In 1933, Abu Jilda, a small-time local outlaw from the edge of Palestine’s Jordan Valley, emerged as a nationally- (and internationally-) known bandit figure. He did so through his actions—killing a Palestinian policeman and evading the ensuing manhunt for nearly a year—but especially through media coverage of his exploits, real and imagined. Newspapers gave near daily coverage to Abu Jilda, ranging from dutiful reproductions of police statements to wild speculation, while Abu Jilda himself sent personalized photographs to the press and, supposedly, encouraged them to print his own narrative of events. Abu Jilda also received fictionalized treatments, including an illustrated pamphlet by Palestinian journalist Hilmi Abu Sha‘ban and an issue of the Beirut-based magazine al-Lata’if al-‘Asriyya (Modern Wit). In some circles, Abu Jilda became symbolic of Palestinian defiance to British rule, expressed more fully in a widespread revolt from 1936–39. Contemporaneous and later commentary debated Abu Jilda’s role in setting the stage for the Palestinian uprising: sympathizers placed him alongside ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam, an iconic militant preacher killed by British police in 1935, as men of action who fomented and foreshadowed the 1936 revolt; detractors saw him as a ruffian with no connection to politics. This paper draws on both journalistic and fictionalized accounts of Abu Jilda to ask: how did Palestinians read (in both sense of the word) Abu Jilda’s actions? That is, in what form did they consume his exploits, and how did they understand them in broader context? This paper brings together “fact” and “fiction,” as well as the social, cultural, and political history of Mandate Palestine, to show how a broad narrative of Abu Jilda allowed writers, publishers, and audiences to critique the difficult conditions imposed on rural Palestinians, the perfidy of British authorities, and the inaction of Arab leaders, while expressing ambiguity about lawbreaking, which some sources justified so long as it was motivated by justice, undertaken out of necessity, or distinguished by cleverness. Moreover, it considers how different media—journalistic and literary, visual and written—sought to evoke pride, anger, sympathy, fear, or humor. Though it draws on the abundant scholarship inspired by Eric Hobsbawm’s “social banditry” thesis, this paper is less interested in the “historical” Abu Jilda than on the impact—political, cultural, affective—of his media profile on Palestinian audiences in the lead-up to the 1936 revolt, and the atmosphere that shaped, and was shaped by, its reception.