Contrary to Guardian suggestion, Palestinian terrorists don't primarily target soldiers and settlers

Peter Beaumont’s Guardian report about a Palestinian stabbing attack on two Israelis, at the Sinjil junction near Shiloh on April 9th, was largely unremarkable, except for these final two paragraphs. 

Israel experienced a wave of similar attacks in the West Bank and Jerusalem towards the end of last year, but the violence has mostly subsided and the current Passover holiday has been relatively quiet thus far.
Palestinians demand the West Bank, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 war, as part of their future state and object to an Israeli presence there. Militants often target soldiers and Jewish settlers.

It appears as if these passages represented an attempt to contextualize the terror attack in southern Samaria (the West Bank) as merely another act of Palestinian “resistance” to the Israeli occupation.  However, though the final sentence within this narrative structure – Beaumont’s claim that “militants often target soldiers and Jewish settlers” –  may be narrowly accurate, it is nonetheless extremely misleading. 
Palestinian terrorists rarely make such distinctions – between soldiers and civilians, and residents of ‘settlements’ vs residents of communities within 1949 armistice lines – when choosing their targets.
Here’s a list of Israelis killed by Palestinians terrorists in 2014:

  • Apr 14, 2014 – Chief Superintendent Baruch Mizrahi, 47, of Modi’in was killed in a terrorist shooting near the village Idhna, northeast of Hebron. 
  • May 1, 2014 – The body of Shelly Dadon, 20, of Afula, was found near the Migdal HaEmek industrial area with multiple stab wounds.
  • Jun 12, 2014 – Three high school students – Eyal Yifrah, 19, of Elad; Gilad Sha’er, 16, of Talmon; and Naftali Frenkel, 16, of Nof Ayalon – were kidnapped by Hamas terrorists in the area of Gush Etzion, while trying to hitch a ride home. Their bodies were discovered after an extensive search on June 30.
  • Sept 16, 2014 – Netanel Arami, 26, of Beit Dagan, fell 11 stories to his death when the cables from which he was suspended on a construction site in Petah Tikva snapped, apparently cut by a Palestinian employee.
  • Oct 22, 2014 – Chaya Zissel Braun, aged three-months, of Jerusalem, was killed when a Palestinian deliberately rammed his car into a crowd of Israelis near a light-rail train station in Jerusalem. Karen Jemima Mosquera, 22, of Ecuador, critically injured in the attack, died of her wounds on Sunday, October 26. Seven others were wounded in the attack.
  • Nov 5, 2014 – Chief Inspector Jidan Assad, a 38-year-old Border Patrol Captain from the Druze village of Beit Jann in northern Israel, was killed and 14 people were wounded when a Palestinian terrorist used his car to deliberately drive into a crowd of Israelis near a light-rail train station in Jerusalem.
  • Nov. 7, 2014 –  Shalom Aharon Badani, 17, a yeshiva student from the ultra-Orthodox Ramat Shlomo neighborhood in Jerusalem, was killed when a Palestinian terrorist used his car to deliberately drive into a crowd of Israelis at a light rail station on the corner of Bar Lev and Shimon Ha’Zadik streets in Jerusalem.
  • Nov 10, 2014Sgt. Almog Shilony, 20, of Modi’in was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist at Tel Aviv’s HaHagana train station.
  • Nov 10, 2014Dalia Lemkus, 26, of Tekoa was stabbed to death at a bus stop near the entrance to Alon Shvut.
  • Nov 18, 2014 – Five people were killed and seven wounded when two Palestinians wielding a gun and butcher knives entered the Kehillat Bnei Zion synagogue and yeshiva in the ultra-Orthodox Har Nof neighborhood in Jerusalem and began attacking worshippers, stabbing them before opening fire.  The victims: Rabbis Avraham Shmuel Goldberg, 68, Aryeh Kupinsky, 43, and Kalman Ze’ev Levine, 55, and Moshe Twersky, 59 – all of the Har Nof neighborhood in Jerusalem. Israel Police Master Sergeant Zidan Seif, 30, of Yanuh-Jat, mortally wounded, died of his wounds overnight.

As you can see, the overwhelming majority of last year’s terror victims were neither ‘settlers’ nor soldiers.  Peter Beaumont’s implicit claim to the contrary does not hold up to critical scrutiny.

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