The former Washington Post building. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

There’s a growing problem with violent extremism in the United States. American college campuses have been proven to be an incubator. But mainstream media outlets have also played an essential role, often whitewashing extremism that they find ideologically acceptable. The Washington Post is foremost among them.

Taylor Lorenz, who gained Internet fame for being a social media “reporter,” recently sympathized with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was gunned down on a New York street on December 4, 2024. Lorenz, formerly of both The New York Times and Washington Post, said that Thompson’s murder brought her “joy” and took to social media platforms to cheer the murder of the married father of two. The news medium Vox parted ways with Lorenz after her comments.

Some pundits are shocked that Lorenz would join the left-leaning extremists who refused to condemn the murder. But they shouldn’t be. When she was an employee for the Washington Post, Lorenz took the side of Hamas in its war against the Jewish State, falsely accusing Israel of committing a “genocide.”

Lorenz even called President Joe Biden a “war criminal” over his administration giving aid to an American ally while it was at war.

It is deeply troubling that well-known reporters would offer apologetics for political violence, the very definition of terrorism. But this too is unsurprising, as a recent Washington Post headline reveals.

Police recently visited the home of two leaders of a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at George Mason University, Jena and Noor Chanaa, who allegedly led a group of vandals that caused thousands of dollars in damage to campus property during pro-Hamas rallies. As the Washington Free Beacon noted:

When officers entered the Chanaa family home, they found firearms—modern weapons, not antiques—as well as scores of ammunition and foreign passports, all of which sat in plain view, according to court documents obtained by the Free Beacon and sources familiar with the investigation.

They also found pro-terror materials, including Hamas and Hezbollah flags and signs that read “death to America” and “death to Jews,” according to court documents and sources familiar.

Police seized the weapons under Virginia’s red flag law, arguing that Mohammad Chanaa, the students’ brother and a George Mason alumnus, was “linked to destruction of property in connection with a large group of people with like-minded rhetoric” and posed a danger to others given his possession of “terroristic” materials.

It should be national news that students at an American university seemingly possessed weapons and pro-terrorist propaganda. Yet, The Washington Post’s headline portrayed these miscreants with sympathy: “Campus ban for two pro-Palestinian activists sparks outcry at George Mason.”

The subhead added: “Two student activists with ties to GMU protesters were given four-year trespass notices for alleged vandalism.”

According to the Post, the real story isn’t that, at a time of rising antisemitism and violent attacks on Jews, two college students were found with weapons and materials celebrating US-designated terrorist groups. Rather, the “real story” is that some were upset that the two SJP leaders received trespass notices.

Indeed, at nearly every turn Post reporter — Dan Rosenweig-Ziff — cast the two in a sympathetic light. This is evident from the opening paragraph: “A coalition of organizations, representing faculty, staff, students and other advocacy groups at George Mason University and beyond is alleging that university police acted inappropriately in banning two pro-Palestinian students from campus and searching their family’s home for reasons authorities have yet to describe publicly,” the Post writes.

Tellingly, the newspaper provides readers with no details about Students for Justice in Palestine.

As CAMERA has noted, SJP is effectively a campus hate group. Numerous SJP members have made statements calling for Israel’s destruction and the genocide of its citizens. And numerous SJP members have threatened pro-Israel students. Canary Mission, among others, has documented some of these examples in a public database that effectively holds a mirror to the face of SJP. These examples are in the public domain and easy to find. But the Post didn’t deign to list them. Indeed, the newspaper compounded the error by treating the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a credible source.

Like SJP, CAIR has a dubious history. CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2009 Holy Land retrial, the largest terrorism financing case in history. No fewer than five former lay leaders or staffers associated with CAIR have been arrested, indicted or deported for terrorism-related charges. CAIR has also trafficked in hate, with its leaders making a litany of  horrific comments. CAIR’s founder and executive director, Nihad Awad, even celebrated the October 7 Hamas-led massacre, saying it made him “happy.” Awad’s comments earned a White House rebuke, with the Biden administration saying: “We condemn these shocking, antisemitic statements in the strongest term.” Notably, this didn’t stop the Post — which has a long history of regurgitating statements from the group — from both treating CAIR uncritically, and failing to disclose the group’s problematic history.

Unsurprisingly, CAIR sought to frame the issue of the SJP arrests as one of free speech. This is disingenuous. And at a time of exploding antisemitism, with Jewish students being forced to literally hide on campuses, it is unacceptable.

