To State Department, graffiti by Jews is equivalent to murders by Arabs

The latest State Department terrorism report for 2014 reveals an obvious bias in choosing which acts qualify as terrorism in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.

Here is what it wrote about attacks in those areas:

Extremist Palestinians and Israeli settlers continued to conduct acts of violence in the West Bank. For the first time since 2008, Palestinians kidnapped and killed Israeli citizens in the West Bank. The UN Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs reported 330 attacks by extremist Israeli settlers that resulted in Palestinian injuries or property damage. In Jerusalem, there was an uptick in violence relative to 2013, including two vehicular attacks against crowds of civilians. Extremist Israeli settlers abducted and murdered a Palestinian teenager in June. A Palestinian stabbed and injured an Israeli in the back in November. In May, in an apparent “price tag” attack, Israeli extremists vandalized the Vatican-owned Notre Dame Center, where they daubed “Death to Arabs and Christians and all those who hate Israel.”

Additional 2014 incidents in the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem included:

• In January, violent extremist Israeli settlers spray painted “revenge by blood” on and set fire to a mosque in the West Bank.
• In January, ISA arrested a group of al-Qa’ida (AQ) sympathizers in East Jerusalem which was allegedly planning several attacks.
• In May, St. George Romanian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem was defaced with the expressions “Jesus is Garbage” and “King David for the Jews.” On another street in Jerusalem, authorities found graffiti stating “Death to Arabs.”
• In June, two Palestinians kidnapped and killed three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank. During an attempt to apprehend the suspected perpetrators, the IDF shot and killed them. An Israeli court indicted a third individual suspected of planning the attack.
• In July, three Israelis kidnapped and killed a Palestinian teenager in Jerusalem. An Israeli court indicted three individuals who confessed to carrying out the attack.
• In July, an Israeli settler drove by and fired a gun into a protest near Nablus, killing one Palestinian.
• In October, a Palestinian crashed his vehicle into a crowd of people and into a Jerusalem Light Rail train as it was passing a light rail stop, killing an American-citizen infant, a foreign national, and injuring approximately nine others, according to media. The driver, who Israeli authorities suspected of being Hamas-affiliated, died from wounds sustained during Israeli National Police’s (INP) attempt to apprehend him.
• In October, a Palestinian critically injured an Israeli-American in Jerusalem while attempting to assassinate him. The INP shot and killed the suspected shooter, a known PIJ associate, during a raid to apprehend him.
• In October and December, violent extremists bombed the French Cultural Center in Gaza. There were no reports of injuries in October and there was one injury in December.
• In October and November, Israeli security forces arrested five residents of Tulkarem for planning to execute a suicide bombing in the Tel Aviv area as well as several other terror attacks, such as shootings, detonating a bomb in a bus crowded with soldiers, and abducting a soldier.
• In November, two Palestinians reportedly affiliated with the PFLP entered a synagogue and attacked Israelis with guns, knives, and axes, killing five people, including three American citizens, and injuring over a dozen. INP shot and killed the perpetrators while the attack was ongoing.
• In November, Israeli extremists vandalized and set fire to the Max Rayne Hand-in-Hand School, a bilingual center for Jewish-Arab education. ISA arrested three suspects, who were indicted by Israeli courts in December.
• In November, a Palestinian stabbed and killed an Israeli and injured two others near the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut.
• Israeli security agencies reportedly thwarted several additional planned terrorist attacks in the West Bank, including a Hamas plan to launch a rocket-propelled grenade at the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs’ vehicle. Security services also prevented Hamas plans to attack Israeli towns and settlements, and to launch an attack on a stadium in Jerusalem.
• In December, a Palestinian threw acid at an Israeli family and another Israeli, injuring six, near a checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. The IDF arrested the attacker.

With two (or three) exceptions, all of the Jewish "terror" attacks were not aimed at people, but buildings. This in no way is meant to minimize the seriousness of anti-Muslim and anti-Christian hate crimes, but it shows that the goalposts are quite different between what is considered to be terrorism for Jews and for Arabs.

One of the two exceptions are the horrific murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, which was universally condemned as terror by Israeli Jews (and only one of whose murderers is a "settler.")

The other exception that the State Department considers terror is outrageous. A woman whose car was being pelted by rocks fired in self-defense, she said into the air, killing Khaled Odeh. To flatly claim that this was a terror attack is a travesty.

The Report also mentions a June abduction and murder of a Palestinian teen by "extremist Israeli settlers" , but I cannot find any report about this. B'Tselem doesn't mention it. It appears that the report is counting the July murder of Abu Khdeir twice.

Contrary to the report's attempts to inflate the number of Jewish terror attacks, the report minimizes Arab terror attacks. According to the Shin Bet, there were well over a hundred terror attacks every month of the year, mostly Molotov cocktails and IEDs, that do not rise to the level of terrorism in the State Department report. Here is the graph from November and December alone:

The bias is even more apparent if you consider that there have been scores of incidents of deliberate attacks against the most important Jewish cemetery in the world, which don't merit a mention, while graffiti by Jews is highlighted

(h/t Gidon Shaviv)