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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.
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Jewish Synagogue, Holocaust Memorial Vandalized in Poland After Politician Denies Holocaust
An antisemitic slur spray-painted on the ruins of a former synagogue in Dukla, Poland. Photo: World Jewish Restitution Organization
Two Jewish sites in Dukla, Poland, were vandalized over the weekend mere days after Polish member of the European Parliament (MEP) Grzegorz Braun claimed gas chambers at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp were fake and repeated an antisemitic blood libel in a live radio interview.
Vandals spray-painted the word “F–k” followed by a Star of David on the ruins of a former synagogue that was destroyed by the Nazis during the Holocaust, and a memorial commemorating Holocaust victims located at the entrance of the Jewish cemetery in Dukla was defaced with a swastika and the word “Palestine,” according to the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO). The memorial honors Jews of Dukla and the surrounding areas who were murdered by Nazis during the Holocaust.
The two Jewish sites in Dukla are cared for by the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland (FODZ), which was established in 2002 by the Union of Jewish Communities in Poland and the WJRO to protect and commemorate Poland’s Jewish heritage sites.
“These hateful acts are not only antisemitic, but they are also attempts to erase Jewish history and desecrate memory,” said WJRO President Gideon Taylor in a released statement on Tuesday. “Polish authorities must take swift and serious action to identify the perpetrators and ensure the protection of Jewish heritage sites in Dukla and across the country.”
“The vandalism of Jewish sites in Dukla—with swastikas and anti-Israel slurs—is not an isolated act,” insisted Jack Simony, director general of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation (AJCF), in a statement to The Algemeiner. The nonprofit focuses on preserving the memory of the Jewish community in Oświęcim (Auschwitz) and maintains the Auschwitz Jewish Center, the last remaining synagogue in town.
“While we cannot say definitively that it [the vandalism] was sparked by Grzegorz Braun’s Holocaust denial, his rhetoric contributes to an atmosphere where hatred is emboldened and truth is under assault,” added Simony. “Braun’s lies are not harmless — they are dangerous. Holocaust denial fuels antisemitism and, too often, violence. This is why Holocaust education matters … because when we fail to confront lies, we invite their consequences. Memory must be defended, not only for the sake of the past, but for the safety of our future.”
On July 10, a ceremony was held commemorating the 84th anniversary of the 1941 Jedwabne massacre, when hundreds of Polish Jews were massacred – mostly by their neighbors – in the northeastern town in German-occupied Poland. The ceremony was attended by dignitaries and faith leaders including Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich and Israeli Deputy Ambassador Bosmat Baruch. Groups of anti-Israel and far-right activists — including MEP Braun and his supporters – tried to disrupt the event by holding banners with antisemitic slogans and blocking the vehicles of the attendees, according to Polish radio.
Hours later, during a live radio broadcast, Braun falsely claimed the Auschwitz gas chambers were “a lie” and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum was promoting “pseudo-history.” He also claimed that Jewish “ritual murder is a fact.” Polish prosecutors launched an investigation into Braun’s comments, they announced that same day. Under Article 55 of the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), Holocaust denial is a criminal offense in Poland.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum issued a swift condemnation of Braun’s remarks and said it intents to pursue legal action. The Institute of National Remembrance — which is the largest research, educational and archival institution in Poland – also denounced Braun’s remarks, saying there is “well-documented” evidence supporting the existence of gas chambers. His comments were also condemned by the Embassy of Israel in Poland, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski and the US Embassy in Warsaw, which said that his actions “distort history, desecrate memory, or spread antisemitism.” AJCF called on the European Parliament to consider disciplinary measures against Braun, including potential censure or expulsion.
Auschwitz Jewish Center Director Tomek Kuncewicz said Braun’s comments are “an act of violence against truth, against survivors, and against the legacy of our shared humanity.” AJCF Chairman Simon Bergson called the politician’s remarks “blatant and baseless lies,” while Simony described them as “a calculated act of antisemitic incitement” that “must be met with legal consequences and universal moral condemnation.”
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Coalition of 400 Jewish Orgs and Synagogues Urge Teachers Union to Reverse Decision Cutting Ties with ADL
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. Photo Credit: ADL.
Following a vote by the National Education Association (NEA) on July 6 to end its relationship with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), 400 Jewish communal groups, education organizations, and religious institutions have come together to call for the influential teachers union to change course.
“We are writing to express our deep concerns about the growing level of antisemitic activity within teachers’ unions, particularly since the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023,” the letter to NEA President Becky Pringle stated. “Passage of New Business Item (NBI) 39 at the National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assembly this past weekend, which shockingly calls for the boycott of the Anti-Defamation League, is just the latest example of open hostility toward Jewish educators, students and families coming from national and local teachers’ unions and their members.”
In addition to the ADL, signatories of the letter included American Jewish Committee (AJC), Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Jewish Federations of North America, #EndJewHatred, American Jewish Congress, B’nai B’rith International, CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting & Analysis), Combat Antisemitism Movement, Democratic Majority for Israel, StandWithUs, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Zioness Movement, and Zionist Organization of America (ZOA).
