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The Washington Post Continuous Its Venomous Campaign Against Jews and Israel
The “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Columbia University, located in the Manhattan borough of New York City, on April 25, 2024. Photo: Reuters Connect
One of the central tenets of antisemitism is the idea that Jews are responsible for all the evil in the world. Der Sturmer, the Nazi Party rag, summed this idea up: “the Jews are our misfortune.” Today, that idea has been revamped for a more liberal era and more polite company.
Now it is the Jewish State that is responsible for all the world’s ills. And The Washington Post, once a bastion of liberal thought and investigative journalism, is here to tell you why.
The lack of democracy in the Middle East? Well, that problem can be laid at the footsteps of the Jewish State and the United States, according to Post columnist Shadi Hamid (“How Israel and the United States suppress democracy in the Middle East,” May 13, 2024). The United States supports “repressive regimes, backed and armed with billions of dollars of U.S. economic and military aid.”
Why do they do this? For Israel (of course).
Israel, Hamid writes, “stands at the center of the region that the United States helped form.” And “the decision to elevate Israel’s security interests above almost everything else, however well-intentioned, has distorted American policy.” The Jewish State “might be the region’s only established democracy, [but] Israel is a staunch opponent of democracy in the rest of the Middle East.”
According to Hamid, Arab populations tend to be anti-Israel, so it follows that both Washington and Jerusalem have to back repressive authoritarian governments — “American client states” as he calls them — to prevent them from having a say. He adds: “That Israel prefers autocrats over democrats has been a source of tension with the United States.” Hamid states that “most of the more than 20 senior George W. Bush and Obama administration officials that I interviewed for my book ‘The Problem of Democracy’ recounted Israeli officials’ irritation whenever the United States would flirt with taking a more forthright pro-democracy stance in the region.”
One example that Hamid offers is the Egyptian regime of Gen. Abdel Fatah El-Sisi. And, for reasons that will be explained shortly, this is a very telling example for the Post columnist to give.
But the gist of his argument is clear: the Jewish State is responsible for the lack of democracy in the Middle East. This is a common, if old and tired, argument for anti-Israel activists to make. The problem with it is simple: it overlooks the entire history of the Middle East. And it overstates Israel’s role and impact in the region. Other than that, it’s fine.
Israel was founded in 1948. It was, and is, a democracy. Prior to Israel’s founding, there were no major democracies in the region. Egypt, ruled by King Farouk, and, before him, other descendants of Muhammad Ali, wasn’t a democracy. Nor was the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, known today as Jordan. Ditto for Iraq, then ruled by Hashemites, as well. And ditto for Syria, Lebanon, and various states in the Gulf and northern Africa.
The modern nation of Turkey, founded by Kemal Atatürk and ruled at the time by his associates, was arguably the most Western-leaning and liberal Middle Eastern nation at the time. Yet, it too was repressive, imprisoning, and torturing dissidents and persecuting religious minorities. All these countries were ruled by dictatorships long before Israel was created. So too was the Ottoman Empire, which ruled over the region for centuries prior. Blaming the Jewish State for the lack of democracy in the Middle East is ahistorical. But it is very much on brand for The Washington Post of today.
To be sure, Egypt, Iraq, and Transjordan were heavily influenced by the British at the time — just as Syria and Lebanon retained heavy French influence. Yet this can hardly be laid at the doorstep of some sort of Western proto-Zionism; all these countries attacked the fledgling Jewish State at its founding, and all received, to varying degrees, support from their colonial masters for doing so. Indeed, as the historian Benny Morris recounted in his history of the 1948 war, the British actively aided Transjordan in its war against the Jewish State.
Nor can it be said that the US has supported dictatorships out of some sort of pro-Israel impulse. Far from it. In fact, many in the US government, including the CIA and State Department, initially backed Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Free Officers movement in Egypt, in their bid to oust Egypt’s King Farouk. Nasser was hardly pro-Israel; he waged a decades long war against the Jewish State, supporting Palestinian terrorist groups and launching no fewer than three wars against the nation in less than two decades of rule. Yet, Nasser had the active backing, indeed friendship with top CIA officials like Kermit Roosevelt, a prominent anti-Zionist.
