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The Washington Post Has Abandoned ‘Truth’ and ‘Fairness’ in Its Israel Coverage
Despite The Washington Post espousing principles of “truth” and “fairness,” its expansive coverage of the Israel-Hamas war since October 7 has been marred by its bias against Israel’s defensive actions and conduct in the region.
Over the past four months, HonestReporting has tracked this biased coverage, focusing on three particularly concerning areas:
The narrative produced by The Washington Post’s general reporting;
The opinions expressed in its editorials;
Its disconcerting reliance on the testimony of controversial sources.
“Civilians,” “Fighters” & “Captives”: The Washington Post’s Skewed Reporting
Through its use of certain terminology, skewed facts, and context-free assertions, The Washington Post’s general reporting on the war helps to create a narrative that implicitly portrays Israel as the aggressor while simultaneously downplaying the ruthlessness of Hamas and its regional allies, including Hezbollah.
One of its most influential pieces produced since October 7 has been the investigation into the IDF’s claims regarding Hamas’ use of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
In order to undermine the evidence presented by Israel to the public (which is not the full extent of its relevant intelligence), the Post made a variety of speculations and context-less assertions to lay doubts in its readers’ minds as to the veracity of Israel’s case.
The Post used this amateurish “muddying the waters” tactic to subvert the IDF’s justified entrance into the hospital complex, portraying Israel as the aggressor while relinquishing Hamas of any responsibility for using civilian infrastructure for terrorist purposes.
Washington Post Muddies the Waters of Israel’s Shifa Hospital Operation
“This reporting is neither groundbreaking nor conclusive. It’s simply a lazy attempt to vilify Israel and absolve Hamas.”
By @SimonPlosker of @HonestReporting https://t.co/RGIWnfGv7a
— Algemeiner (@Algemeiner) December 25, 2023
In another investigative report, the Post sought to cast a dark pall over the IDF’s actions in Gaza by claiming that the number of children killed in this conflict might be unprecedented in the annals of 21st-century warfare.
However, the Post was only able to reach these conclusions by skewing the statistics against Israel: It relied on selective data that didn’t provide a complete picture of the damage wrought by these other conflicts and also relied on verified statistics for the other conflicts while relying on Hamas’ unverified number for the Gazan casualties.
While both the Al-Shifa hospital report and the comparison of Gaza with other conflict zones were blatant hit pieces directed against the IDF’s activities in Gaza, there are more subtle ways in which the Post’s bias has skewed the narrative.
For example, while the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health does not differentiate between combatants and civilians in its count of the daily dead during the war, it would be irrational to assume that all killed by the IDF were civilians. However, this didn’t stop the Post from referring on numerous occasions to all of Gaza’s dead as “civilians.”
Does @IgnatiusPost really believe that every single Palestinian killed in Gaza is a civilian or is it now @washingtonpost policy to simply regurgitate Hamas talking points? https://t.co/GXJIt81LTE pic.twitter.com/0bthk8UYO2
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) December 20, 2023
Similarly, in reporting on the November 2023 exchange of Israeli hostages held by Hamas for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, the Post described it as an exchange of “captives” — implicitly equating civilians kidnapped by a terror organization to those imprisoned by a democratic country.
In addition, one of the reports on the exchange deal referred to Palestinian prisoners as “civilians,” sanitizing those who are members of internationally recognized terror organizations and/or in prison for violent activities.
Following the November exchange, the newspaper even uncritically quoted a Hamas official saying that all women and child hostages had been released, even though that was patently untrue.
This is not the only instance in which the Post has parroted Hamas’ claims to its audience.
Days after the October 7 massacre, the news outlet published an explainer on what Hamas is and why it had invaded southern Israel. This included detailing Hamas’ reasoning for its attack without any editorial rebuttal, implicitly justifying the terror group’s twisted logic.
Similarly, following the IDF’s entrance into Al-Shifa Hospital, the Post uncritically tweeted Hamas’ claim that this constituted “war crimes and crimes against humanity” to its 20 million followers.
Is this a @washingtonpost or a Hamas tweet?
Hard to tell. https://t.co/LpezGoDiPG
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) November 18, 2023
The Washington Post has sought to create a moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas by comparing Hamas’ indiscriminate rocket fire directed against Israeli civilian centers to Israel’s strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza.
