The rhetorical trickery employed by Telegraph reporter Melanie Swan to avoid assigning blame to the Palestinian men who abuse women and girls is staggering, and represents another example of the media echo chamber that refuses to assign Palestinians agency. The piece (“Thousands of women and girls in the West Bank exposed to gender based violence”, March 27) is based on a report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNPF), and, as you can see, the desired narrative assigning blame to Israel, and not the male Palestinian perpetrators, is introduced early on:
Latest information from the UN group in the occupied territories has found that since the start of intensified Israeli military operations on January 21, a humanitarian crisis has hit those displaced, mainly from Jenin and Tulkarm.
“Displaced women and girls are exposed to increased gender-based violence. They face heightened risks of harassment and sexual exploitation in overcrowded and insecure displacement settings,” said the UNPF.
Though we weren’t able to find the report in question, which was likely sent to sympathetic reporters in advance of its public release, it seems to go out its way to avoid imputing guilt the violent actors – namely, Palestinian men. Instead, the women and girls face “heightened risk” and are “exposed to” such violence, language you’d expect to see used in a report describing a deadly communicable disease. Further, you’ll see, the Telegraph reporter’s own language mirrors that of the report.
The article continues:
In the occupied West Bank, domestic violence has been significantly aggravated by the war. Many women are unable to leave their communities due to restrictions on movement put in place by the Israeli security forces or what the UN calls an internalised fear that leads families to confine women to their homes.
Again, note the passive language to describe the decision of Palestinian men to confine their wives or daughters to their homes – attributing such abuse not to the misogynistic attitudes of the men themselves, but to “internalized fear” fueled by Israeli restrictions on movement which “leads families” to such behavior.
Further into the piece, Israel is again framed as the responsible party for abusive behavior by Palestinian men, specifically, the practice of fathers forcing their daughters into young marriages, with Swan quoting the UNPF report:
“Adolescent girls are increasingly being pulled out of school, not only due to limited access, but also because of growing fears of [Israeli] violence and harassment on the way – fears that have led many families to push girls into early and forced marriages, often seen as a form of protection or a desperate response to economic hardship,” the UNFP said.
Interestingly, a 2020 UNFP report on combating forced early marriage noted that, within the West Bank, that a staggering 20% of all Palestinian marriages are child marriages. The article doesn’t say whether or not this rate has increased since either Oct. 7th, 2023, or since the military’s West Bank anti-terror operation began in January, 2025.
However, by far the most serious omission in Swan’s article regards the extent to which sexist attitudes towards women are pervasive in Palestinian society – context which could help readers understand the problem of gender-based violence in the West Bank. For instance, Swan’s report omits the fact that, according to a 2016 UN Report on Palestinian gender equality, 34% of Palestinian men agreed with the statement that “There are times when a women deserves to be beaten“. Further, 63% of Palestinian men agreed that women should tolerate such violence in order to keep the family together.
To provide a rough benchmark for Palestinian statistic on spousal abuse that, showing that 34% of men believe there are times when a woman deserves to be beaten: according the World Values Survey database, roughly 10% of men in the United States believe is it sometimes justifiable for a man to beat his wife.
Another important fact about Palestinian attitudes towards gender can be found in a report by the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA), which noted that, in the PA, under Article 62 of the 1960 Jordanian Penal Code, courts are allowed to rule in favor of a father who kills his child if such actions are justified by “local customs.” Similarly, under Article 98 of the same code, JCFA added, courts can grant reduced sentences to those who commit honour murders if they claim an inability to control their anger.
The Telegraph, of course, isn’t the only British outlet insisting on finding an Israeli root cause for every Palestinian problem. As we’ve noted on these pages, the Guardian has, over the years, published pieces blaming Israel for the culture of misogyny, rape, spousal abuse and honor killings in Palestinian society.
Moreover, it’s important to understand this isn’t merely about how such myopic coverage and flawed causality results in unfair reporting about Israel.
The late Middle East historian Bernard Lewis persuasively argued that there are two different ways in which individuals, groups and nations can choose respond to problems. The first is to ask “Who’s doing this to us?” The second is, “What are we doing wrong?” The first one, Lewis said, leads to conspiracy theories, self-pity and avoidance of personal responsibility, whilst the other leads to self-help and moral agency. One usually leads to failure and the other to success.
At the end of the day, the primary victims of this habit of infantilising Palestinians that’s so prevalent in the media – and elsewhere in the West – are Palestinians themselves.