As Hugh Wilford documents in his excellent 2013 book, America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East, Roosevelt was involved in a project called American Friends of the Middle East — a CIA-backed front group whose entire goal was to attack Israel and defame it in Western press. And, as the journalist Ian Johnson recounted in his 2010 book A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Muslim Brotherhood, the US even actively supported former Nazi collaborators, including allies of Amin al-Husseini, the founding father of Palestinian nationalism, during the Cold War. Support was also extended to Muslim Brotherhood elements, whom the US-viewed as a useful foil against the atheist Soviets. Are we to believe that they were pro-Israel?
It should also be noted, and is no less important, that many Middle Eastern nations, such as Syria and eventually, for a time, Egypt, were Soviet client states. They were dictatorships and they were, to put it mildly, anti-Israel. When Israel is factored out of the equation, a simple, and unpleasant truth emerges: many Middle Eastern countries have been led by autocrats before Israel existed and were led by autocrats irrespective of whether they recognized Israel or waged war on the Jewish state. In the Middle East, democracy is not the norm — and that’s hardly Israel’s fault, nor is it that of the United States.
Indeed, when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Gazans voted for the repressive and highly undemocratic Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group. Hamas hasn’t held elections since. The US doesn’t support Hamas. Nor does Israel. They’re fundamentally undemocratic all on their own. Blaming Israel or the United States for the lack of democracy in the Middle East is a convenient way to overlook some decidedly unpleasant truths — truths that predate Israel’s founding and speak volumes about much of the region.
It is curious that Hamid doesn’t mention the example of Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot. It is equally curious that he seldom, if ever, writes anything negative about Qatar, a backer of the Brotherhood and a dictatorship itself. And it’s particularly interesting that he singled out Egypt’s Sisi, a foe of the Brotherhood.
Of course, Hamid used to work for the Brookings Institute, whose financial links to Qatar are a matter of record. Hamid is hardly alone in this; as a recent National Review article noted, in recent years, the Post has hired numerous staffers with ties to Qatari-linked entities, be it Brookings, Al Jazeera, the Qatar Foundation, or others.
When it isn’t warning about the nefarious Jewish State, The Washington Post is warning about undue Jewish influence.
In a May 16, 2024 article, the Post claimed that a group of prominent business leaders expressing concerns over campus antisemitism offered “a window into how some prominent individuals have wielded their money and power in an effort to shape American views of the Gaza War, as well as the actions of academic, business and political leaders—including New York’s mayor.” That sure is a lot of influence and power! And it sounds nefarious!
The article, headlined “Business titans privately urged NYC mayor to use police on Columbia protestors, chats show,” posited that powerful, pro-Israel, business leaders used WhatsApp to convince New York City Mayor Eric Adams to use police to crush campus “protesters.”
The problem? The entire gist of the article is false. One senses a theme here when it comes to the Post and bending the truth in service of an anti-Israel narrative.
As the New York City Mayor’s office told Jewish Insider:
Let’s be very clear: Both times the NYPD entered Columbia University’s campus — on April 18th and April 30th — were in response to specific written requests from Columbia University to do so. Prior to these operations, Mayor Adams consistently stated that Columbia is a private institution on private property and that assistance would be provided only upon request.
Further: “Any suggestion that other considerations were involved in the decision-making process is completely false, and the insinuation that Jewish donors secretly plotted to influence government operations is an all too familiar antisemitic trope that the Washington Post should be ashamed to ask about, let alone normalize in print.”
On X, formerly known as Twitter, Fabian Levy, a spokesperson for the Mayor’s office, upbraided the Post for saying Jews “wielded their money & power in an effort to shape American views,” noting that it “is offensive on so many levels.”
It is offensive. But it is also in keeping with the Post’s brand. Once well-regarded, the newspaper has steadily earned a reputation for being “Al Jazeera on the Potomac,” as some critics have asserted. Indeed, the May 16, 2024, Jewish Insider write up was the fourth such critique of the Post’s coverage of Israel to appear in the publication in the last six month. National Review, Commentary, and other major publications have all published pieces in the last few months noting the Post’s current trend away from serious journalism and towards something else.
