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If you want statistical accuracy politically neutrality, and academically reliability, then you should start by being neutral yourself.

Reader comment on item: State (Dept.) of Confusion [when It Comes to Palestinian Terror against Israel]

Submitted by Barry Grossman (Indonesia), Sep 8, 2014 at 23:48

… The data relaesed by the IMFA is intrinsically flawed. In any case, you know only too well that IMFA the web site is also not the correct forum through which to provide relaible and compIete data about terrosim.

I have put every letahl incident reported by the IMFA between 2000 and 2014 in a spread sheet and distinguished each reproted incident of Palestinian Terrosim by location, nature of the target, number and staus of victims, claims for repsonsibilty, the nature of the attack (i.e. sucide bomb, shooting, riocket, stabbing, etc.) and several other criteria. Having done all that, I have also plotted all incidents on a sattelite map with various other histrocial maps transparently superimposed on the satellite image.

The first thing that emerges is that there has been a sustained almost 95% decrease in lethal incidents over the entire 9 year period since the 2nd Intifada ended by comparison to the Intidada years of 2000 to 2004 inclusive. This is not some insignificant fact to be glossed over or dismissed.

Another fact that emerges is that the vast majority of incidents took place on what is recognised even by the international community as Palestinian territory, while a substantial part of those which did not took place on territory designated by the 1947 UN Partition Plan which Israel accepted as a condition of its UN membership in 1949.

Stll another fact that emerges is that a very substantialo percentage of incidents claimed by Israel to be examples of Palestinian terrorism, though less than a majority, actually targeted IDF or Israeli security appartus targets. In a great many instances, these so-called terroist attacks took place during operations instigated by the IDF which targetted Palestinians.

In addition, a number of International incidents are attributed to Palestinians without evidence and numerous incidents which on their face appear to be regular crimes are included. For example, when an Israeli diamond merchant is killed in his apratment in Amman Jordan, that fact alone does not make it a terroist incident carried out by palestinians.

The data released by the IMFA is presented in a hapahzard sloppy format which is inconistant in the data conveyed about each incident. Israeli place names are almost always used to disguise incidents which took place on Palestinian territory. The data is also presented in a way which is clearly calculated to obfuscate where the incidents took place and which of them took place in the context of on going conflict between illegal Israeli settlers and the Palestinain resistance.

Of course another fact which emerges is that quite apart from the massive decline since 2004 in reported incidents and without wanting to in any way disparage the unfortunate victims, all lethal incidents involving "rocket or mortar" fire do not add up to a hill of beans in the context of the ongoing recirprocal slaughter, especially when those incidents which took place during a major IDF offensive on Gaza are excluded and more generally, all IDF personel are exclude from the victim count. We are talking about a total number of victims since thebeginning of time of about 46, many of whome were IDF personel and a great many of whom died during incidents which took place during major IDF offenses.

Submitting....

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Reader comments (9) on this item

Title Commenter Date Thread
5If you want statistical accuracy politically neutrality, and academically reliability, then you should start by being neutral yourself. [540 words]Barry GrossmanSep 8, 2014 23:48217680
State Dept of Confusion [70 words]John HarmanJul 19, 2004 18:2615999
I Wonder [46 words]Darwin BarrettJul 19, 2004 18:2415998
If I were king of the world... [226 words]David SmythJul 19, 2004 16:1215996
22 Fatal Attacks [16 words]Nancy BrownJul 19, 2004 12:5415993
infuriated [30 words]Harvey SimonsJul 19, 2004 12:3615992
This Whitewashing HAS to be stopped! [109 words]T. A. AdamsJul 19, 2004 11:2115991
Terror In Israel [334 words]yonasonJul 19, 2004 11:1915990
State Dept. Survey: State (Dept.) of Confusion [10179 words]Alon ReiningerJul 19, 2004 11:1415988

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