When Comparisons Hurt — And Why We Still Have to Make Them

ICE in Minneapolis and settler violence in the West Bank aren’t identical, but there are many similarities.

The other day, J Street posted on social media a comparison between some of what ICE is doing in Minneapolis and settler violence in the West Bank. As an organization dedicated to advocating for democracy and justice both in the United States and Israel, these are two issues we care deeply about. I heard back from a number of people I know and respect who felt the analogy went too far and was unfair to Israel.

I understand that reaction. These are painful comparisons, especially for American Jews who are appalled by the Trump administration’s cruelty toward immigrants and deeply uncomfortable — even outraged — by the actions of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his extremist allies, but still recoil at putting these two situations in the same frame. It can feel wrong, even offensive, to suggest that they rhyme.

And to be clear from the outset: these situations are not identical. In our writing, we have been explicit about the differences. ICE is a formal state entity that is committing the violence and terrorizing communities. Settler violence in the West Bank is not officially state-sponsored — but it is routinely enabled, protected, and facilitated by the state in ways that, for all practical purposes, matter just as much.

Still, I want to walk through with some details and examples of why I think the analogy is fair — and why we have to confront the reality that what is happening in the West Bank today is state-enabled violence designed to dispossess people of land they have lived on for generations. That reality has uncomfortable echoes in what we are seeing in parts of the United States.

Awdah Hathaleen and Alex Pretti

Consider two cases.

Last summer, Yinon Levi — an extremist settler previously sanctioned by the Biden Administration (and unsanctioned by Trump) for violence against Palestinians — was filmed with a group of settlers who were driving a bulldozer into the Palestinian village of Umm al-Khair destroying property. When residents tried to stop him, he pulled out a gun. Awdah Hathaleen — a Palestinian activist — filmed the incident and captured Levi firing the bullet that killed him. The video is pretty tough to watch:

Now look at what followed. Israeli authorities held the victim’s body for days, negotiating over funeral conditions to minimize unrest. The IDF’s initial response was to say that an Israeli civilian was attacked by “terrorists” who were throwing rocks at him. The IDF also raided the village and arrested multiple Palestinian men, holding them under administrative detention — an extraordinary legal mechanism that bypasses due process and is used almost exclusively against Palestinians.

The shooter? He was released within a day and, within a week, was back at the same village:

Ask yourself honestly: does this feel so fundamentally different from Alex Pretti filming a video, stepping in to protect a woman who was assaulted, being killed, and then being called a “terrorist” by the Trump Administration?

They are not the same — but they rhyme.

The role of ICE and the role of IDF Settler Reservist Units

In both contexts, security forces play a deeply troubling role.

In the U.S., we see ICE terrorizing communities on our screens every day. In the West Bank, it often works like this: since the war in Gaza began, IDF reserve units — many made up of settlers themselves — are often the ones patrolling the West Bank and responsible for security. Their mandate is to protect Jews, not Palestinians.

When extremist settlers go off in groups to attack Palestinian communities, these units often accompany them. They don’t initiate the violence, but when Palestinians try to defend themselves — throwing rocks, resisting attacks from extremist settlers — the IDF steps in to protect the Israeli assailants. Palestinians are arrested. Settlers are not.

We have also seen many more instances of violent settlers being drafted directly into the reserves and then showing up in areas of the West Bank in uniform and committing these acts of violence. This is also a new development since October 7th, as IDF reserve units made up of settlers have expanded five-fold since the October 7th attacks.

Here is a video from just three days ago of IDF soldiers escorting settlers who stole 150 cattle from a Palestinian family.

And another video from last year of IDF soldiers standing by and escorting settlers while they attack and vandalize Palestinian communities.

Bureaucracy in Service of Extremism

Both the Trump administration and the current Israeli government’s extremist agendas are being advanced through the machinery of the state.

Americans have watched ICE and DHS violate court orders and shred the rule of law to pursue ideological goals. In Israel, a recent documentary on public television laid bare how senior ministers have deliberately built parallel bureaucratic systems to seize control over the West Bank — removing authority from the IDF and consolidating it in the hands of ideologues, while using loopholes and, in many cases, breaking Israeli law. And this is not hearsay — the documentary shows Smotrich bragging about this in an interview:

Land seizures; “illegal outposts” that are mysteriously connected to water, roads, and electricity systems almost instantly; “farms” that appear overnight, grab huge chunks of territory, and become bases for violence. This is not chaos conducted by hoodlums. The outposts and settler violence are part of a coordinated effort abetted by extremist elements within Netanyahu’s coalition to take over as much of the West Bank as possible.

When Israeli officials say these are just “bad apples,” they are obscuring the truth: these actors are part of the governing system and they actually brag about it on TV. Only when international pressure becomes overwhelming does anything change — and even then, only temporarily.

Dispossession as Policy

Finally, ICE’s actions are explicitly about removal and dispossession. So is what’s happening in the West Bank.

This isn’t just about random violence. Since 2023, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, 45 entire Palestinian communities have been erased by settler violence. These are small villages that comprise roughly 3,500 people whose living situation became so unbearable that they were forced to pick up and leave. I’ve stood in a building that used to be a school where you can still see desks and books amid the rubble.

On one visit, while we were in a recently attacked area, the IDF arrived — not to protect Palestinians, but to tell us to leave. As we drove out, we passed a settler monitoring us, clearly coordinating with the military whom he had alerted to our presence.

These aren’t isolated incidents. They are part of a systematic effort to make life untenable so people leave.

The Comparison Hurts but It’s Real

Is what’s happening in Minneapolis exactly the same as what’s happening in the West Bank? No. But let’s also be clear that what is happening in the West Bank is not just a few “bad apples” outside of the control of the state.

Both are symptoms of governments that no longer respect the rule of law, that deploy state power in service of authoritarian, racist, anti-democratic agendas, and that use violence — directly or indirectly — to dispossess vulnerable populations while denying accountability.

That is an extraordinarily painful reality for American Jews to confront. I don’t minimize that.

But I would urge anyone who visits Israel to also spend time in the West Bank. See this side of the story up close. Because if we care about democracy, about Jewish values, and about the future of both Israel and the United States, we can’t look away just because the comparison hurts.

Making this comparison does not mean condemning Israel and turning our backs on it, just as condemning the Trump administration does not mean abandoning American democracy. We fight for, and advocate for, the governments we want to see, grounded in the principles and values we were raised with as Americans and as Jews. As American Jews, we also have a responsibility to advocate for the Israel we want to see. And to do that, we have to be clear-eyed about what is actually happening on the ground.

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Join me, and join J Street, in Washington, DC, from February 28 to March 3 for J Street’s National Convention, Building Tomorrow: Regional Peace & Resilient Democracy.