Similarly, clashes on the northern front between the IDF and Hezbollah have been described as “tit for tat” fighting, where Israel attacks Lebanon and then Hezbollah attacks Israel even though it is actually the opposite: Hezbollah initiated hostilities on that front and Israel is forced to respond to the terror organization’s attacks against northern Israel.
The Post’s bias is not limited to reporting on the present; it can also be observed in the newspaper’s revisionist view of Israeli history.
For example, in one article, the outlet claimed that during the creation of Israel, “750,000 Palestinians were expelled.”
This is a gross mischaracterization of history (which serves to perpetuate the myth of Palestinians being the victims of Israeli aggression), as most of the Palestinian population that was displaced during that time voluntarily fled to escape the fighting.
Similarly, describing the 1967 Six-Day War, the Post claimed that Israel “launched” the “war against Syria, Jordan and Egypt,” ignoring the fact that in the month prior to the outbreak of the war, Syria and Egypt had engaged in acts of war against the Jewish state and Israel only fought Jordan after the latter attacked Israeli positions after the war had started.
.@washingtonpost‘s history section isn’t so hot on actual history.
Israel didn’t simply “launch” the 1967 war. It responded to Arab threats to annihilate it & other belligerent actions with a pre-emptive strike.
Israel warned Jordan to stay out of the fighting. Jordan… pic.twitter.com/opqRooviOE
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 16, 2024
The Washington Post has also published an array of anti-Israel opinion pieces, both those written by its staff and those contributed by guest writers.
In the month following the October 7 attack, columnist Karen Attiah published several opinion pieces that sought to tarnish Israel’s reputation and its fight against Hamas through misleading statements, a skewed analysis, and unfounded opinions.
Some of the most egregious examples of Attiah’s disdain for the Jewish state and whitewashing of Hamas include the claim that Israel is committing “ethnic cleansing” against the Palestinians, the implicit comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany, the complete disregard for the rise in global antisemitism since October 7, and the undermining of the term “human shields” in regards to Hamas’ cynical use of Gazan civilians for its nefarious purposes.
The Nazis trapped millions of Jews & transported them to their deaths.
Israel is helping Palestinians escape while rooting out Hamas evil that’s ACTUALLY perpetrating atrocities based on identity.
How dare @washingtonpost allow @KarenAttiah‘s antisemitism to infect its pages. https://t.co/biLeEPboRT pic.twitter.com/IBZ7F3kJ1d
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 14, 2023
Ishaan Tharoor has used his column to promote the false idea that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and to present a one-sided view of Israeli administrative detention.
Like Karen Attiah, Tharoor relies on biased sources, skewed analyses, and misleading statements to denigrate the Jewish state in the eyes of The Post’s readership.
But it’s not only seasoned columnists like Ishaan Tharoor and Karen Attiah who have been given a platform to spread their anti-Israel views.
In December 2023, Perry Bacon Jr. (who rarely comments on Israel) penned an op-ed accusing Israel of “indiscriminately bombing” Gaza while simultaneously downplaying the role of Hamas, its misappropriation of civilian infrastructure, and its October 7 atrocities to make them seem almost irrelevant.
Similarly, in a guest op-ed by Benjamin Moser, Israel is blamed entirely for the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process with nary a mention of the numerous Palestinian terror attacks, rejections of peace offers, and continued incitement against the Jewish state.
While opinion pieces may not reflect a newspaper’s official viewpoint, the fact that the pieces mentioned above were deemed acceptable for publication speaks volumes about how the Post’s editorial board views the conflict.
Why do @benjaminfmoser & @washingtonpost hold only Israeli government policies responsible for the lack of a Palestinian state?
Palestinians also have agency & responsibility for:
The Second Intifada
Terrorism against Israeli civilians
Rejecting multiple peace offers… pic.twitter.com/4TaV6w9O4z
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 3, 2024
On January 8, 2024, HonestReporting published an investigation into two Gaza-based freelance journalists who had supported the October 7 invasion of Israel.
