Shoot Palestinians, not settlers: Israeli general exposes double standard

Leaked comments from the head of the Israeli army in the West Bank reveal two-tier firing policies and endemic prejudice.Published On 6 May 2026Major-General Avi Bluth, the Israeli commander with responsibility for the occupied West Bank, had not known his comments would be leaked when he boasted of the success of Israel’s policies in the occupied territory.The army, he claimed in undated comments published by the Israeli liberal daily Haaretz last week, was “killing like we haven’t killed since 1967″.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4Smotrich says he promised his son ‘more destruction’ in Lebanonlist 2 of 4For Christians in Israel and Jerusalem, intolerance is becoming normallist 3 of 4Israel’s ‘two-tier’ policing and the crime epidemic in Palestinian townslist 4 of 4‘I can’t feel my leg’: Israeli gunfire disables teenagers in West Bankend of listIsrael, Bluth added, was “turning villages into conflict zones”. Critically, he also admitted to his audience what many had long known: that Israel was practising a two-tier firing policy, actively avoiding firing at Israeli settlers throwing stones at Israeli forces, while freely firing at Palestinians doing the same.“This [stone throwing] is terrorism, not popular or grassroots terrorism – there’s only popular [‘folk’] dancing,” Bluth said, adding that the military had killed 42 Palestinian stone-throwers in 2025. Firing at Israeli settlers, however, was to be avoided, he said, due to what he described as the “profound societal consequences” of doing so.Al Jazeera approached Bluth, via the Israeli authorities, for comment, but did not receive a reply at the time of writing.Ratcheting rhetoricThat double standard is unlikely to come as a surprise to anyone who lives in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, or the rights groups that campaign on their behalf. However, within an Israeli society described by analysts as veering sharply to the right and increasingly nationalistic, comments such as Bluth’s were increasingly becoming a point of pride, irrespective of the human cost.