Voice of the Jewish News: #StopIgnoringTerror
This week's editorial focuses on the continued overlooking of terror aimed at Israelis
Almost two years ago, Palestinians started stabbing and car-ramming Jews in Israel.
The attacks, from men, women and teens with no terrorist affiliations or past convictions, were horrifying in their brutality, simplicity and randomness.
Israeli and Diaspora Jews were dying or suffering serious life-changing injuries almost every week. It was an uprising like no other. Each incident got worldwide media attention. Everyone knew what was going on.
Today, the only thing that has changed is that it has slipped off the media’s radar, as evidenced by an attack on Wednesday this week, in which a 19-year old Palestinian man walked into a supermarket in the central Israeli city of Yavne and stabbed a 43-year-old Israeli shop worker.
The victim suffered stab wounds and is in a serious condition.
His attacker was pinned down and arrested.
How many of us heard about it?
That could be because, in the hours after the attack, the top trending news articles searched for with the word ‘Israel’ included not a single mention of it.
There was a story about a Palestinian official being on Israel’s lung transplant list.
There was an article on China rallying support for a peace plan.
There was something about an antiquities dealer being arrested, and Israel’s Sephardi Chief Rabbi criticising Jewish visitors to Temple Mount, and more coverage about Israel’s BDS ban, and a column on Israel’s natural gas reserves.
There was even a feature about Israel’s first environmental satellite being launched. But nothing popped up on the attack.
This serious terrorist attack – carried out in broad daylight at a supermarket on a stranger for no reason other than ethnicity – for all intents and purposes, simply wasn’t registering as an issue outside Israel.
And herein lies the problem: the Palestinian uprising is ongoing but forgotten.
The terror Israelis face is real and ever-present, but after two years of similar stories, the West’s news world has become fatigued by it.
What would have been given space and photos and quotes and justice now gets barely a mention in the outer orbit of newspapers and news sites. That’s not OK.
The only way this terror stops is if the world condemns it, and that’s only going to happen if the world knows about it.
#StopIgnoringTerror.
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