Media Abet Palestinian Squatters in Transforming Real Estate Dispute into International Incident

Media Abet Palestinian Squatters in Transforming Real Estate Dispute into International Incident

Akiva Van Koningsveld


An Israeli appeals court recently upheld a decision by a lower court to evict Palestinian squatters living rent-free on Jewish-owned land in the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah/Shimon HaTzadik. Although the debate surrounding the property dates back many years, the issue this week exploded into the limelight as Palestinians for several nights on end clashed with Israeli police and Jewish residents of the area.

Most major media outlets were quick to adopt the Palestinian narrative that the real estate dispute between private parties was somehow linked to alleged attempts by Israel to “Judaize” Jerusalem and simultaneous riots by tens of thousands of Arabs on Temple Mount and near the Old City’s Damascus Gate. In reality, though, the situation in Sheikh Jarrah/Shimon HaTzadik is unrelated and highly complex, as demonstrated by the fact that the case has been working its way through the courts for decades. In fact, several Palestinian tenants of a few buildings in question acknowledged under oath as far back as the 1980s that the property was indeed owned by Jews.

Not surprisingly, many outlets have distorted the basic facts of the story, preferring instead to jump on the anti-Israel bandwagon.

Consider this paragraph from a report published by The Washington Post:

 In recent days, protests have grown over Israel’s threatened eviction in Sheikh Jarrah/Shimon HaTzadik of dozens of Palestinians embroiled in a long legal battle with Israeli settlers trying to acquire property in the neighborhood.” [emphasis added]

This assertion is simply false. Israelis are not trying to acquire property in Sheikh Jarrah, but want to regain control over what they believe legally belongs to them. In 1875, Rabbi Avraham Ashkenazi and Rabbi Meir Auerbach acquired the land in question from Arab sellers. Shortly before Israel’s War of Independence, in 1946, two Jewish non-governmental organizations moved to register the deed with authorities in what was then British Mandatory Palestine.

Few media mentioned that Sheikh Jarrah is also known as Shimon HaTzadik, named after the Jewish High Priest during the Second Temple period, whose tomb is located in the neighborhood. After the war in 1948, Shimon HaTzadik came under the control of Jordan, which expelled the local Jewish population and gave the resulting vacant houses to Jordanian citizens, who paid rent to the Jordanian Custodian.

In the 1970s, after Jerusalem was unified under Israeli sovereignty, Va’ad Eidat HaSfaradim and Va’ad HaKlali L’Knesset Yisrael reclaimed their ownership with the Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property. In 1982, the Palestinian residents of the property – including the parents and grandparents of some of the current occupants – signed an agreement confirming that the Israeli NGOs were the rightful owners.

In the early 2000s, these two Israeli non-profits sold the land to the Nahalat Shimon organization. The Palestinians occupying the dwelling were nevertheless allowed to continue living there and enjoyed “Protected Residents” status. However, by law, the tenants were required to pay rent to Nahalat Shimon. It was only after the Palestinian residents refused to do so — and instead illegally expanded the property and rented out spaces to third parties — that Nahalat Shimon initiated eviction proceedings.

This past February, the Jerusalem District Court upheld an October 2020 decision by the Jerusalem Magistrate Court, which ruled in favor of Nahalat Shimon. According to the verdict, the residents failed to back up their claim that the former Jordanian authorities had gifted them the property. “All of the witnesses were born after [the] 1967 [Six Day War, in which Israel acquired the area] or were very young at the time and testified that they heard about the [Jordanian] promise from an older relative,” the lower court had noted. No tangible evidence of ownership was presented.

However, this crucial context has been almost entirely missing from the news cycle. When Reuters writes that “Jewish settlers backed by an Israeli court have taken over some homes” in Sheikh Jarrah/Shimon HaTzadik, or Associated Press reports that “dozens of Palestinians are fighting attempts by Israeli settlers to evict them from their homes,” without even mentioning the facts surrounding the case, an informed discussion on the matter becomes impossible.

The Supreme Court, Israel’s final court of appeals, was supposed to hear the case on Monday, but delayed the session by a month at the request of Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit. According to local media, Israels security services feared that the trial could further fuel tensions in the holy city. In the meantime, the Palestinian squatters will be allowed to remain on the property.

Meanwhile, the Human Rights Office of the United Nations on Saturday went as far as saying that the possible eviction, rooted in basic property law, would “contribute to a coercive environment and lead to a risk of forcible transfer.” The US State Department expressed “deep concern” about the situation in Sheikh Jarrah/Shimon HaTzadik, noting that many of the tenants have “lived in their homes for generations.” Concurrently, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (D-VT) posted angry statements to Twitter, with the former suggesting that the prospective evictions were “abhorrent.” For her part, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) falsely claimed that “Israeli forces are forcing families from their homes.”

By once again wreaking havoc in the streets of Jerusalem, Palestinians have seemingly successfully turned a minuscule — and not uncommon — real estate disagreement into a major international incident. But none of this would have been possible without the laziness, if not complicity, of mainstream media outlets. Instead of insisting that their journalists do a modicum of due diligence, apparently they prefer to smear Israel, in general, and “settlers,” specifically, who do not believe that four Palestinian families have the right to live on lands that Israeli courts have to date determined belong to these Jews.


