By Sheri Oz, JNS
Israel’s success in stopping Palestinian attacks creates a dangerous illusion: the absence of terrorism makes the Jewish state look like the aggressor.
Israel faces a unique strategic paradox: the better Israel becomes at preventing Palestinian terror, the more the world is convinced that Israel is the aggressor.
Social media rewards what is visible, not what is true. Terror prevention is invisible.
Multiple reports of increasingly vicious settler violence against Palestinian farmers during the current olive harvest season led me to analyze X (formerly Twitter) post volume related to violence in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) committed both by settlers and Palestinians.
Ninety-four-and-a-half percent of all posts focused exclusively on settler violence. Only 4.3% mentioned Palestinian attacks at all.
Across the 1,012 posts in both English and Hebrew, settler violence appeared 956 times. Palestinian violence appeared 43 times. Posts that mentioned both sides: 13.
The engagement numbers were just as skewed. Posts showing settler aggression averaged over 3,000 likes, with top videos exceeding 30,000. The posts that went viral contained video clips. Phones captured smashed olive groves, injured activists, or someone slashing a tire. Viewers saw action, noise, motion and confrontation.
Posts about Palestinian terrorism averaged 62 likes. Almost none contained video. They were screenshots of IDF press releases or security charts summarizing what had been prevented. There was nothing visceral for social media to consume.
Violent actions by Jews involve activists and NGOs who arrive with cameras ready. Terror prevention by security forces involves classified intelligence, arrests in the dark, and quiet press statements.
A burning olive tree is visible. A suicide bombing that never happens is not. The disproportional attention creates disproportional perception.
The security reality is the opposite of what the online narrative suggests. Ynet provided data from the 2024 Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) report documenting 6,828 Palestinian attacks that killed 46 Israelis and foreign nationals. Security forces thwarted 1,040 planned terror attacks, including mass casualty bombings and kidnappings.
Those thwarted attacks did not go viral because they produced no dramatic footage.
Settler violence is real. And increasing. That is a fact. According to The Times of Israel, the IDF logged 704 nationalist incidents so far this year and 675 in 2024—mostly property damage, very rarely lethal. These acts are wrong, criminal, and episodic, not systemic. They do not compare in scale, intent, or lethality to the 6,828 documented Palestinian attacks.
Yet on social media, one rock thrown by a settler gets 3,000 likes.
One bomb stopped by the IDF gets zero.
On June 21, 2023, responses to video clips from Turmus Ayya showing violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians were almost instantaneous. According to an analysis of public social media metrics, the clips racked up over 8,500 likes and 6,000 shares across Hebrew and English posts in the first week, with estimated impressions reaching 800K-1.2m. This is how claims of settler extremism as the primary threat are fueled.
In contrast, Ynet reports that in the last few months, security forces have stopped Palestinian terror cells transporting explosives and rifles toward Jerusalem. One of these included a father and son who intended to carry out a mass shooting at a nightclub in Tel Aviv. That announcement received about 167 likes and 45 shares on X across English and Hebrew posts, with fewer than 30K views.
Activist groups seek out flashpoints during harvest season. They position themselves where confrontation is likely. They arrive with cameras already recording. When a scuffle begins, the footage is uploaded instantly. There is no waiting for investigative clarity. The image becomes the conclusion.
By contrast, Israel prevents terror in silence. When security forces arrest a terror cell before the bomb reaches a café, the result is that nothing happens. The absence of violence produces no image. Without an image, there is no outrage, and without outrage, there is no virality.
Even well-meaning pro-Israel voices absorb the distorted framing. Clergy, commentators and journalists increasingly speak as though Jewish extremism has replaced Palestinian terrorism as the central threat. They believe what they see on their screens, not what they don’t see.
When Palestinian terrorism disappears from the narrative, the very presence of the IDF in Judea and Samaria appears unjustified. The argument becomes simple: if settlers are the main threat, then Israeli soldiers should not be there at all.
If Israel withdrew tomorrow, those 1,040 thwarted terror attacks would not vanish. They would succeed.
Israel is now paying a narrative price for preventing massacres. The videos that go viral today are creating the conditions for the massacre that goes viral tomorrow.
And when that massacre happens, when buses and pizza parlors explode, the same voices demanding withdrawal today will ask why Israel did not act sooner.
