The characterization is precise enough to check, which is why it is worth checking. Asked about the wave of settler violence across the West Bank, Israel's prime minister described the people responsible as "150 or so what you would call juvenile delinquents." [1]
The United Nations has documented at least 580 settler attacks in the West Bank so far this year. [1]
The two numbers are not measuring the same thing, and the steel-man requires saying so: 150 is a claim about perpetrators, 580 is a count of incidents, and a small number of people can commit a large number of attacks. Taken at face value, the prime minister's own framing has each of those 150 individuals responsible for nearly four documented attacks apiece this year. That is not delinquency. That is a campaign with a low headcount.
The incidents themselves resist the juvenile framing. Two mosques were burned, in the villages of Qusra and Kour. [1] Arson against places of worship is a category of crime that no legal system anywhere files under youthful high spirits.
Then comes the response, which is the part that turns a characterization into a policy. The Israeli military's operation following the wave of settler attacks fell on Palestinian communities: raids on more than 20 towns, three homes demolished, and more than 130 Palestinians arrested. [1] On Friday, raids near Nablus injured at least 11 people, including children. [2]
A wave of attacks by settlers produced a security operation against the attacked. Whatever one calls the 150, the enforcement went the other direction, and it went there at scale.
The prime minister's number may even be right about how many people are doing this. The record simply says that those people, whoever they are, have generated 580 documented attacks, burned mosques in two named villages, and prompted a military response that arrested 130 of their victims' neighbours.
