US Jewish groups blame Netanyahu for West Bank settler violence

A joint statement issued by 12 American Jewish groups on Monday blames Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for violent attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

"As leaders of the American Jewish community, we cannot and will not stand idly by," Haaretz reported the statement as saying, which was signed by groups including the Union for Reform Judaism, the New Israel Fund, J Street and the National Council for Jewish Women.

The groups expressed their "growing anguish and horror" over the recent wave of violent attacks by Jewish Israeli settlers against Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank.

This violence "has not come from nowhere, but is aligned with the Netanyahu government's broader agenda of settlement expansion, deepening of occupation and displacement of Palestinians", the groups said.

"Prime Minister Netanyahu bears ultimate responsibility for the policies deployed in the West Bank on his watch and for the chilul hashem, or desecration of God's name, that has been unleashed in the form of these despicable violent attacks."

Netanyahu responsible for settler pogroms and terrorism, US Jewish groups say