NYT Describes Deadly Palestinian Terror Attacks as ‘Spasms of Violence’ Israel Had Coming

The New York Times on Saturday published an article referring to the the two Palestinian terror attacks that left seven people dead and injured several more in Jerusalem as “spasms of violence” fueled by Israel’s new, democratically-elected right-wing government.

Former speechwriter for Israel’s delegation to the United Nations Aviva Klompas took to Twitter to blast the newspaper, which she said was “describing the slaughter of Jews as a ‘spasm of violence’ that Israel had coming because of the people it elected.”

Seven people were murdered, including a minor, in a terrorist shooting attack on Friday evening in Jerusalem’s Neve Ya’akov neighborhood while they were leaving a synagogue after Shabbat services. The attack occurred on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The terrorist, identified as Alqam Khayri, a 21-year-old resident of eastern Jerusalem, was shot dead by police while attempting to flee.

A second attack took place the morning after 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 younger victim, an off-duty soldier, managed to shoot the terrorist, as did another member of the group, wounding him.

True to form, the Times draws several moral equivalencies between Israel’s actions versus the Palestinians off the bat. The piece opens by telling the reader that “Nine Palestinians were shot dead on Thursday morning, in the deadliest Israeli raid in the West Bank for at least a half-decade,” before continuing in the very next sentence by reporting that “a Palestinian gunman killed seven people on Friday night outside a synagogue in Jerusalem, the deadliest attack on civilians in the city since 2008.”

There is no mention of the fact that at least seven of the nine dead Palestinians were members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group, who were in active planning stages of a large-scale bombing attack. Including them in the same breath as the seven Israeli worshipers, who were gunned down simply because they were Jewish, is par for the course for the Times.

The piece then goes on to put Palestinian terrorists and “violent settlers” on an equal footing, reporting on the Palestinian Authority’s announcement in the wake of Thursday’s counter-terrorism operation that it was severing security ties with Israel, which, the Times‘ maintains, makes “it easier for both armed Palestinian groups and violent Israeli settlers to act unimpeded.”

While violence among Jewish residents in the West Bank, including vandalism of Palestinian properties and harassment, has been on the rise, it is not in any way comparable to the terror from “Palestinian armed groups,” which includes bombing, shooting, knife, car-ramming, and missile attacks, which occurred as recently as Thursday evening when Gaza based terror groups launched a barrage of rockets into Israel in retaliation over the earlier IDF raid.

The Times‘ analysis, titled “Amid Spasm of Violence, Israel’s Far-Right Government Raises Risk of Escalation,” admits that terror attacks are “not unique to this government’s tenure” but goes on to say that the new administration — the most right-wing in Israeli history — is likely to “further inflame the situation.”

The piece then highlights the “extreme” elements of Israel’s new government, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir who apparently is guilty of the sin of campaigning “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 reads.

Incredibly, the Times makes no mention of extremism on the other side. Not one word of the thousands of Palestinians that took to the streets in dozens of locations in the West Bank and Gaza in the hours following the attack, handing out candy, firing celebratory rounds of ammunition, igniting fireworks and shouting “Allahu Akbar” in jubilation over the deadly attack.

Last month, the Times published an editorial warning that the government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu was a “significant threat to future of Israel.”

Laughably, the editorial noted that the Times “has been a strong supporter of Israel,” despite its long record of anti-Israel bias, from sugarcoating Palestinian terrorism, to accusing Israel of war crimes to spreading outright lies.