The United States government defines terrorism as any activity that is used to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population,” to “influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion,” or “to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.”

Using that definition, one can then say the Israelis have been victim to multiple vicious acts of terrorism in the last 40 years.

Yet, late last month, when the Guardian published a major 2,200-plus-word article exploring the history of urban terrorism, there was not a single mention of the many recent acts of terror experienced by Israelis.

The article, titled “Cities and terror: an indivisible and brutal relationship,” posits that cities are the traditional targets of terrorist attacks. It has been this way for more than a century and we shouldn't expect it to change any time soon, the author argues.

The article mentions the Fenian bombing campaign of the 1880s, which mostly targeted London. It mentions the 1920 Wall Street bombing. It mentions the 2016 Berlin attack, in which a motorist drove a truck into a crowd of Christmas revelers, killing 12 and injuring 56. It mentions recent terrorist attacks in London, Manchester, Paris, Nice, Brussels, and Barcelona. It mentions Algeria’s war of independence against France. It mentions the German and Italian left-wing terrorist groups of the 1970s. It mentions bombings and assassinations by Basque nationalists. It mentions high-profile bombings in Kuwait and Lebanon in the early 1980s. It mentions the 1993 bombings in New York City. It mentions Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. It mentions the Islamic State, al Qaeda, and Pakistani jihadists.

There is not, however, a single mention of the many documented terrorist attacks on Israelis, carried out by groups like Hamas, al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Perhaps because the Guardian article deals specifically with terrorism in urban areas, it omits the many attacks over the years in the West Bank. But this still doesn’t explain why the article makes no reference to Jerusalem's many brushes with terrorism.

It seems hard to leave out the 1995 Ramat Eshkol bus bombing, which killed five, but they did. There’s no mention of the Jerusalem Central Bus Station bombing of 1996, which killed 26, or the 2003 Shmuel HaNavi bus bombing, which killed 23. There are no mentions of the 2004 Gaza Street bus bombing, which killed 11, or the suicide bombing of a Sbarro pizza restaurant in 2001, which killed seven children, a pregnant woman, and seven additional adults.

The article does mention, however, that Jewish terrorists targeted British troops in Jerusalem in 1946, before the establishment of the state of Israel, killing 91 people in one bomb blast. So, it’s not that the author forgot Jerusalem exists. It’s just that the author and his editors didn’t think it was worth mentioning the many acts of terrorism or the hundreds killed in the city following establishment of the state of Israel.

A Guardian spokesman did not response to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.

(h/t Yair Rosenberg)