The group told Pringle that “we have heard directly from NEA members who have shared their experiences ranging from explicit and implicit antisemitism within the union to a broader pattern of insensitivity toward legitimate concerns of Jewish members – including at the recently concluded Representative Assembly. We are also deeply troubled by a broader pattern of union activity over the past 20 months that has targeted or alienated Jewish members and the wider Jewish community.”
The letter to Pringle included an addendum providing examples of objectionable rhetoric. These named such incidents as the Oakland Education Association (OEA) putting out a statement calling for “an end to the occupation of Palestine” and the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) accusing Israel of genocide.
The coalition of 400 organizations urged the NEA to “take immediate action” and suggested such steps as rejecting NBI 39, issuing a “strong condemnation” of antisemitism within the union, drafting a plan to counter ongoing antisemitism in affiliate chapters, and opposing “any effort to use an educator’s support for the existence of Israel as a means to attack their identity.”
ADL CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt wrote on X that “Excluding @ADL’s educational resources from schools is not just an attack on our org, but on the entire Jewish community. We urge the @NEAToday Executive Committee to reverse this biased, fringe effort and reaffirm its commitment to supporting all Jewish students and educators.”
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Zohran Mamdani Won’t Condemn Calls for Violence Against Jews; Why Are Jewish Leaders Supporting Him?
Zohran Mamdani. Photo: Ron Adar / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
In the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s surge in New York City politics, a disturbing trend has emerged: prominent Jewish leaders are being urged to join “Jews for Zohran,” a newly formed effort to legitimize a candidate whose record and rhetoric are alarmingly out of step with Jewish communal values.
In a city that’s home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel — and where antisemitic incidents are on the rise — this is a profound mistake.
Mamdani has refused to explicitly condemn the slogan “Globalize the Intifada,” which has been widely understood as a call to violence against Jews. His defenders insist it’s a symbolic plea for Palestinian rights. But nuance offers little comfort when the phrase glorifies violent uprisings, and is routinely chanted alongside calls for Israel’s destruction.
Institutions such as the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and watchdogs like StopAntisemitism.org have made it clear: attempts to sanitize violent language must be firmly rejected.
Mamdani’s vocal support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is equally troubling. BDS does not merely critique Israeli policy; it seeks to economically isolate and politically delegitimize the Jewish state. When a candidate stands against the most visible symbol of Jewish survival — Israel — while brushing off violent slogans as misunderstood metaphors, we must ask what message this sends to our communities.
The answer should be clear. Jewish New Yorkers were the targets of over half the city’s reported hate crimes last year. From Crown Heights to Midtown, visible Jews have been harassed, assaulted, and mocked. Mamdani was flagged by national antisemitism monitors in December for promoting material that mocked Hanukkah. This is not abstract. This is personal, present, and dangerous.
Yes, Mamdani has pledged to increase hate crime funding from $3 million to $26 million. But that’s not enough. The Jewish community — especially now — needs more than budgetary gestures. We require moral clarity, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel powerfully stated: “Morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself….”
Moral clarity demands more than financial promises, it requires principled rejection of rhetoric that endangers Jews. Belonging isn’t forged by slogans; it’s proven through sustained empathy, shared responsibility, and unwavering commitment to safety.
Calls for Jewish leaders to publicly support Mamdani, including those made to officials like Brad Lander and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), aim to provide political cover for a candidate whose worldview clashes with core Jewish values. These aren’t harmless endorsements. They’re symbols. And symbols matter.
Endorsing Mamdani sends a troubling signal: that political convenience or progressive branding outweighs communal safety and historical memory. When Jewish leaders align with someone who flirts with the delegitimization of Jewish statehood and refuses to condemn slogans rooted in violence, they are telling our adversaries that our moral lines are negotiable.
New York’s Jewish community has long been a moral compass in American politics. What happens here echoes across the nation. If our leaders can be cajoled into supporting a candidate like Mamdani, what message does that send to Jews in swing districts, smaller cities, and across college campuses? It normalizes equivocation. It emboldens the fringe. It tells the next generation that Jewish dignity is up for debate.
This is about more than Mamdani. It’s about whether Jewish pride and Jewish safety remain non-negotiable pillars of our political participation. Some have argued that this is simply politics as usual — that strategic alliances are part of coalition-building. But the Jewish people know better than most that what begins as a small compromise can metastasize into a much greater danger.
Former Democratic Councilman Rory Lancman said it best: “If ever there was a time to put principle over party, this is it.” He’s right. And that’s why this moment requires Jewish leaders to speak not just as political actors, but as moral stewards.
Jewish leaders are free to engage with any candidate they choose. But engagement is not endorsement. One can listen, challenge, and debate without aligning oneself publicly with a candidate whose positions cross communal red lines. Outreach does not require complicity.
If Jewish political figures join “Jews for Zohran,” they risk helping mainstream dangerous ideologies. They risk fracturing communal unity even further at a time when Jewish communal unity is our best defense. They risk allowing today’s ambiguity to become tomorrow’s regret.
Jewish history teaches us the cost of silence, of appeasement, and of looking away. We cannot afford those mistakes again — not in this city, not in this era; history is beginning to repeat itself and we cannot allow that to happen.
To every Jewish leader now weighing their public stance: choose principle. Choose safety. Choose the kind of moral leadership our tradition demands; reject the logic of “Jews for Zohran.” The stakes are too high — and the message matters.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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