One of these freelancers, Ashraf Amra, hosted an Instagram Live where he encouraged Gazans to cross into Israel and gleefully watched footage of the lynching of an Israeli soldier. It was also revealed that Amra has at least twice had friendly interactions with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Mere hours after HonestReporting published its investigation, Ashra Amra was quoted by name in a Washington Post report.
The same day we exposed Gaza freelancer Ashraf Amra enjoying footage of an IDF soldier being lynched on Oct. 7 as well as his relationship with Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh, @washingtonpost quoted Amra.
Amra should never be cited again. In any media outlet. https://t.co/GfLlUuXcUb
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 9, 2024
This is not the only time that the Post has relied on the testimony or evidence of a controversial Gaza-based figure.
In late October 2024, the Post’s Instagram page shared a video of Israel’s military activities taken by Palestinian journalist Hind Khoudary.
It was revealed in 2020 that Khoudary had reported to Hamas a group of Palestinian youth who had engaged in a Zoom dialogue with Israelis.
Members of this group were later arrested by Hamas for “normalization.”
In January 2024, the Post advertised a talk about life in Gaza during the war to be given by Plestia Alaqad, an “aspiring journalist.”
However, Alaqad has been known to spread Hamas propaganda and anti-Israel libels, including claims of genocide and the assertion that Israel had committed a “massacre” at the Al-Ahli Hospital (the explosion outside the hospital was actually determined to have been caused by an errant Palestinian rocket).
While it should be noted that The Washington Post has also featured some opinion pieces and reports that are favorable to Israel, this does nothing to “balance” what remains the clear evidence of bias against Israel in its pages.
This should concern anyone who looks to The Washington Post for an objective and fair take on the current conflict between Israel and Hamas.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post The Washington Post Has Abandoned ‘Truth’ and ‘Fairness’ in Its Israel Coverage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai
Around 200 people gathered for a pro-Israel demonstration at University of Toronto’s downtown campus at King’s College Circle—which was the site of one of Canada’s largest pro-Palestinian encampments during May […]
The post A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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‘Not Welcome’: New Pro-Hamas Campaign Aims to Abolish Hillel Campus Chapters
A statue of George Washington tied with a Palestinian flag and a keffiyeh inside a pro-Hamas encampment is pictured at George Washington University in Washington, DC, US, May 2, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Craig Hudson
The campus group National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) is waging a campaign to gut Jewish life in academia, calling for the abolition of Hillel International campus chapters, the largest collegiate organization for Jewish students in the world.
“Over the past several decades, Hillel has monopolized for Jewish campus life into a pipeline for pro-Israel indoctrination, genocide-apologia, and material support to the Zionist project and its crimes,” a social media account operating the campaign, titled #DropHillel, said in a manifesto published last week. “Across the country, Hillel chapters have invited Israeli soldiers to their campuses; promoted propaganda trips such as birthright; and organized charity drives for the Israeli military.”
It continued, “Such actions reveal Hillel’s ideological and material investment in Zionism, despite the organization’s facade as being simply a ‘Jewish cultural space.’”
DropHillel claims to be “Jewish-led,” although only a small minority of Jews oppose Zionism, and the group has been linked to and promoted by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters.
Hillel International has provided Jewish students a home away from home during the academic year. However, NSJP says it wants to “weaken” it and “dismantle oppression.”
The idea has already been picked up by pro-Hamas student groups at one college, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to The Daily Tar Heel, the school’s official student newspaper. On Oct. 9, it reported, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) unveiled the idea for “no more Hillel” during a rally which, among other things, demanded removing Israel from UNC’s study abroad program and adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Addressing the comments to the paper days later, SJP, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, proclaimed that shuttering Hillel is a coveted goal of the anti-Zionist movement.
“Zionism is a racist supremacist ideology advocating for the creation and sustenance of an ethnostate through the expulsion and annihilation of native people,” the group told the paper. “Therefore, any group that advocates for a supremacist ideology — be it the KKK, the Proud Boys, Hillel, or Heels for Israel — should not be welcome on campus.”
The #DropHillel campaign came amid an unprecedented surge in anti-Israel incidents on college campuses, which, according to a report published last month by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), have reached crisis levels.
Revealing a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena, the report — titled “Anti-Israel Activism on US Campuses, 2023-2024” — painted a bleak picture of America’s higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hate.
