CBS’ 60 MINUTES SANITIZES ISRAELI SETTLER VIOLENCE

CBS’ 60 Minutes recently aired a report documenting Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including footage of settlers physically attacking a Palestinian family attempting to reach its own property.

Despite the report focusing on Israeli settlers, the segment sanitized the settlement enterprise by presenting a settler involved in establishing an West Bank outpost as a simple farmer, obscuring the broader system of land seizure, Palestinian displacement and territorial expansion these outposts facilitate. By treating settler agriculture as an ordinary livelihood rather than a pretext for dispossessing Palestinians, CBS gave viewers a grossly distorted, even propagandistic, picture of the violence it documented.

The propaganda became even more apparent when it emerged that 60 Minutes had interviewed Samed Khdair, a Palestinian American beaten by Israeli settlers, but cut his testimony from the final broadcast. While his testimony was left on the edit-room floor, the report gave prominent attention to the Israeli settler’s identity as a farmer and shepherd.

Across the occupied West Bank, settler outposts are frequently established under the guise of farming and grazing, with agricultural activity serving as a pretext for taking control of Palestinian land, blocking Palestinians from their fields and pastures, and expanding Israeli territorial control. These are not simply farms that happen to encroach on Palestinian land, according to several human rights organizations, these agricultural outposts are deliberately used as a means of dispossession. By presenting a settler implicated in this system primarily as a farmer while cutting the testimony of a Palestinian American victim of these so-called farmers and shepherds, 60 Minutes obscured the purpose of these outposts and marginalized the people whose land and livelihoods are being taken.

The report aired under Bari Weiss, CBS News’ editor-in-chief, whose appointment by David Ellison has intensified scrutiny of the network’s editorial independence. Weiss has publicly advocated for Israel, while Larry Ellison, David’s father, has donated tens of millions of dollars to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces organization. In this context, the report not only functions as propaganda serving Israeli interests by legitimizing the settlement enterprise, but also raises the question of whether that was precisely its purpose.

The ADC interviewed West Bank Palestinian, Samed Khadiar on the violence he and his community face at the hands of Israeli settlers.