Contrary to what The Observer claims, there has not been “relative peace” in Israel

Weapons found in Palestinian terror suspect’s home, near Hebron, January 2012

Yesterday we commented on an Observer editorial which harshly condemned Israel for the use of administrative detention to detain suspected terrorists: “Observer op-ed on ‘hunger strikers’ exposes double standards on administrative detention coverage“.

In addition to the failure of The Observer (sister publication of The Guardian) to provide context on the use of such practices by other democracies and its failing to acknowledge that many of those held have already engaged in terror activities, the editorial made this astonishingly inaccurate claim:

“Indeed, according to the UN’s special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, over the past year the number of administrative detentions has almost doubled despite the period of relative peace in Israel.” [emphasis mine]

First, it evidently never occurs to Guardian Group journalists that the degree to which there has been a decrease in the number of major terror attacks may have something to do with preventative anti-terror procedures, including administrative detention.  

But moreover, while the kind of large-scale deadly suicide attacks Israel experienced during the 2nd Intifada have thankfully decreased dramatically, Palestinian terrorists’ attempts to launch such attacks have not waned.

As I noted in the previous post, there are dozens of terror attacks in Israeli each month (see official Israeli terror statistics here), most of which the Guardian (and the majority of the mainstream media) fails to report.

In addition to rockets fired into Israeli towns from Gaza ( 627 deadly projectiles were fired in 2011 and 272 so far in 2012), here are a few recent attempted attacks, thankfully thwarted by the IDF, which belie the claim that there has been “relative peace” in Israel.

  • February 21: A powerful explosive device was uncovered along the Israel-Egypt border. Israeli forces saw a man hurling a suspicious bag and immediately fleeing the scene. The explosive was detonated in a controlled manner. No one was hurt.

There is one thing, of course, that all of these thwarted Palestinian terror attacks (against innocent Israeli civilians) have in common:

They weren’t reported by the Guardian. 

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