Indeed, in the seven months since Hamas perpetrated the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, the Post has consistently regurgitated casualty statistics provided by the terrorist group and defended doing so, minimized and denied the rapes and sexual violence carried out by Hamas, and labeled the massacre — the worst slaughter of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust — merely a “bad thing” that “doesn’t justify other bad things.” The Post has, on multiple occasions, met the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. Post columnists have also minimized the rampant antisemitism taking place on college campuses. That’s quite the record.
Yet, antisemitism is more than conspiracy theories about Jewish influence, or blaming Jews for a lack of democracy. It is also, by its very nature, obsessive.
The Post’s Chris Richards used a May 12, 2024 review of Neil Young rock concert to insert some curious anti-Israel commentary. A concert review. Richards asserted that police “across our country were brutalizing college student’s protesting Israel’s war on Gaza.” But Israel didn’t declare “war on Gaza.” Rather it is engaged in a defensive war against Iranian proxies, including, but not limited to, Hamas. CAMERA even clarified this point — that saying “Israel is at war with Gaza” is incorrect — in an interview with the Washington Post’s Paul Farhi on Oct. 17, 2024.
But facts don’t seem to matter to the Washington Post. Narrative does. And that narrative — that the Jewish state is uniquely evil and unjust — is rampant at the newspaper. Both readers and advertisers alike should take note.
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 The Washington Post Continuous Its Venomous Campaign Against Jews and Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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As Gaza War Continues, Hamas Calls for Global Protests While Israel Marks Breakthroughs in Medical Innovation
A pro-Hamas march in London, United Kingdom, Feb. 17, 2024. Photo: Chrissa Giannakoudi via Reuters Connect
As the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas calls for global protests amid stalled Gaza ceasefire talks, Israel has broken new ground despite the ongoing conflict, achieving a major medical breakthrough in synthetic human kidney development.
The contrast illustrates a stark contrast between the priorities of Hamas, an international designated terrorist group that has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, and Israel, the lone democracy in the Middle East that has long been a leader in tech and medical innovation.
On Wednesday, Hamas urged worldwide protests in support of Palestinians, calling on the international community “to denounce Israel’s genocidal war and starvation policy in Gaza.”
“We call for continuing and escalating the popular pressure in all cities and squares on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday … through rallies, demonstrations and sit-ins outside the embassies of the Israeli regime and its allies, particularly in the US,” the statement read.
The Palestinian terrorist group also called to expose what it described as “the terrorism of the Zio-Nazi occupation against defenseless civilians.”
Hamas’s latest move against Israel comes amid stalled indirect negotiations over a proposed 60-day ceasefire and hostage release deal, which collapsed last month after the group vowed it would not disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is established — rejecting a key Israeli demand to end the war in Gaza.
In its statement, Hamas demanded the opening of all border crossings to allow immediate aid into the war-torn enclave and urged a global condemnation of “the international community’s inaction on the Israeli crimes.”
Amid mounting international pressure to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Israel announced new measures to facilitate the delivery of aid, including temporary pauses in fighting in certain areas and the creation of protected routes for aid convoys.
Israeli officials have previously accused Hamas of diverting aid for terrorist activities and selling supplies at inflated prices to civilians, while also blaming the United Nations and other foreign organizations for enabling this diversion.
Hamas’s statement also emphasized that the “global resistance movement must continue until Israeli aggression on Gaza ends and the siege on the coastal strip is lifted.”
Meanwhile, as Israel faces escalating hostilities and the heavy toll of war, the Jewish state continues to push the boundaries of innovation and resilience, achieving new medical breakthroughs while confronting ongoing challenges.
In a major medical breakthrough, scientists at Sheba Medical Center and Tel Aviv University have successfully grown a synthetic 3D miniature human kidney in a lab using specialized stem cells derived from kidney tissue — one of the most promising advances in regenerative medicine.
