When Every Jew in the World Is a ‘Settler’

By Seth Mandel

Tuesday, September 08, 2026

 

Andy Burnham has decided to begin his term as prime minister by fundamentally reshaping Britain’s relationship with Israel. For the worse.

 

Burnham is trying to prevent any further exodus of anti-Zionist politicians from his ruling but floundering Labour Party. Keir Starmer, his predecessor, came into office on a massive electoral wave, which he promptly squandered. To get out of the hole Starmer left London in, Burnham has picked up a shovel and begun to dig: He is simply doubling down on Starmerism.

 

And the first order of business is to institute a boycott of Jewish towns and businesses in Judea and Samaria.

 

That’s going to cost Palestinians jobs, but the Gaza Left is unconcerned with actual living, breathing Palestinians. Burnham too, apparently.

 

Why is Burnham instituting discriminatory policies against Jews while making Palestinian lives harder? Because he has been convinced by the “settler violence” narrative.

 

Now, violence orchestrated by a few dozen extremist Jews has risen. But by the most recent annual statistics we have, that violence still does not reach the number of attacks originating in Judea and Samaria by Palestinians against Jews.

 

Still, violence moving in the wrong direction is a problem. And there are two ways that Israel’s allies have sought to address it. The first is the approach taken by President Trump. Along with Ambassador Mike Huckabee and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the administration’s team has real credibility with the Israeli prime minister and the segment of the Israeli population most affected by, and implicated in, disorder in Judea and Samaria.

 

The result: Recently Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the removal of several illegal settler outposts, and the IDF dismissed a soldier who prayed with settlers who besieged an Arab home, despite it being election season, a time when Benjamin Netanyahu is usually more hesitant to anger the right wing.

 

The Trump team won Israel’s trust and got some concessions.

 

The other strategy, the one pursued by Burnham, France, Canada, and other Western countries, was the opposite: reduce cooperation, reduce trust, and remove all possible diplomatic influence over the Israelis.

 

The results: Israel closed the British consulate in Jerusalem and removed Britons from West Bank Palestinian military training and from the Gaza postwar coordination team.

 

The removal of the consulate in Jerusalem is overdue. The UK uses it as a diplomatic post for Palestinians but keeps its Israeli embassy in Tel Aviv. The UK is now free to move its Palestinian consulate into the state of Palestine that it recognized.

 

The other result of all this will, of course, be increased anti-Semitism. If you want to understand why Jews are uncomfortable with the suddenly ubiquitous “settler violence” narrative, it’s not only because it paints all Jewish life beyond the armistice line as illegitimate. It’s also because of stories like the following, from the Times of Israel’s New York correspondent:

 

The flyers went up in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood last month, plastered onto lampposts, bollards, building walls and traffic control boxes.

 

“Beware: Talmudists are trained to cheat,” said one of the flyers posted in opposition to a housing redevelopment project.

 

“Locals vs. Rothschilds,” another said.

 

While those flyers echoed age-old antisemitic tropes, others deployed Israel-related or anti-Zionist rhetoric, decrying “dirty zionist money” and comparing the redevelopment project to the Nakba.

 

“Stop Zionist occupation of Manhattan. NYCHA residents must keep their homes,” one said, referring to the New York City Housing Authority, at the entrance to an apartment building.

 

Progressive DSA-types have been nurturing this particular globalization of Jewish evil for a few years, but it has really taken off now. In a June Democratic primary debate, Darializa Avila Chevalier specifically equated gentrification in New York with West Bank settlement and suggested the same “institutions” are responsible for both. It was an absolutely crazy thing to say, true bottom-of-the-barrel Jew-baiting. But Chevalier wasn’t the first and won’t be the last to say it.

 

A group called Crown Heights Bites Back is part of this activist campaign. Last year it put out a statement that said: “Black people in Brooklyn are violently exploited via rents to then feed their genocidal land grabs in Palestine.”

 

One of the major figures in New York’s anti-Semitic incitement industry is Nerdeen Kiswani, who, as the Times of Israel notes, accused “Zionist landlords” of “exploiting Black communities here and building settlements with it in Palestine.”

 

Do I even need to mention the popular “Israelis are colonizing the world” videos and the constant attacks on Israelis traveling abroad?

 

The point is that Jews understand that when the progressive political dogma holds that all Jewish Israelis are settlers, the lie soon gets applied to Jews anywhere at all. Andy Burnham is reacting to this ugly campaign by rewarding it, and thus feeding it. And he’ll continue to do it after seeing the consequences for Jews around the world.