New York Times: Terror attacks are ‘spasms of violence’ fueled by Israel’s ‘extremist’ gov’t

The newspaper of record mentions extremism on Israel’s part, but none on the part of the Palestinian leadership. 

By World Israel News Staff

The New York Times published an article in the wake of two deadly Palestinian terror attacks, referring to them as “spasms of violence” occurring “under the watch of Israel’s extremist” government.

One Twitter user, former speechwriter for Israel’s mission to the United Nations Aviva Klompas accused the Times of “describing the slaughter of Jews as a ‘spasm of violence’ that Israel had coming because of the people it elected.”

The analysis, titled “Amid Spasm of Violence, Israel’s Far-Right Government Raises Risk of
Escalation,” opens by mentioning the terror attacks immediately following the mention of an IDF counterterrorism raid on Thursday, as if the two are comparable and as if the IDF operation was to blame for the terror attack.

“Nine Palestinians were shot dead on Thursday morning, in the deadliest Israeli raid in the West Bank for at least a half-decade,” the analysis reads, and the next sentence continues with, “Then a Palestinian gunman killed seven people on Friday night outside a synagogue in Jerusalem, the deadliest attack on civilians in the city since 2008.”

The Times failed to mention that the overwhelming majority of the Palestinians killed in Thursday’s raid in Jenin were terrorists, who were in the final stages of launching a wide scale bombing attack. The piece also failed to mention that a second terror attack took place hours after the first, when a 13-year-old terrorist opened fire on a group of Israelis outside the Old City of Jerusalem, severely wounding two people, a father and son.

The piece also compared Palestinian terrorists and “violent settlers,” reporting that the Palestinian Authority had cut security cooperation with Israel over the IDF operation, which, the Times‘ said, makes “it easier for both armed Palestinian groups and violent Israeli settlers to act unimpeded,” as if Israeli vagabonds in Judea and Samaria, some of whom have caused damage to Palestinian-owned land, is somehow comparable to massive shooting and bombings by Palestinian terror groups, not to mention rocket fire.

The Times acknowledged that while terror attacks are “not unique to this government’s tenure” the new Netanyahu-led government is likely to “further inflame the situation.”

One example is “extremist” National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir who, the piece says, earned an election victory over his campaign “to take stronger action against Palestinians he deems a terrorist threat.”

“Extremists in the current government were elected on promises that have already added fuel to Palestinian anger. And they have proved emboldened, not cowed, by the rise in tensions,” the piece said.

It omitted all mention of Palestinian extremism, and no word of the widespread celebrations that took place all over Palestinian towns and cities in the wake of Friday’s attack.

Last month, the Times published an editorial warning  against the “far-right” government, saying it posed a “significant threat to future of Israel.”

The editorial noted that the so-called newspaper-of-record “has been a strong supporter of Israel” — this despite the many, many column inches saturated with anti-Israel bias, from accusing Israel of war crimes to calling for the end of Israel as a Jewish state and replacing it with a binational “Israel-Palestine.”