Akiva Van Koningsveld – Originally from The Hague, Akiva Van Koningsveld left The Netherlands for Israel in the fall of 2020. Before joining the HonestReporting team, he worked as a policy officer at the Center for Information and Documentation Israel, a Dutch organization dedicated to combating antisemitism and spreading awareness of the Arab-Israel conflict. Akiva studied journalism at the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht. In 2020, he graduated from Utrecht University with a law degree, focusing on the intersection of human rights and civil liability.


Media Miss Real Story As Palestinians Riot on Temple Mount

Emanuel Miller


On Friday, thousands of Muslim worshippers chanted violent slogans while rioting on the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, also location of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest place. Over 200 Palestinians and 17 Israeli police officers were wounded in resulting clashes.

But that wasn’t how the media reported the story.

To read any of the reports by The New York TimesBBCThe GuardianWashington PostReuters or Associated Press, one could be forgiven for thinking that Palestinian worshippers were severely mistreated by heavy-handed Israeli security forces.

Such a representation is not only a distortion of the facts, but also blurs the bigger picture. 

Omitted from Reports: Palestinian Battle Cries

“Ya Qassam, Ya Habib/Bomb, bomb, Tel Aviv.”

Those were the words on the lips of not hundreds, but thousands, of Palestinians, who had gathered at the Temple Mount to mark the last Friday of the month of Ramadan.

These weren’t the only violent words heard: the familiar old refrain, “With our soul, with our blood, we’ll redeem you, Al Aqsa” was also repeatedly chanted.

Perhaps the most egregious example came in a segment by NPR, in which chants were mentioned  — but only those of a small group of Jewish extremists over the last few weeks (2:40 in audio clip). The chants in Arabic sung by thousands, of Muslim worshippers during the clashes this Friday night, however, weren’t deemed worthy of inclusion.

While this went almost entirely unreported by foreign media, Reuters should be credited for being one of the few news organizations that made mention of the incitement to violence.

Meanwhile, self-proclaimed “pro-peace” IfNotNow organization described the hate speech as “inspiring… Palestinian resistance.”

Simplistic ‘Sheikh Jarrah Land Conflict’ Framing

In recent days, a legal debate over the fate of a few properties in the Shimon HaTzaddik/Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem has made international headlines. While it is clear that this issue has been used as a rallying call by rioters in Jerusalem, media reports have oversimplified the narrative to the point of effectively ignoring Palestinian intolerance.

An article by the BBC published after the Friday night rioting serves as a perfect case in point. It opened by documenting the numbers of injured and noting the weapons used by each side, thereby creating the impression of ‘courageous’ Palestinians underdogs standing up to brutal Israeli security personnel:

At least 163 Palestinians and six Israeli police officers have been hurt in clashes in Jerusalem, Palestinian medics and Israeli police say. Most were injured at the Al-Aqsa mosque, where Israeli police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades as Palestinians threw stones and bottles.”

The next paragraph frames the issue as arising on the backdrop of another:

Tensions have been rising over the potential eviction of Palestinians from land claimed by Jewish settlers.”

That’s all. Not a word about the recent trend of unprovoked attacks by Palestinians on Jewish Israelis; or the non-stop incitement by Palestinian politicians, religious leaders and media; or that the frequency of Palestinian terrorism almost always increases during Ramadan.

Downplayed: Palestinian Violence

Another seemingly inconvenient fact ignored by the media is that Palestinian rioters brought large rocks to the Temple Mount and stashed them inside Al Aqsa Mosque. Videos of the clashes also show Palestinians using fireworks as weapons, forcing Israeli border police to use shields to protect themselves. It also seems that lasers were used to distract and disorient the officers. 

Video Player

This video footage provided by the Israeli Police is invaluable, as it helps viewers properly understanding what is captured in the lead image used by the Washington Post. The Post’s caption of the photo reads, “Palestinians react as Israeli police fire stun grenades during clashes at the compound that houses the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City.”

However, the picture very clearly shows fireworks exploding in mid-air, most likely those used by Palestinians — with a view to harming Israeli security forces — that prompted a response.

And whereas stun grenades were at times indeed used by security forces as a dispersal method, this is what they actually look like when they explod.

It seems clear, then, that the Post‘s caption is inaccurate.

Unreported: Palestinian Power Struggle

For perhaps the first time ever, hundreds of Hamas flags were this weekend flown on the Temple Mount. The terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip is dedicated to Israel’s destruction and is evidently making inroads in Jerusalem.

The flags should speak for themselves, given that they represent a genocidal group. But there another angle to this occurrence.

As was widely expected, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently canceled legislative elections originally scheduled for May 22. Since then, tensions have been rising between Abbas’ Fatah faction, which essentially governs the West Bank by fiat, and Hamas. In response, Hamas has increased its incitement against the Jewish state in what many analysts construe as an attempt to up its public profile by demonstrating its nationalistic bona fides.

Unfortunately, readers are routinely deprived of detailed, nuanced coverage of the decade-and-a-half-long intra-Palestinian conflict. This has resulted in fundamental misperceptions about the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as between the Palestinians themselves. In this case, the result is clear: readers are left misinformed as to what truly accounts for the latest escalation of violence in Jerusalem.


Emanuel Miller – is a Jerusalem-based writer who has previously worked for the Jerusalem Post and the Times of Israel, and helped establish the English media department of My Truth, an organization that documents the experiences of Israeli soldiers while facing an immoral, cynical enemy. He regularly speaks about Israel, media bias, and Israel’s geopolitical complexities to audiences including Birthright groups, student leaders visiting Israel, and for those seeking to get a more nuanced understanding of Israel.


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