The West Bank, Bibi, Iran, and Vance

By Jim Geraghty

Friday, July 31, 2026

 

A week ago, July 24, a clash in Tal (sometimes spelled Tell), a village near Nablus in the West Bank, killed six people — four Palestinians and two Israelis. The Palestinian version of events, shared with Human Rights Watch, is that the Israelis just marched into a Palestinian village and started the fight:

 

Human Rights Watch interviewed two witnesses to the attacks and a local activist, and verified six videos of the incidents posted to social media platforms and shared directly with researchers.

 

Between 6:10 and 6:45 a.m. on July 24, 40 to 50 settlers, including children, approached Tal from the east, attacked four or five Palestinian homes with stones, and tried to break in, witnesses said. A confrontation between the settlers and Palestinians erupted, during which an armed settler shot and wounded a Palestinian man, the witnesses said. More Palestinians then arrived to assist the family, and the settlers fled.

 

About 30 minutes later, the same group of settlers reentered Tal from the southwest, where they were joined by Israeli soldiers, said Mujahid Waleed, a local resident who witnessed both incidents.

 

The Israeli version of events, as you would imagine, is dramatically different:

 

The Israeli army said the settlers had been on a “hike” in the area when clashes broke out with Palestinian residents.

 

It said the settlers fired warning shots before troops arrived and attempted to disperse the confrontation.

 

Now, if you’re an Israeli, is a spot near a Palestinian village really the best place to go hiking? And if you feel like you must go armed on your hike, are you sure there weren’t any other trails that looked appealing that day?

 

The Telegram statement on the clash from the Israel Defense Forces:

 

Following the report regarding a shooting attack in the area near Havat Gilad, earlier today (Friday), IDF soldiers were dispatched to the area of Tal following a report regarding an attack on Israeli civilians who were hiking in the area.

 

Subsequently, terrorists stole the weapon of a security personnel who had arrived at the scene and opened fire toward the Israeli civilians. As a result, several Israeli civilians were injured and evacuated to receive medical treatment at the hospital.

 

Additional IDF soldiers were dispatched to the scene and are currently pursuing the terrorists while establishing security roadblocks in the area.

 

Tal/Tell is a Palestinian village, in the West Bank, and is part of the territory that Israel captured from Jordan during the Six-Day War. The village is in “Area B,” where the Palestinian Authority exercises administrative control but shares security control with Israeli authorities.

 

As of July 19, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported 68 Palestinians killed in the West Bank in 2026, at least 13 by settlers. OCHA reported that as of July 15, 20 Israelis had been injured in 2026 in the West Bank. The position of the Israeli government is that there is pervasive anti-Israeli bias in OCHA and throughout all the U.N.’s agencies.

 

The official position of the Israeli government is that they oppose settlers running around in the West Bank, picking fights with the Palestinians, or being “vigilantes.” Earlier this month, before the Tal clash, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu appeared on NBC News’ Meet the Press and said:

 

We’re a country of laws, and people who break the law, we take them to court. The- in the West Bank, in Judea and Samaria, we’ve had thousands, thousands of attempted attacks and warning against terrorist activities, against innocent Israelis, families, mother with her children driving along the road. They’re stopped by terrorists and they kill them. And this has happened again, and again, and again. There is a vigilante effort not by the settler community. They’re 99.9%, you know, law-abiding citizens. They work, they serve in the army, and so on. There are 150 juvenile delinquents that are not part of that community. They come from the other parts of Israel. We are- I don’t want vigilantes of any kind. And we are working to put them under the law. But I think if we put things in perspective, we should see that we have thousands of attacks. And some, few, but obvious breaking of the law, then we apply the full measure of the law against them. Israel, unlike our neighbors, is a democracy and a country of laws, and we act against those who break the law.

 

The Palestinians and other critics of Israel dismiss that entirely, contending that if the Israeli government wanted to stop violent settlers or “vigilantes,” they would and could do so.

 

The Israeli non-governmental organization Yesh Din documented offenses committed by Israeli civilians — settlers and others — against Palestinians or their property in the West Bank. In January 2025, their data indicated that from 2005 to 2024, roughly 94 percent of cases ended without an indictment, and just 3 percent of investigations ended with a conviction. Figures like that don’t help the Israeli argument that it is “a country of laws” or “we act against those who break the law.” Law enforcement and incarceration are forms of deterrence.

 

Nothing these Israeli settlers do justifies the terrorism and raw military aggression of Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran. Those terrorist organizations and regimes say, in their charters and rhetoric, that they aren’t fighting merely Israeli settler violence; they want to destroy Israel and drive the Jews into the sea.

 

But if we wanted tensions to calm down in the Middle East, it might be helpful for Israeli settlers to stop going on hikes near Palestinian villages while carrying guns, you know? And maybe prosecute and convict some folks for committing crimes against Palestinians in the West Bank? Is a conviction rate in double digits too much to ask?

 

Why Replacing Netanyahu Isn’t Likely to Change Much

 

Israel’s next election is scheduled for October 27, a vote for the 26th Knesset, and it will be the first national election since the 10/7 Hamas attack, as well as the resulting wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and against Iran. Note that Israel has a parliamentary system, with 120 seats in the Knesset and 61 seats needed for a majority.

 

There is likely to be a crowded field; the 76-year-old Netanyahu will run for another term. Because no party is expected to win 61 seats, the big question is which parties will be able to form a coalition government to reach that threshold.

 

Either this coming October or some point thereafter, Israel will have a different prime minister than Netanyahu. I suspect that there are a considerable number of Jews and supporters of Israel who believe that Netanyahu and his actions are the driving force behind the surge in public antisemitism over the past three years, and that when Netanyahu departs, things will get better.