Notably, the Post has opposed efforts to combat antisemitism in higher education. On Dec. 11, 2019, then-President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order to protect Americans from antisemitic discrimination on college campuses. The order itself was based off of the bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Act and was praised from a broad array of groups on both sides of the aisle. Yet, in both an editorial and several published op-eds, the Post opposed the executive order, falsely claiming that it sought to redefine Judaism and “deals with campus incidents too broadly by threatening to suppress speech.”

As CAMERA noted at the time, the executive order did no such thing. And the sharp increase in antisemitism — including attacks on Jews around the world — keenly illustrates how necessary such efforts are.

But five years later, after the largest massacre of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust, the Washington Post still doesn’t get it. The newspaper continues to give extremists undue credibility, whether it’s employing them, quoting them, or omitting facts and context about their actions and history. Extremism is thriving in America, and the Post continues to play a role in its ascent.

The writer is a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.

The post As College Students Are Arrested with Weapons, The Washington Posts Offers Extremists a Helping Hand first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Troops from the IDF’s 98th Division operating in Jabalia, the northern Gaza Strip, May 2024. Photo: Israel Defense Forces.

Imposing an arms embargo on Israel would strengthen the terrorist group Hamas, prolong the ongoing war in Gaza, and worsen the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave, according to John Spencer, the chair of urban warfare studies at West Point’s Modern Warfare Institute.

US Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) hosted a discussion with Spencer on his podcast earlier this week about urban conflict around the world, and part of the conservation focused on the potential consequences of placing an arms embargo on Israel amid the Jewish state’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.

During the discussion, Spencer argued that withholding weapons from Israel could have the unintended consequence of causing more death and destruction in Gaza. Spencer, who served in the US Army for 25 years and did two tours in Iraq, asserted that barring countries from using bombs, missiles, and mortars in urban locations such as Gaza will “drive war into populated areas.”

The urban warfare expert explained that implementing a weapons ban against the Jewish state would only incentivize Hamas to double-down on tactics that prolong the war and endanger the lives of civilians. He pointed out that heavy munitions, such as 2,000-pound bombs, are capable of penetrating the earth and collapsing underground tunnels, which Hamas has built and utilized to hide hostages, plan attacks, and use civilians as human shields. Therefore, Spencer argued, a ban on arms transfers to Israel would lead Hamas to build more tunnels underneath the besieged enclave.

Spencer suggested that a media-driven pressure campaign against Israel has resulted in a “restriction” on arms transfers to the Jewish state. He stated that the insistence from so-called “Western, moral, law-abiding countries” that Israel not use heavy weaponry in densely populated areas is at odds with the best urban warfare practices. Through hamstringing the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Spencer argued these restrictions could allow Hamas to potentially turn a single building in Gaza into a “months-long battle.”

He also argued that depriving Israel of heavy bombs would force the Jewish state to unnecessarily put its own soldiers at risk to confront terrorists. Spencer claimed that Israel should be allowed to use heavy bombs as a “tool” to vanquish Hamas, assuming that the military is following “the law of proportionality, discrimination, distinction.”

Spencer has previously said that Israel has “followed the laws of war, legal obligations, best practices in civilian harm mitigation, and still found a way to reduce civilian casualties to historically low levels.”

Calls for enacting a US arms embargo against Israel have grown louder in recent months, with critics claiming that the Israeli military campaign has gone too far and created dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza.

Although demands for a weapons blockade against the Jewish state were originally stemmed from the most progressive corners of the US Congress, they have expanded to include many more traditionally moderate lawmakers. Last month, for example, 19 senators voted to implement a ban on sending Israel certain additional weapons, marking an unprecedented shift against the Jewish state among federal lawmakers. 

More recently, a group of 20 Democratic lawmakers in the US House earlier this week sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin urging the Biden administration to “suspend offensive weapons” to Israel due to the country’s military campaign in Gaza.

The letter came days after a group of 77 Democrats in the House sent a letter to Blinken and Austin demanding that the Biden administration provide an assessment of Israel’s “compliance with all relevant US policies and laws,” suggesting that the Middle East’s lone democracy and Washington’s closest ally in the region is violating international humanitarian law in Gaza.

Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties in Gaza, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication. However, Hamas, which rules Gaza, has in many cases prevented people from leaving, according to the Israeli military.

Another challenge for Israel has been Hamas’s widely recognized military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.

The post Arms Embargo on Israel Could Lead to More Destruction in Gaza, Says West Point Urban Warfare Expert first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Illustrative: Pro-Hamas protesters outside the Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago, Illinois on Tuesday, May 21, 2024. Photo: Ron Sachs via Reuters Connect

Clark University in Massachusetts has said it has no plans to adopt the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

“Our endowment is not intended to be used as an instrument to express views on social or political issues,” university president David Fithian said in a statement earlier this month. “Neither is it a means for exercising social power or advancing specific interests. Therefore, the university — under the Board of Trustees’ direction — will not consider divestment as a strategy for addressing world events.”

