The Terror Attacks You Didn't Hear About

Terrorism against Jews is somehow less terroristic.

photo: Magen David Adom/X

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A young Israeli boy was fatally shot and several people were wounded in a terror attack targeting a Jerusalem-bound bus in the West Bank late Wednesday night.

The bus was shot up by the gunman at a junction by the Palestinian town of al-Khader, the Israel Defense Forces said, before proceeding with the wounded to the Tunnels Checkpoint.

The attack came after three Israelis were lightly injured by gunfire the previous night while visiting Joseph’s Tomb in the Palestinian city of Nablus without coordinating with the military, and also followed a car-ramming attack in the southern West Bank over the weekend in which a soldier was seriously wounded.

Violence has risen sharply in the West Bank since the Gaza war started on October 7th, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages. Since then, 42 people, including Israeli security personnel, have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank.

A month ago, one Israeli person was killed and dozens were injured after a Palestinian terrorist rammed his truck into a bus stop near Tel Aviv. In October, at least seven people were killed — including an Israeli mom shielding her 9-month-old son — and eight others injured in a Palestinian stabbing and shooting attack in Tel Aviv.

That same month a policeman was killed and four people were wounded when a Palestinian terrorist opened fire along the Route 4 highway north of the Israeli coastal city, Ashdod. And in a separate incident, one person was killed and at least nine were wounded in a terrorist attack after shots were heard at Israel’s Beersheba Central Bus Station.

In August, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for a bomb blast near a synagogue in Tel Aviv. That same month a knife-wielding Palestinian murdered two people in a town near Tel Aviv.

In March, three Israelis were seriously wounded (and one of them died of their wounds) in a terror stabbing at Gan Yavne mall by a Palestinian who worked at the shopping center illegally.

I could keep going on and on about Palestinian terror attacks in Israel that have occurred before and after October 7th, but the point is this: Terrorist attacks take place in Israel with disturbing regularity. Buses, restaurants, synagogues, street corners — the ordinary spaces of daily life become the backdrop for extraordinary violence.

But somehow, these events rarely make it beyond the local headlines. They are just another day in the life of the Jewish state, as though Israelis were born with a kind of morbid superpower to endure the unbearable without anyone noticing.

The media silence is not just oversight; it is selective perception. When a car rams into a crowd of commuters waiting at a Jerusalem bus stop or when a teenager wielding a knife attacks Jewish pedestrians, it is not widely called terrorism. It is a “lone wolf incident,” or a response to “Israeli occupation” — because, naturally, stabbing strangers is a perfectly proportional response to political frustration, isn’t it?

The Jewish victims become footnotes, their humanity relegated to the margins of the story (if the story even gets told by the “mainstream” media).

Here’s the cynical reality: In the court of public opinion, when Jews are attacked, it is often framed as a consequence of their own actions. There is an unspoken belief that they had it coming. This grim logic extends far beyond media bias. It is an indictment of the double standards that underpin global discourse on violence and morality.

Consider this: When terrorist attacks happen in Paris, New York, London, or Melbourne, the world lights up with hashtags, candlelight vigils, and resolute declarations of “never again.”

But when Jews in Israel face the same horrors? At best, there is a deafening silence. At worst, the media finds a way to hint that it was their fault. Maybe it’s the “settlements.” Maybe it’s Gaza. Maybe it’s just ... Jewishness. Whatever the reason, the end result is clear: Terrorism against Jews is somehow less terroristic.

This is not to say that every incident in Israel is devoid of context. Of course, there is a larger geopolitical conflict at play. But is that not true in almost every situation where terrorism occurs?

When a terrorist kills civilians in London or New York, no one rushes to explain how their grievances might be valid. No one is asking whether the victims were, in some convoluted way, to blame. And yet, when the victims are Israelis — often Jewish Israelis — the conversation veers into a maze of justifications and historical footnotes, as though bombings and shootings are just spirited debates in disguise.

The irony here is almost Shakespearean. The Jews, history’s perennial scapegoats, have once again become the ultimate exception. We are the only people whose tragedies are routinely explained away as deserved — the only victims of terrorism who, by some twisted calculus, are transformed into aggressors.

To those who claim that this is not deliberate, that it is just the result of media prioritization or regional fatigue, let me ask you this: How often do you hear about the daily acts of terror that plague the streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, or the West Bank? How often do news outlets report the murders of Israelis in cold blood with the same urgency they reserve for attacks elsewhere? Why does the world cry “human rights” for Palestinians but turn a blind eye to the human rights of Jews?

The answer is uncomfortable. It is easier to ignore Jewish suffering because acknowledging it would force a reckoning with centuries of bias and double standards. It is easier to paint Jews as powerful, privileged, and unassailable than to admit they are still vulnerable, still targets of hatred. It is easier to pretend that terrorism in Israel is not really terrorism, just as it was easier to pretend that antisemitism was not really antisemitism until it came knocking on other people’s doors.

So, the next time you hear about a terrorist attack in Israel — if you hear about it at all — pay attention to the language. Notice how often the word “terror” is avoided, how the victims’ names and stories are glossed over, how the context is twisted until the perpetrators look like “freedom fighters” and the victims look like collateral damage.

And remember: Silence is not neutrality. It is complicity.

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There’s an old saying: “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

In today’s world, a more fitting update might be: “If a terrorist attack happens in Israel and the ‘mainstream’ media does not cover it, did it really happen?”

It is a rhetorical question, of course, but one that captures the troubling paradox of modern information flow. In the digital age, where every second of news is chronicled and beamed across countless platforms, one might assume that nothing of significance escapes notice.

And yet, entire tragedies, entire lives lost, can vanish into the ether of selective reporting. A car bomb explodes, a bus is attacked, or a family is gunned down on their way home from synagogue — and the world’s collective consciousness barely registers a blip.

This is not just about the lack of coverage; it is about the implications of that absence. If no one hears about an act of terrorism, the societal response to it becomes nonexistent. There is no international outrage, no moments of silence, no hashtags trending on social media. The victims’ stories are silenced twice: once by the act of violence itself and again by the global indifference that follows.

This silence creates a dangerous vacuum. It subtly informs the world that some lives are more grievable than others, that some forms of violence are not worth mentioning, that some victims are less deserving of empathy. It is not just a failure of journalism; it is a failure of morality. By choosing not to amplify these stories, the media implicitly condones the violence, transforming it into an unspoken status quo.

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