 10 had been killed by settlers since Oct. 7, 2023, a number that included those Palestinians killed while attacking or attempting to attack Israeli civilians.
The Economist contributor also completely erases the surge in Palestinian terror attacks in the West Bank against Israelis.
This spike, crucially, began in May 2021, two years before the Oct. 7 massacre, and a year-and-a-half before the current government was sworn in – necessitating the increase in anti-terror operations in the territory. The timeline is important, as Novik suggests that Palestinian terror represent a reaction to both the policies of far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich, and the broader post-Oct. 7 IDF crackdown.
The increase in Palestinian fatalities over the past four years has been driven in large measure by the IDF’s reaction to the decision of Palestinian terrorist groups in the West Bank to increase attacks, with support and encouragement from Iran and its proxies.
Instead of acknowledging the Palestinian terrorist group and Iranian roots of the increase in violence, Novik doubles down on his infantilization of Palestinians, writing that, if Ali’s mind “snaps,” and he joins Hamas and becomes a shahid, it will be a shahid that Israel created.
In addition to the appalling liberal racism in Novik’s failure to portray Palestinians as moral actors, his mono-causal explanation for jihadism more broadly – as a reaction to Israeli oppression and intransigence – is profoundly ahistorical.
His take erases the fact that the Palestinian murder campaign targeting Jews known as the second Intifada began when negotiations for two states were at its pinnacle. Further, even before the intifada, the years following the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993 – when the Palestinian Authority (PA) was created, and most Palestinians were governed by PA leaders — saw a dramatic rise in deadly terror attacks – including the first suicide bombings – inside of Israel.
In other words, the tsunami of Palestinian terrorism throughout the peace process disproves Novik’s implicit argument that Palestinians are driven to terror as a result of desperation over Israeli actions.
Tellingly, Novik also has absolutely nothing to say about the thousands of Palestinian terror attacks emanating from the West Bank each year, or about the Oct. 7 massacre, where barbaric pogromists in the Palestinian-controlled territory went on (Trigger Warning) a murder, rape and torture rampage – representing the worst antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust.
Are we to believe that Yahya Sinwar and his willing Palestinian executioners were, like “Ali,” “sober-minded” souls whose minds just “snapped?”
Here’s a more “sober” way of looking at it. Palestinians and Israelis who commit acts of terror should be held morally responsible for their violent, cruel and destructive behavior. Framing Palestinian attacks against Israelis as an understandable response to IDF actions is just as indefensible as framing Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians as an understandable response to Hamas atrocities on Oct. 7.
One of the most fundamental tenets of liberal Western democracy is that moral standards are universal, and that there can be no exceptions to this principle due to race, religion, ethnicity or any other mere accident of birth.
Failing to hold Palestinian jihadists responsible for their decisions is both racist and fundamentally illiberal.