The Media, obsessing over ‘fake news’, does not report terrorist attacks in Israel which advances the agenda of portraying Israel as the ‘aggressor’ and the Arabs as ‘victims’.
Israel is in the midst of a terror wave few people outside of Israel know about, because the international media is not reporting about it.
Although it is rarely described as such even in Israel, the terror wave has been ongoing for twenty-nine months – from September 2015 and until the present. In January 2018, according to the latest figures from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there were a total of 332 terrorist incidents, resulting in one murder and 16 injured. The incidents included 2 stabbings/attempted stabbings; 2 shootings; 1 ramming attack; 4 roadside bombs; 251 stone-throwing attacks and 45 Molotov cocktails.
Most of the mainstream media, which is constantly obsessing over ‘fake news’, is not reporting any of these terrorist attacks, which is ironic, as nothing could possibly be more fake than deliberately omitting to report news. Especially because the omission only happens in order to advance the specific and insidious agenda of portraying Israel as the ‘aggressor’ and the Arabs as perpetual, ‘oppressed victims’.
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, since 13 September 2015, 62 innocent people have been killed in terrorist attacks and 899 people have been wounded. There have been 192 stabbing attacks and 139 attempted stabbings; 173 shooting attacks and 61 vehicular (ramming) attacks. In addition, riots and other types of attacks occur almost daily: rock throwing (6481), roadside/pipe bombs (187) and Molotov cocktails/grenades (1320). Furthermore, in the south, Hamas & Co. has launched innumerable rockets and mortar shells on Israel from Gaza, 64 of which have fallen in Israel. In 2017, 54 terrorist attacks were successfully carried out, while 400 terrorist attacks, including 13 suicide attacks and 8 kidnappings, as well as 1,100 potential lone-wolf attacks, were prevented.
Meanwhile, organizations pretending to care about ‘human rights’ (very selective human rights, they do not include the human rights of Israeli Jews) such as Amnesty International, obsess over the fates of professional terrorists such as Ahed Tamimi, who provokes and terrorizes IDF soldiers for a living. It is therefore not surprising that a crucial piece of news went unreported by most news organizations, namely that the Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida — translated by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) – admitted in a January article that 161 Arabs from the PA carried out stabbing attacks against Israelis in 2015-16.
Why is it newsworthy that the PA officially admitted that its citizens carried out stabbing attacks? Because back in 2015-16, the PA falsely claimed that Israel was ‘fabricating’ the stabbing attacks and, as documented at the time by PMW, “planted knives” next to the dead bodies of “innocent Palestinian victims” after having “executed” them in “cold blood.”
The media and the international community naturally believed Abbas. He knew he could count on major news outlets not to question why Arab terrorism against Israelis was spiking. Instead, the media pulled the ragged old cliches of the mysteriously self-igniting “cycle of violence” out of the old bag, while Israel’s legitimate self-defense against the stabbings, shootings and rock throwings was reported in negative terms and sometimes in terms taken straight out of Abbas’ own playbook. One particularly egregious CBS headline from 2016 said, “Three Palestinians killed as daily violence grinds on”. The headline referred to a terrorist attack committed by three Arab terrorists armed with guns, knives and bombs, on two border policewomen at Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. One of the police officers, 19-year-old Cpl. Hadar Cohen, was killed in the attack.
At the time, Mahmoud Abbas even asked the U.N. Human Rights Council to dispatch a commission of inquiry to the region “to investigate all crimes perpetrated by Israel against our people.”
After all this genuinely fake news about the terrorism committed against Israel, you might be inclined to think that the international media, as well as the Western establishment – which has lately become so obsessed with countering ‘fake news’ – would simply rush at the speed of light to correct its mistakes, would you not? To report the breaking news that the PA has finally admitted that it orchestrated the terrorism.
Predictably, that has not happened. Nor has the EU reconsidered its promise to strengthen its support of the PA, as EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini recently promised Abbas that the EU would do, while proudly boasting that “the EU and its member states are collectively by far the largest donor, the largest supporter of the Palestinians and our support will continue, including to UNRWA…”
It is unlikely that the admission of terrorism published in the PA daily even interests anyone in the international mainstream media, which has long ago ceased to report actual news. Instead, it serves specific political agendas. In the words of the Jewish radical and anti-Semite, Ilan Pappe, “Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truth-seekers.”
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Judith Bergman is a columnist and political analyst
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