Aletho News

THE STATS ON PALESTINIAN TERRORISM — 2000 TO APRIL 2024

By Larry Johnson | SONAR | May 10, 2024 

I have completed the initial cleanup of the data posted on the website of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, which lists all suspected Palestinian terrorist attacks during the 23-year, four-month period (i.e., 2000 to April 26, 2024). During this period, the Israeli Government identifies 672 terrorist attacks blamed on the Palestinians. Why do I phrase it like that? Because several of the incidents involve the discovery of dead Israelis with no identified attacker. Here is just one example:

Apr 30, 2013 – Evyatar Borovsky, 31, of Yitzhar, was stabbed to death in a terror attack at the hitchhiking post at theTapuah junction in the northern West Bank.

Maybe it was a terrorist attack or maybe it was a jealous husband. Listing this as a terrorist attack implies a degree of planning and intent that is not supported by the data.

Now here are the really interesting numbers. 105 of the attacks are attributed to Hamas. 58 to Islamic Jihad and 5 to Hezbollah. In other words, only 25% of the attacks are associated with a specific Palestinian group. The remaining 75% are blamed on nameless culprits. The total number killed by Palestinian violence during this 23-year-plus period is 1,455. That is the number of victims listed at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs site. And, as I noted in my recent article (Hamas is a Third-Rate Terrorist Organization), the Israelis killed 7,065 Palestinians during the same period of time. In other words, the Israelis killed almost five times the number of Palestinians. This may explain why the Palestinians carried out “terrorist” attacks — they were seeking vengeance, retribution.

I am not suggesting that Hamas was a benign actor. Hamas took credit for several bombings, such as the August 9, 2001 suicide blast at a Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem. There is no excuse for this kind of mindless violence. If someone is wearing a uniform and carrying a firearm, then they are a legitimate target of war. That is insurgency, not terrorism in my view. Others may differ. Killing families sitting down for a meal is not only criminal, but evil. It is wrong when Hamas or Islamic Jihad do it and it is wrong when Israel drops a bomb on civilian housing and wipes out extended families. It appears that Hamas and the other Islamic groups concluded that such acts of violence were counterproductive because the last use of an explosive on a public gathering in Israel was July 18, 2012. It also is possible that Israel increased its security protocols making it more difficult for suicide bombers to infiltrate into Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

I have attached the spreadsheet to this article. I have not had time to thoroughly organize the data. For example, I would like to get the incident dates into a separate column. I want to identify how many of the victims were military versus civilian. I want to identify the specific group that claims responsibility for the attack. If any of you have the free time and the inclination (and the skill) to convert this database into something more useful as an analytical tool please feel free to take a whack.

Vilifying Hamas as an unrepentant international terrorist group is not fair nor accurate. They share more in common with Native American tribes carrying out attacks on European settlers in the 19th Century in America’s Wild West. It is violence spawned by a fight over land and freedom of movement. Hamas is not in the same category nor league as ISIS and Al Qaeda. Not even close.

One final point of reference. The number of people murdered in Chicago between 2000 and 2023 stands at 13,526. And we don’t call that terrorism. Israel has close to ten million people, while Chicago is a little more than one-fifth the size, with 2,665,000 in 2022. Just keep that in mind.

May 11, 2024 - Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Hamas, Israel, Palestine, Zionism