Where Terrorism is Not News

I’m a runner.

I’m a long distance runner and for the past few years, I have run thousands of kilometers. Most of my runs have started and finished from my home in Neve Daniel, a small town in the Gush Etzion region twenty minutes south of Jerusalem.

There is a beautiful trail that goes between Neve Daniel and the next few towns. It’s called “Derech Avot,” Hebrew for the “Path of the Patriarchs,” a reference to the Biblical story of Avraham going to sacrifice his son Isaac. This would be the route they would have traveled toward Jerusalem.

One does not have to believe in the Bible to see that the trail is indeed based on an established ancient route. There are 2,000-year-old Roman mile markers along the path as well as an ancient Jewish mikvah (ritual bath) dating back to the Second Temple. Pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem for holidays would ritually immerse themselves along the way.

Last night, as I was driving home, I heard the news that a runner on the trail, near my home, had been stabbed by a Palestinian terrorist who then sprinted off into the hills in the direction of Nahalin, a nearby Palestinian village.

The victim’s name is Tomer Ditur. He’s 28.

And if you live in Israel, you probably already know this.

But if you live outside of Israel, you would have no idea unless you have Israeli friends on social media who posted about the attack.

That’s because the mainstream media does not consider such attacks as “news.” While they cover terrorist attacks with mass casualties, they ignore “smaller” attacks with only one or two victims, especially when these victims are Israelis.

This is not a new phenomenon. During the Gaza war last summer, massive barrages of Hamas rockets from Gaza would only be reported in the context of a response to Israeli military attacks. Unprovoked attacks against Israel did not receive the same coverage.

Today, we are not talking about a single attack. We are talking about an enormous wave of Palestinian terror attacks on a near-daily basis. Since September, there have been 116 stabbing attacks, 41 shooting attacks, and 23 car ramming attacks. The results? 31 Israelis killed and 302 injured.

There is no indication these attacks will stop anytime in the near future. With a Palestinian leadership that praises the terrorists and pays stipends to their families, it would not be surprising for these numbers to continue to increase.

Yet the international media are rarely interested in reporting about this massive wave of terrorist attacks unless the Palestinian terrorists are killed during the attack. Then the coverage tends to be simple statistics of how many Israeli and how many Palestinians have been killed. But if an attack results in just Israeli casualties, it will almost never receive coverage. Of the hundreds of terrorist attacks listed above, how many where reported anywhere outside of Israel?

Which brings us back to Tomer. He was able to reach help and is recovering in Shaarei Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem.

He will never forget the attack. Neither will those of us who live here.

But thanks to the silence of the media, no one will even know it even happened.

Featured image: Running Silhouette Free Vectors by www.Vecteezy.com; Derech Avot courtesy Anitra King Lehman; infographic by Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs

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