Dr. Dror Harats, chairman of Sheba’s Research Authority, described this achievement as a reflection of Israel’s leading role in global medical innovation.
“Despite growing efforts to isolate Israel from international science, breakthroughs like this prove our impact is both lasting and essential,” he said.
In a landmark study, a team from Sheba’s Safra Children’s Hospital and Tel Aviv University’s Sagol Center for Regenerative Medicine created synthetic kidney organs that matured and remained stable for 34 weeks — the longest-lasting and most refined kidney organoids developed to date.
Nearly a decade ago, the research team became the first to successfully isolate human kidney tissue stem cells — the cells responsible for the organ’s development and growth.
Previous attempts to grow kidneys in a lab using general-purpose stem cells were short-lived, typically lasting only a few weeks and often producing unwanted cell types that compromised research accuracy.
However, this Israeli research team used stem cells taken directly from kidney tissue — cells that naturally develop into kidney parts — allowing them to create a much purer and more stable model with key features found in real kidneys.
This medical breakthrough could have far-reaching implications, redefining the current understanding of kidney diseases and advancing the development of innovative treatments.
Researchers believe the model could help assess how medications impact fetal kidneys during pregnancy and move science closer to repairing or replacing damaged kidney tissue with lab-grown cells.
The discovery came days after researchers from Hebrew University of Jerusalem and international partners discovered a way to boost the immune system’s cancer-fighting ability by reprogramming how T cells, which are white blood cells critical to the immune system, produce energy.
The researchers explained in a study published in the peer-reviewed Nature Communications that disabling a protein known as Ant2 in T cells greatly enhances their effectiveness against tumors.
“By disabling Ant2, we triggered a complete shift in how T cells produce and use energy,” Prof. Michael Berger of Hebrew University’s Faculty of Medicine, who co-led the study with doctorate student Omri Yosef, told the Tazpit Press Service. “This reprogramming made them significantly better at recognizing and killing cancer cells.”
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Netherlands to Push EU to Suspend Israel Trade Deal but Won’t Recognize Palestinian State ‘At This Time’
Netherlands Foreign Affairs Minister Caspar Veldkamp addresses a press conference, in New Delhi on April 1, 2025. Photo: ANI Photo/Sanjay Sharma via Reuters Connect
The Netherlands is spearheading efforts to suspend the European Union-Israel trade agreement amid rising EU criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, while simultaneously refusing to recognize a Palestinian state, contrasting with other member states as international pressure mounts.
On Thursday, Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp announced that the Netherlands will push the EU to suspend the trade component of the EU-Israel Association Agreement — a pact governing the EU’s political and economic ties with the Jewish state.
This latest anti-Israel initiative follows a recent EU-commissioned report accusing Israel of committing “indiscriminate attacks … starvation … torture … [and] apartheid” against Palestinians in Gaza during its military campaign against Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group.
Following calls from a majority of EU member states for a formal investigation, this report built on Belgium’s recent decision to review Israel’s compliance with the trade agreement, a process initiated by the Netherlands and led by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas.
According to the report, “there are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations” under the 25-year-old EU-Israel Association Agreement.
While the document acknowledges the reality of violence by Hamas, it states that this issue lies outside its scope — failing to address the Palestinian terrorist group’s role in sparking the current war with its bloody rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israeli officials have slammed the report as factually incorrect and morally flawed, noting that Hamas embeds its military infrastructure within civilian targets and Israel’s army takes extensive precautions to try and avoid civilian casualties.
In a Dutch parliamentary debate on Gaza on Thursday, Veldkamp also announced that the government would not recognize a Palestinian state for now — a position that stands in sharp contrast to the recent moves by several other EU member states to extend recognition.
“The Netherlands is not planning to recognize a Palestinian state at this time,” the Dutch diplomat said.
“This war has ceased to be a just war and is now leading to the erosion of Israel’s own security and identity,” he continued.
This latest decision goes against the position of several EU member states, including France, which has committed to recognizing Palestinian statehood in September.
The United Kingdom has likewise indicated it will do so unless Israel acts to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and agrees to a ceasefire.
