“‘Conquering the land on foot.’”

12 AUGUST—In a Palestinian village called Tell, five kilometers southwest of Nablus, a group of trouble-seeking settlers, with the usual protection of the Israel Occupation Forces, attacked local residents trying to protect their families, homes, and property. When the clash was over, in a matter of minutes, four Palestinians and two Israelis were dead. The fallout of this incident has not ceased.

While there is no evidence that any Palestinian was responsible for the two Israeli fatalities, what transpired during those moments has since proven a trip wire in the Jewish state’s escalating aggressions against West Bank Palestinians. The Zionist regime and the Zionist press—with the conspicuous exception of Haaretz, whose reporting it is important to analyze—continue to describe the incident as a terrorist attack. Netanyahu and Israel Katz, his defense minister, immediately launched a major new military operation across the West Bank. Armed settlers, often in coordination with the I.O.F., are now on a spree of village-to-village attacks that resemble nothing so much as a pogrom.

Since the events in Tell, is there any longer denying that we witness—such as we can, given Western media have sustained a more or less complete news blackout—the ‘Gazification’ of the West Bank? I do not think so. This is the truth I draw from all that has followed the incident. Fewer bombing runs and drones, at least for now, more bulldozers, semi-automatic weapons, the torching of villages and crops: This is the West Bank formula.

What actually happened in Tell on Friday, 24 July, such that the Zionist army and the settlers they protect are escalating what we can no longer deny is a second genocide against the Palestinian population? Why aren’t we reading about this escalating violence in The New York Times and the rest of the mainstream press? Why, with the significant exceptions of Haaretz and, among independent media, +972 Magazine, has no news organization conducted a close-in investigation of that day’s events? What cynical use are those in power in Tel Aviv making of the incident? Why do the rampages of increasingly savage settlers, daily occurrences in the West Bank now, go unreported in U.S. corporate media? As Israel continues its atrocities in Gaza and the threat of renewed attacks on Iran linger, what’s happening on the ground in the West Bank?

These are our questions.

Corollary question: Why, once again, is the Israeli press reporting events in Tell and elsewhere in the West Bank more thoroughly, objectively, and honestly—within limits, of course—than ever we find in American media, broadcast or print?

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Let’s begin with what transpired on 24 July. Even now new details continue to emerge in the more credible Israeli media. These make it clear that there was no “terrorist attack”—not against Jewish settlers—in Tell that day and that official accounts of the events to this effect—from the I.O.F., from the Netanyahu regime, in the Zionist press—are lies.