The US Media Continues to Ignore Palestinian Terrorism

Where there is smoke, the saying goes, there is fire. But if you’re Palestinians committing mass arson against Israelis, there might not be media coverage.

Many major US news outlets, despite the staggering damage to Israel’s economy and property, have ignored what should be a front-page story.

For more than two months, Palestinians have been sending hundreds of helium balloons and kites filled with flammable material over the Gaza border and into Israel. This method of terrorism via mass arson has gained steam in recent weeks, with the Israeli Defense Ministry estimating on June 5 that more than 600 incendiary kites and balloons have crossed the border.

These “fire kites” have burned more than 4,300 acres of land on the Israeli side of the Gaza border — more than half of which has been in once-pristine nature reserves. More than 250 fires have caused an estimated $1.4 million in damage to farmland alone. The damage to both crops and livelihoods has been extensive, and Israeli farmers in the area reportedly plan to sue Hamas, the US-designated terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip, in the International Criminal Court.

According to a JNS report, “Officials at the Israel Nature and Parks Authority estimated that at least one-third of the Carmia nature reserve has been destroyed with significant harm to local plants and wildlife.”

The Palestinian arsonists have made their motives clear. As the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) has detailed, many of the kites were embroidered with Nazi swastikas, with calls to “burn the Jews” accompanying their launching.

Although Gazans have claimed not to be connected to Hamas, it’s inconceivable that Hamas, which exerts tightfisted control over Gaza’s population, has not sanctioned and supported the attacks. For its part, the Palestinian media has taken to calling the units mujahedeen — holy warriors fighting against non-Muslim “infidels.”

Yet despite the damage and the novelty of these attacks, Western news outlets have largely reacted with a shrug. As of this writing, The Washington Post, USA Today, and The Baltimore Sun, among others, have failed to file their own reports detailing the rise of “kite terrorism.”

The Post’s failure is particularly egregious. The newspaper is one of the few major US newspapers to still maintain a foreign bureau in Israel, staffed with reporters and a bureau chief. The paper could be examining the destruction to Israel’s economy — to lives, families, careers, animals, and nature. It could be asking why Gazans are sending firebombs, some labeled with swastikas, into the Jewish state more than a decade after Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

Read More: Algemeiner