In the last several days, several dozen violent Jewish radical settlers have gone on rampages in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, assaulting an Israeli military base and a military commander, slashing police car tires,  defacing and setting on fire a disused mosque -- all in apparent protest against the planned dismantling of illegal outposts.

Prime Minister Netanyahu immediately ordered a massive crackdown, including long-term detention and military trials for suspected offenders.  He also gave the Israeli military the right to make arrests, rather than rely entirely on the police, and increased the number of security forces and the number of radical settlers banned from the West Bank.

But Netanyahu also drew a sharp distinction between an estimated 50 or so violence-bent settlers and the 300,000 law-abiding Jewish residents in the West Bank -- a position which the New York Times could not countenance.

Instead, the Times uses the violence perpetrated by a small group of miscreants to launch an all-out indictment of all settlers and all settlements, lumping them under the rubric of what it deems a misbegotten Israeli "occupation" of West Bank lands that must be reserved for a Palestinian state.

"Around the world, it is the abuse of Palestinians under Israeli occupation that draws anger," writes Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner in a Dec. 15 article ("Israeli Leader Sets Curbs on Settlers For Violence" page A6).

Bronner, you see, is not content to tar the few Jewish extremists and their rampages; he just uses them as a peg to ream all settlers.  And he makes no bones about the fact that he's clearly displeased that Netanyahu's views differ from those of the New York Times.

Or, as he puts it:  "Mr. Netanyahu rejected the position, widely held outside of Israel and among some factions within, that the settlement enterprise is taking land from a future Palestinian state." 

Never mind that under Netanyahu, no land has been taken for settlement expansion.  Only growth within settlements is permitted.  Why bother with facts?

Never mind also that Netanyahu keeps signaling that he's ready for direct negotiations leading to a two-state solution with Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, who won't negotiate and prefers instead unilateral moves like gaining statehood recognition at the UN.  And never mind that Netanyahu, by accepting the two-state objective, effectively embraces the notion that most settlements will have to be vacated, while Israel nevertheless will retain close-in urban centers like Maale Adumim and Ariel. 

As far as the Times and Bronner are concerned, they instead want immediate, unilateral Israeli concessions, notwithstanding Palestinian obstructionism, Hamas control of Gaza, and the Palestinians' failure to renounce once and for all reliance on violence to effectuate their political objectives.

While disregarding Palestinian rejection of a negotiated peace deal, the small band of out-of-control violent settlers gives the Times and Bronner an irresistible, golden opportunity to blacken the Netanyahu government and all Jewish settlers as the only obstacle to peace.

As Uzi Landau, a minister in Bibi's cabinet, observes in the final paragraph of Bronner's piece, "These scoundrels have caused the settlements heavy damage.  They help the enemies of settlements in Judea and Samaria and also help those who wish evil on the settlers." 

Count the New York Times, where anti-Israel bias is fit to print as news, among these scoundrels.