I am reposting what I found to be an interesting and helpful article published by Larry Johnson which he published Saturday, September 28th. It includes two excellent video discussions.
If you aren’t familiar with Larry’s work, he is “a former CIA officer and intelligence analyst, and former planner and advisor at the US State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism. As an independent contractor, he has provided training for the US Military’s Special Operations community for 24 years.”
Israel is justifying its acts of murder and terror as retribution for terrorism by Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. But the data regarding terrorist attacks does not support Israel’s claim. In fact, the biggest terrorist state in the Middel East is Israel as measured by the deaths of civilians, especially women and children.
I want you to go back and read the article I posted — based on data from the Israeli Foreign Ministry — that lists EVERY terrorist attack by Palestinians (including Hamas and Hezbollah) against Israelis or foreigners visiting Israel since August 2000. Here are the key takeaways:
I have completed the initial cleanup of the data posted on the website of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, which lists all suspected Palestinian terrorist attacks during the 23-year, four-month period (i.e., 2000 to April 26, 2024). During this period, the Israeli Government identifies 672 terrorist attacks blamed on the Palestinians. Why do I phrase it like that? Because several of the incidents involve the discovery of dead Israelis with no identified attacker. . . .
Now here are the really interesting numbers. 105 of the attacks are attributed to Hamas. 58 to Islamic Jihad and 5 to Hezbollah. In other words, only 25% of the attacks are associated with a specific Palestinian group. The remaining 75% are blamed on nameless culprits. The total number killed by Palestinian violence during this 23-year-plus period is 1,455. That is the number of victims listed at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs site. And, as I noted in my recent article (Hamas is a Third-Rate Terrorist Organization), the Israelis killed 7,065 Palestinians during the same period of time. In other words, the Israelis killed almost five times the number of Palestinians. This may explain why the Palestinians carried out “terrorist” attacks — they were seeking vengeance, retribution.
Remember, these are not my numbers or statistics. These are numbers produced by the Government of Israel. Here is a graph I put up earlier this year, comparing civilian losses in Ukraine with Palestinian deaths and injuries at the hands of Israel. The difference is staggering. In Ukraine, 17 civilians died every day as a result of Russian military operations. In Palestine, the death toll, only through November 1, 2023, was 352 dead per day. Since then, that number has grown exponentially.
In terms of proportionality alone, if we accept Israel’s dubious claim that Hamas killed 1200+ Israelis on October 7, how is Israel justified killing more than 40,000, with the vast majority being women, children and the elderly?
Israel continues to accuse Iran of massive support for terrorism. Yet, as the Israeli Foreign Ministry stats show, neither Hamas nor Hezbollah are engaged in large-scale, casualty causing, terrorist attacks. Even the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Counterterrorism (who gets its statistics from the National Counterterrorism Center), has not identified Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran as one of the “Top Perpetrators” of terrorism in the last decade. Here are the numbers for 2018 – 2022.
I had the privilege of persuading my friend, Alastair Crooke, to sit down and discuss Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel. Alastair has had first hand experience with all of them. It was a fascinating and enlightening conversation.
Danny Davis, in light of the murder of Hassan Nasrallah, rounded up Matt Hoh and me for an emergency roundtable. We offered up our opinions about the implications of the attack on Hezbollah’s leadership.
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Thanks for this crucial information, Azra.