U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee met with about 10 Palestinian American residents who described the impact of the violence on their lives and properties.
Page A2From§Eachthe late evening edition — 5 September 2026
Ambassador Huckabee calls West Bank settler violence an 'act of terror,' same words as last week
As it ran on the front
Somebody had to say it, so on Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee said it: settler violence in the West Bank is "an act of terror." Crime is crime, terror is terror, and a diplomat calling it by its name deserves credit. He met with about ten Palestinian American residents, heard what the violence has done to their homes and their lives, and used the phrase that fits. That's the story. That was also the story before Wednesday — the Washington Examiner's own headline calls this statement his statement "again."
Start counting and it gets uncomfortable fast. Retired Israeli generals had already toured the West Bank and come back using a harder phrase — "ethnic cleansing" — to describe what the ambassador is calling terror. That was August 31st, five days before Wednesday's statement, and it did not change the wording the ambassador reached for. Three NBC journalists were attacked by masked settlers on August 30th, injured while they interviewed a Palestinian woman about the same violence, and the sentence did not change. Amnesty International said Thursday that Israel is "brazenly expanding" its annexation agenda — fifteen land confiscation orders in July alone, twenty hectares of West Bank land signed away by the military — and the sentence still did not change.…
…(cont) Give the ambassador this much: he is consistent. He condemned settler violence after an American-owned home was attacked in Qusra last month — I'm told he "previously spoke out," which I am going to go ahead and call the same condemnation, because a man repeating three words about a widening pattern of the same three words' subject matter is not issuing a new statement. He's renewing one.
The label isn't in question. The schedule is. "Act of terror," filed on a schedule, next to generals calling it ethnic cleansing and a government signing confiscation orders by the dozen, is not a policy. It is a caption. The caption has not moved in a week. The confiscation orders have.
“They keep calling it "an act of terror" like the words are the punishment, but it's the same sentence, filed twice in one week, sitting right next to Amnesty counting fifteen land orders in a single month. Call it terror all you want — the confiscation orders don't read the transcript, they just keep coming. That's the racket: the language moves every few days, the ground under it doesn't move at all.”
“Look, the ambassador used the words "act of terror" — that's accountability, that's a diplomat actually naming the thing. And sure, it's the same statement he made the week before, and the week before that it was retired generals calling it ethnic cleansing, but consistency is a virtue, that's — a leader saying the same three words is strength, that's — okay, that's just the same press release over a worse situation, forget I said strength.”
The receipts
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee again denounced violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank, describing their attacks against Palestinians as acts of “terror.” Huckabee has previously spoken out against settler violence, including after Israeli settlers attacked a home in the West Bank village of Qusra that was owned by an American…
‘Crime is crime, terror is terror’
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on Wednesday called Israeli settler violence in the West Bank an “act of terror,” condemning their actions.
Amnesty International said Thursday that the far-right Israeli government's recent flurry of land confiscation orders in the illegally occupied West Bank "deepens Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise and further undermines the rights of Palestinians," who are facing an increasingly destructive and deadly wave of settler violence. The…
· 'This Is Ethnic Cleansing': Retired Israeli Generals Decry Settler Terrorism Against West Bank Palestinians from the morgue, 31 Aug 2026
· 'Horrific': Masked Israeli Settlers Attack, Injure Palestinian Woman and NBC Crew from the morgue, 30 Aug 2026
· Palestinian woman and NBC News team attacked by masked Israeli settlers from the morgue, 29 Aug 2026
· 3 NBC journalists, Palestinian woman attacked by Israeli settlers in West Bank from the morgue, 30 Aug 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.