Intentional car ramming is terrorism all over the world except one place. Guess where?
Appalling attack
This week’s appalling terror attack in Paris involved a vehicle being driven at speed into soldiers in the wealthy Parisian suburb of Levallois-Perret, north of the city center and the Arc de Triomphe, causing serious injuries. This has prompted comparisons with other terror attacks around the world where vehicles have been used as weapons.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
News.com.au (a part of News Corp Australia) bills itself as “Australia’s #1 News Site” with over 60 million monthly unique visitors.
In an article on the Paris attack, the site included other examples of vehicle attacks around the world, saying that the Paris attack was “…the latest in a disturbing trend of terrorists or otherwise disturbed people driving their cars into crowds with the express purpose of killing innocent people.”
News.com.au then goes on to describe the following incidents:
- June 3 – London Bridge
- April 8 – Stockholm
- March 22 – Westminster
- January 20 – Melbourne
- December, 2016 – Berlin
- July, 2016 – “Bastille Day” attack (Nice)
- December, 2014 – France
- April, 2009 – Dutch Royal Family
But which country is conspicuous by its absence?
As documented by Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Israel has suffered 60 vehicular terror (ramming) attacks since the beginning of the wave of terror in September 2015. Not one like Melbourne or Berlin, not two like the UK, not even four like France, but 60.
Sixty attacks.
What did News.com.au have to say about these 60 terror attacks against Israelis?
Nothing.
News.com.au could have taken its cue from a previous story by wire service Reuters, which did include the following in its own story:
Vehicle attacks are not a new tactic in the Middle East.
In 2008, a Palestinian rammed a bulldozer into vehicles on a Jerusalem street before a visit by then US presidential candidate Barack Obama, wounding at least 16 people.
Another Palestinian drove his truck into a group of Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem in January this year, killing four of them in an attack that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said was likely to have been inspired by Islamic State.
Or News.com.au might have taken a look at the Associated Press or AFP, each of which published a similarly deficient accounts of car ramming attacks, but then corrected their stories after being critiqued and contacted by HonestReporting.
Attacks against Israelis…exported home to you.
An analysis in the New York Post last November by Benny Avni pointed out that car rammings were originally perfected by Palestinian terrorists in their attacks against Israelis, and only later exported to other countries around the world. Avni writes:
We ignore Palestinian terror and condemn Israel’s robust response to it at our peril. Campaigns of violence against Israeli civilians are often copied elsewhere, from the streets of Nice, France, to the Columbus, Ohio, campus.
Indeed, the world continues to ignore Palestinian terror against Israelis, and continues to suffer the horrible consequences.
https://youtu.be/GUbCQPDDu_8
Combined vehicular terror attack and stabbing: Jerusalem, October, 2015. The Palestinian terrorist killed 59 year old Rabbi Yeshayahu Krishevsky. (Warning: the video is rather gruesome).
So…why?
Why is it that terror against Israelis simply doesn’t register on News.com.au’s radar?
By excluding Israel from its list of terror victims, the news site violates its own Code of Conduct, by misleading readers into thinking either that Israel suffers no such attacks, or that in Israel such attacks simply do not count as “terror.”
The omission of Israel from the article begs the question as to why it was overlooked and why terror in Israel is treated differently than terror in other countries. The failure to acknowledge Palestinian vehicular terror in the same terms as similar attacks elsewhere does nothing to challenge a false and unfortunately prevalent narrative that excuses or attempts to justify Palestinian actions. It also erases Israeli victims of terror in a way that would not be the case for the terrorist attacks that News.com.au did describe.
Because according to “Australia’s #1 News Site,” a “disturbing trend of terrorists…driving their cars into crowds” counts as “terror” everywhere in the world…except Israel.
Register your complaint with News.com.au by filling in the feedback form at the bottom of this page – http://www.news.com.au/more-information
Featured image: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90
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