For its part, Germany said it was not planning to recognize a Palestinian state in the short term, and Italy argued that recognition must occur simultaneously with the recognition of Israel by the new entity.
Spain, Norway, Ireland, and Slovenia all recognized a Palestinian state last year.
Israel has been facing growing pressure from several EU member states seeking to undermine its defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
On Thursday, European Commission Vice President Teresa Ribera strongly condemned Israel’s actions in the war-torn enclave, describing the situation as a “grave violation of human dignity.”
“What we are seeing is a concrete population being targeted, killed and condemned to starve to death,” Ribera told Politico. “If it is not genocide, it looks very much like the definition used to express its meaning.”
Until now, the European Commission has refrained from accusing Israel of genocide, but Ribera’s comments mark one of the strongest European condemnations since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.
She also called on the EU to take decisive action by considering the suspension of its trade agreement with Israel and the implementation of sanctions, while emphasizing that such measures would require unanimous approval from all member states.
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Graduate Student Unions Promoting Antisemitism, Reform Group Says
Students listen to a speech at a protest encampment at Stanford University in Stanford, California US, on April 26, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.
Higher-education-based unions controlled by United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) are rife with antisemitism and anti-Zionist discrimination, according to a new letter imploring the US Congress’s House Committee on Education and the Workforce to address the matter.
“Tracing its roots to communism in the 1930s, the UE is a radical, pro-Hamas labor union that has a long history of antisemitism,” the National Right to Work Foundation (NRTW), one of the US’s leading labor reform groups, wrote on July 30 in a message obtained by The Algemeiner. “The UE openly supports the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which is designed to cripple and destroy Israel economically. Today, the UE furthers its antisemitic agenda by unionizing graduate students on college campuses and using its exclusive representation powers to create a hostile environment for Jewish students. The hostile environment includes demanding compulsory dues to fund the UE’s abhorrent activities.”
NRTW went on to describe a litany of alleged injustices to which UE members subject Jewish student-employees in the US’s most prestigious institutions of higher education, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to Cornell University. At MIT, the letter said, “union officers” aided a riotous group which illegally occupied a section of campus with a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” participating in the demonstration and even denying access to campus buildings. UE members at Stanford University, meanwhile, allegedly denied religious accommodations to Jewish students who requested exemption from union dues over that branch’s supporting the BDS movement. And Cornell University UE was accused of denying religious exemptions in several cases as well and followed up the rejection with an intrusive “questionnaire” which probed Jewish students for “legally-irrelevant information.”
The situation requires federal oversight and intervention, NRTW said, including Congress’s possibly clarifying that student-employees are not traditional employees and are therefore afforded protections under sections of the Civil Rights Act which apply to the campus.
“These continuing patterns of antisemitism are illegal, immoral, and must be stopped,” the letter continued. “We encourage you to do all that is in your power to investigate and help bring an end to the UE and its affiliates’ nonstop harassment and intimidation of Jewish students … The Trump administration can also use tools available to it under Title VI and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act against colleges who work with unions to create a hostile environment for Jewish students.”
July’s letter is not the first time NRTW has publicized alleged antisemitic abuse in unions representing higher education employees.
In 2024, it represented a group of six City University of New York (CUNY) professors, five of whom are Jewish, who sued to be “freed” from CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) over its passing a resolution during Israel’s May 2021 war with Hamas which declared solidarity with Palestinians and accused the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and crimes against humanity. The group contested New York State’s “Taylor Law,” which it said chained the professors to the union’s “bargaining unit” and denied their right to freedom of speech and association by forcing them to be represented in negotiations by an organization they claim holds antisemitic views.
That same year, NRTW prevailed in a discrimination suit filed to exempt another cohort of Jewish MIT students from paying dues to the Graduate Student Union (GSU). The students had attempted to resist financially supporting GSU’s anti-Zionism, but the union bosses attempted to coerce their compliance, telling them that “no principles, teachings, or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees” to the union.
“All Americans should have a right to protect their money from going to union bosses they don’t support, whether those objections are based on religion, politics, or any other reason,” NRTW said at the time.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.