Pearl River      There’s no question that the Israel actions on the West Bank are completely out of control when US Ambassador, former Arkansas Governor, and consistent Israel apologist, Mike Huckabee, refers to the settlers as “Israeli terrorists.”  These comments came after settlers pitched tents and created encampments in front of three Palestinian houses, blocking any entry and exit, in an effort to force the families to surrender the property to them.  Huckabee went on to say, “Actions by those who carried out this horrific act of terror meant to intimidate and harass this family are disgusting,”  Adding to this crisis is the fact that not only are these terrorists blocking Qusra, a Palestinian village of about 5,000 people near the city of Nablus, but one of the properties is owned by a US citizen and in another property these settlers have trapped five Italians who happened to be visiting one of the families.

We should not lose sight of the fact that all of this is happening in an area of the West Bank that is supposedly off limits to Israelis.  The Israeli army was dispatched to the scene according to these reports and engaged in scuffles with the settlers as they dismantled several of the tents.  Reports in the New York Times say that an Israeli commander came, saw the problem, made small progress, and then left, allowing the settlers to return and continue their blockade and violent harassment.  All of this was four days after the settlers’ actions began.  Finally, the army mobilized a battalion to deal with the matter.

It’s not easy to agree with Huckabee after his apologies for the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians in recent years, explicitly putting a US seal of approval on that horror.  In this instance, he’s almost right, but it’s actually more than disgusting.  One could say this is all completely out of control as reportedly,

…hundreds of Israeli settlers have been terrorizing Palestinians with near-impunity all year. As of late July, 18 Palestinians have been killed by settlers, one more than in all of 2025, according to U.N. data. Settlers have been boasting on social media of their attacks, posting videos showing mosques that have been torched in Palestinian towns.

The problem with seeing it out of control is that all of us know full well that if the Israeli government wanted to stop settler atrocities, it could do so in a New York minute.  Instead, the facts on the ground indicate that often there is a wink-and-nod of approval or at least a state-approved turning of the eye away from these illegitimate expropriations.

All of this is also happening, as we know from ACORN’s affiliate PSCC, during the height of olive harvesting season.  In the same way that any visit to almost any town in Italy means that a visitor hears that the best and purest olive oil in the country is grown there, Palestinians are equally proud and boastful of the quality of the oil produced by their olive groves.  Volunteers to help with the harvest have been recruited from all over the world.  It’s hard to believe that the settlers’ current provocations were ignorant of the timing and visibility of their affronts, which only heightens global knowledge that they believed their impunity would be ignored and permitted.

How can any country or any of us allow this to continue to happen?