On the question of “conforming to directives of” the BDS movement, Fithian continued, the university “does not intend to change current institutional policies or procedures. Nor will we allow the adoption of measures within any unit or function that are discriminatory and/or force involuntary adoption of one particular point of view over others.”

The statement described such measures as “inconsistent with our values as a university and would conflict with university policy,” adding that they would also “threaten academic freedom, the respectful free expression of ideas and views, and the principles of inclusion and belonging that are central to our community.”

Clark’s emphatic rejection of BDS followed some confusion caused by spurious student reporting which suggested that the university had taken steps toward adopting BDS and had even met with pro-BDS parties to discuss doing so.

Last month, a student newspaper at the school, The Scarlet, reported erroneously that the student government of the Clark Undergraduate Student Council (CUSC) was seeking to push student clubs into adhering to BDS, creating, for example, a vendor list to help groups use alternatives to Amazon — which maintains investments in Israel — for purchases. CUSC has reportedly been encouraging student organizations to use this list and regularly check the BDS movement’s website to ensure “compliance.” The Scarlet also reported that CUSC has worked with the university’s Student Leadership and Programming to use tax-exempt vendors for their supplies such as Walmart, Target, and Party City, all of which comply with BDS.

However, a university spokesperson told The Algemeiner that the report was categorically false and shared with The Algemeiner‘s Campus Bureau documents showing nearly $10,000 in Amazon purchases made by campus clubs during the first two-thirds of the academic year alone.

The Scarlet also said that the university’s dining vendor, Harvest Table, was persuaded to purchase BDS-approved products “from local vendors and providers to better comply with the [BDS] movement.” Such charges, in addition to not being true, were harmful, Clark University explained to The Algemeiner.

“Providing kosher meals for our Jewish students is extremely important and something the university will never compromise,” the spokesperson said, adding that no recent vendor changes have anything to do with BDS and will not in “any way negatively affect the provision of kosher options for our students.”

Since then, the student paper issued a recantation, which said in part: “The article … erroneously reported  that ‘as of November 15, no purchases have been made through Amazon using CUSC’s club budget.’ As of November 15, 36 clubs have made 68 purchases through Amazon totaling $9,430.97 using CUSC’s club budget. Lastly, it was reported that Harvest Table replaced items from companies flagged by BDS and purchases from local vendors to better comply with BDS. This is not true.”

The paper also noted that an account of a meeting between Fithian and pro-BDS members of student government to “begin charting a path toward divestment” was fiction, explaining that the university “did not indicate in those conversations any specific intentions or action that would be taken.”

Clark University is one of many schools that has rejected the BDS movement, which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination.

Trinity College in Connecticut did so last month, explaining that “the long-term and practical challenges of divesting or utilizing the endowment to exert political influence would create too much risk for the institution and potentially compromise its ability to carry out its primary educational mission.”

In September, Chapman University trustee Jim Burra cited a “fiduciary responsibility” to future students and faculty which rules out divestment as a possibility, adding that “it is important that we make financial decisions based on risk and return.”

The prior month, the University of Minnesota pointed to the same reason while touching on the extent to which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict polarizes its campus community. However, the university did adopt a new policy for its investments, a so-called “position of neutrality” which, it says, will be a guardrail protecting university business from the caprices of political opinion.

Several weeks earlier, Oberlin College’s Board of Trustees voted against divestment after reviewing a proposal submitted by “Students for a Free Palestine,” a spin-off of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations.

Colleges and universities will lose tens of billions of dollars collectively from their endowments if they capitulate to demands to divest from Israel , according to a report published in September by JLens, a Jewish investor network that is part of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Titled “The Impact of Israel Divestment on Equity Portfolios: Forecasting BDS’s Financial Toll on University Endowments,” the report presented the potential financial impact of universities adopting the BDS movement, which is widely condemned for being antisemitic.

The losses estimated by JLens are cataclysmic. Adopting BDS, it said, would incinerate $33.21 billion of future returns for the 100 largest university endowments over the next 10 years, with Harvard University losing $2.5 billion and the University of Texas losing $2.2 billion. Other schools would forfeit over $1 billion, including the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, and Princeton University. For others, such as the University of Michigan and Dartmouth College, the damages would total in the hundreds of millions.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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