This past Last Saturday afternoon, 71-year-old Hagar Gefen was driving through the Jordan Valley when she was waylaid by Palestinian assailants. They pulled her from her car, beat her and stole her vehicle.
Gefen is an anti-Zionist activist affiliated with the radical NGO Looking the Occupation in the Eye. Her group’s modus operandi is to harass Israeli civilians and military forces in Judea and Samaria in order to demonize them. As the organization’s leaders wrote recently, “We initiate direct actions that get in the face of the settlers and challenge the security forces. We work in cooperation with Palestinian colleagues who often stand together with us in the West Bank.”
Gefen was carjacked just after she had just finished such a “direct action”: “Protecting” Palestinian shepherds from Israelis who live in the area. When security forces came to help the elderly woman as she sat beaten on the side of the highway, Gefen refused to file a complaint against her assailants.
Her story is notable because all aspects of it—the carjacking, her efforts as an anti-Israel activist to demonize Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria, and her refusal to report on Palestinian violent attacks, even when she is the victim of those attacks—expose the nature of the current international campaign against Israel’s civilian and military presence in Judea and Samaria. This campaign reached its pinnacle on Feb. 1 with an executive order issued by U.S. President Joe Biden, directly targeting Israeli civilians in Judea and Samaria as quasi-terrorists.
Galloping Palestinian terrorism
This week, the Israel Defense Forces published its final statistics for 2023 regarding Palestinian terrorism in Judea and Samaria. Last year saw a 350% increase in terrorist attacks over 2022 levels, with 608 attacks last year and 173 in 2022. The IDF reported that 300 of the 608 attacks were shooting attacks—the highest number since the Second Intifada from 2000 to 2005.
The IDF data only includes incidents that ended with wounded or dead Israelis and others. The full data shows that the dimensions of Palestinian terrorism in Judea and Samaria are much greater.
United Hatzalah’s Rescuers Without Borders serves as the first responders in Judea and Samaria. Its data enumerated 4,099 terror attacks during the first six months of 2023 alone. In the 100 days following Oct. 7, Palestinians carried out another 2,674 attacks on Jews in Judea and Samaria. Rescuers Without Borders includes vehicular stoning attacks in their data. Those average around 10 per day.
Not including stoning attacks, the Oct. 7 massacre or the casualties of the war in Gaza, the Shin Bet tallied 3,436 attacks in Israel, including Judea and Samaria in 2023. A total of 43 Israelis were murdered and another 224 were wounded. Israel Police put the total number of terror attacks in Judea and Samaria during 2023 at 5,600.
While the data varies depending on the source and what is counted, the trends are clear: 2023 saw a massive increase in Palestinian terrorist attacks, and in the number of Israeli victims. The steepest increase came in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks.
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