 

Unfortunately, I suspect the change in world sentiment will be negligible. Most of the people who vehemently oppose Netanyahu do so because they hate Israel; most of the people who vehemently oppose Israel do so because they hate Jews. An unnerving number of people claim they oppose Israeli policies, and then attack synagogues and Jewish worshippers and menorahs. Their words say they hate Israel, but their actions say they hate Jews.

 

Vance’s Claims of Israeli Payola Sabotaging the Iran Deal

 

Vice President JD Vance, in his interview with Joe Rogan:

 

You know, there’s a lot of talk about how much is the Israeli government influencing American politics, and there are certainly certain people within the Israeli government who hate the deal. And we see exact evidence. There was a Time story that came out yesterday, that basically there are certain influencers in America who are being paid in order to attack the deal.

 

I definitely think you have seen this very discreet, extremely well-funded campaign to try to derail the negotiation and try to derail the deal. And you know, there was again there’s this Time article that came out yesterday. A friend sent it to me. It’s like worth reading because it lists a bunch of people who have quite literally been paid by a former Trump campaign person who was himself paid by certain elements within the Israeli government. And those people are attacking me viciously for quite literally trying to accomplish the negotiation objective that the president set for the country.

 

That interview was July 15, so I presume Vance is talking about this Time article from July 14:

 

The [Trump administration] official began collecting screenshots and came to believe it wasn’t a coincidence. Tracing tweets by prominent members of the online right, the official came to believe there was an unlikely figure at the center of all this criticism: Trump’s former presidential campaign manager and digital guru, Brad Parscale.

 

Last September, the global ad agency Havas hired Parscale’s firm, Clock Tower X, to conduct a digital campaign on behalf of the State of Israel, according to Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) filings reviewed by TIME. Under the agreement, Parscale’s operation would produce 100 original pieces of content each month, with at least 80% aimed at Gen Z audiences across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and podcasts. In a Services Agreement draft included in the filing, Parscale also pledged to amplify the campaign across social media and through “integration of narrative messaging into Salem Media Network properties and aligned distribution channels,” referring to the Christian conservative broadcasting and publishing company where he serves as Chief Strategy Officer. Parscale vowed the effort would produce at least 50 million digital impressions per month, as well as influence how AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini characterized Israel and the war. For all this, Israel agreed to pay Clock Tower X $1.5 million per month. . . .

 

While Parscale acknowledges that the operation was intended to prevent young conservatives from drifting away from Israel, he says neither he nor his firms played any role in turning opinion against Trump’s objectives. “I have never funded, organized, or participated in any effort to undermine President Trump — ever — including his MOU or ceasefire proposal,” Parscale tells TIME. “The claim that I am coordinating an effort to prolong the war is completely false. The only people manufacturing a conflict between President Trump, Israel, and me are anonymous officials using background quotes to make me the bogeyman.”

 

Now, you can be justifiably angry with a social media influencer for taking money from a foreign government and not disclosing it to their audiences. It has happened before, and you see how much taking money from Russia through Tenet Media damaged the careers of Benny Johnson and Tim Pool — that is, not at all. (Johnson and Pool insisted they were victims of the foreign influence scheme . . . extremely well-compensated victims.)

 

Here’s the problem with Vance’s argument: How much of the criticism of the memorandum of understanding do you think was driven by Parscale’s firm and its payments, and how much criticism of the MOU was driven by the fact that it required the United States to trust the Iranian regime? How much trust of the Iranian mullahs do you think existed on the right side of the aisle before Vance went to Pakistan to negotiate the deal? Do you think that the fact that the Iranians, right out of the gate, declared that they were shutting down the Strait of Hormuz and violating the deal had anything to do with that extremely negative response to the MOU on the American right?

 

Vance has every right to be irked about influencers on the right taking money through Parscale’s firm and not disclosing it to their audiences. But secret sinister Israeli money is not why just 18 percent of Americans believed the MOU would lead to lasting peace, according to a June 23 Ipsos-Reuters poll.

 

Vice President Vance, speaking about the Iran deal, to CNN’s Jake Tapper, June 15: “The coolest thing about the progress we’ve made over the last few weeks is that you see people within the Iranian system, senior leadership, even IRGC officials say, you know what, we may have some animosity, we may have some mistrust, but we recognize the way that we’ve done business with the United States for 47 years is a mistake, let’s try something else.”

 

Hey, how’s that “coolest thing” working out lately?

 

As for the notion that Vance has some secret affinity for, or alliance with, the antisemitic groyper types on the right’s fringes, let us give Vance the benefit of the doubt and believe that he meant it when he said Nick Fuentes “can eat s***.” Let us also give Vance the benefit of the doubt and believe that he has no desire to politically court the kind of knuckle-dragging evolutionary U-turns who hate his wife and kids for being Indian or Hindu.

 

By the way, it isn’t just snot-nosed punks on the right who believe hateful nonsense like that. Here’s Abdul el-Sayed, the man who is likely to be the Democrats’ nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, in a podcast interview in April:

 

JD Vance has brown kids who he thinks are less American than everyone else. Like that’s wild to look at your own kids and be like you don’t actually belong as much in this country that I brought you into. . . . And honestly, like, JD Vance’s kids? I love you. Like, Usha, like, get out. Okay? Still got time.

 

After el-Sayed said that, the host, Brian Allen, turned to the camera and said, jokingly, “Vance if — I know you’re going to see this. Do not sue me. All right? I didn’t know he was going to talk about you like this. I had no idea.”