‘A modern blood libel’

Naomi Kahn, director of the International Division of the Israeli NGO Regavim, challenged the United Nations’ reporting on alleged settler violence in Judea and Samaria during a panel discussion at the JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem this week.

Speaking Monday on a panel about developments in Judea and Samaria, Kahn said Regavim had spent more than a year analyzing the raw data used by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to compile reports on settler violence.

According to Kahn, those reports have served as the basis for sanctions imposed by several governments on Israeli individuals, organizations and military units.

“What we found was that the data was provided in a very, very particular fashion … and it is, in short, a modern blood libel,” Kahn said. “Ninety-five percent or more of the incidents that are reported as settler violence by the United Nations itself either didn’t involve settlers, didn’t involve violence, or didn’t happen in Judea and Samaria.”

As an example, Kahn said OCHA categorizes every legal, peaceful visit by non-Muslims to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount as “storming Al-Aqsa” and includes those visits in its database of “settler violence.”

She also said the paving of roads in Judea and Samaria by the Israeli government for use by all residents is recorded as trespass or expropriation.

“This is a very clear manipulation of events, and the United Nations will not tell you what they’re really reporting on,” Kahn said.

She further cited testimony from the head of the Israel Police’s Judea and Samaria Division, who she said told Regavim that “the vast majority” of reported incidents never occurred.

“They are reported as cases of settler violence in order to keep the entire system busy,” Kahn said. “This is a system that’s been perfected by the Palestinian Authority over years.”

Regavim’s findings are detailed in a report titled “False Flags and Real Agendas: ‘Settler Violence,’ a Modern-Day Blood Libel,” which examines the data underlying international reports on violence in Judea and Samaria.