“As the year progressed, Jewish students and Jewish groups on campus came under unrelenting scrutiny for any association, actual or perceived, with Israel or Zionism,” the report said. “This often led to the harassment of Jewish members of campus communities and vandalism of Jewish institutions. In some cases, it led to assault. These developments were underpinned by a steady stream of rhetoric from anti-Israel activists expressing explicit support for US-designated terrorists organizations, such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and others.”
The report added that 10 campuses accounted for 16 percent of all incidents tracked by ADL researchers, with Columbia University and the University of Michigan combining for 90 anti-Israel incidents — 52 and 38, respectively. Harvard University, the University of California – Los Angeles, Rutgers University New Brunswick, Stanford University, Cornell University, and others filled out the rest of the top 10. Violence, it continued, was most common at universities in the state of California, where anti-Zionist activists punched a Jewish student for filming him at a protest.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘Not Welcome’: New Pro-Hamas Campaign Aims to Abolish Hillel Campus Chapters first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza
Former US President Donald Trump is seen at a campaign event in South Carolina. Photo: Reuters/Sam Wolfe
The “Muslims for Trump” organization has officially launched initiatives to help elect Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to the White House, arguing that he would be more likely to end the war in Gaza than Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
In a statement released on Monday, the group said it will focus on recruiting Muslim voters in key battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina. The organization both praised Trump for his supposed “peace-focused” approach to ending the war in Gaza and condemned Harris for helping facilitate a so-called “genocide.”
“After meeting with President Trump, it was clear to me he is the right leader for Muslims to get behind,” Rabiul Chowdhury, co-founder of Muslims for Trump and former co-chair of the “Abandon Harris Movement,” said in a statement.
Chowdhury added that during his discussions with Trump, the former president vowed to “ending the escalation of wars and bringing peace to war-torn regions.” In contrast to Trump’s promise to stop the “bloodshed” in Gaza, he claimed, Harris has “recklessly pushed us toward World War III.”
Chowdhury, a self-described “peace advocate,” urged the Muslim community not to fall victim to supposed “misinformation” campaigns by the media and Democrats that paint the former president as hostile to immigrants. He claimed that the former president’s focus is on “ending war, not dividing families through false immigration claims.”
Samra Luqman, chair of the Michigan chapter of Muslims for Trump, underscored the need to punish the Biden administration for what he described as supporting a “genocide” in Gaza.
“The goal of this election is to hold the Biden administration accountable for a genocide. No amount of fear mongering or scare tactics will persuade my community into forgiving the mutilation, live-burning, and genocide of over 200,000 people,” he said.
According to data produced by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, roughly 40,000 people have died in Gaza since the war began last October. Israel has said that its forces have killed about 20,000 Hamas terrorists during its military campaign.
Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, 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.
On the organization Muslims for Trump’s official website, it claims that the Abraham Accords, a series of historic, Trump administration-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several countries in the Arab world, helped stabilize the Middle East. It also says that had Trump not lost the 2020 presidential race, the so-called “genocide” could have been prevented.
“Under Trump’s leadership, the Abraham Accords were brokered, fostering peaceful relations between Israel and several Arab countries. Supporters might argue that Trump’s diplomacy prioritized peace and stability in the Middle East, reducing the likelihood of large-scale conflicts like genocide,” the group wrote.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump has repeatedly touted his support for the Jewish state during his singular term in office. Trump has boasted about his administration’s work in fostering the Abraham Accords, promising to resume efforts to strengthen them if he were to win November’s US presidential election.
Harsh US sanctions levied on Iran under Trump crippled the Iranian economy and led its foreign exchange reserves to plummet. Trump and his Republican supporters in the US Congress have criticized the Biden administration for renewing billions of dollars in US sanctions waivers, which had the effect of unlocking frozen funds and allowing the country to access previously inaccessible hard currency.
Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria, and also moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital.
Despite Harris’s repeated efforts to woo Muslim voters, polling data indicates that the demographic has made a dramatic swing away from the Democratic Party. Polling data from the Arab American Institute reveals that Trump slightly edges Harris among Muslim voters by a margin of 42 to 41 percent. A report from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) shows that Green Party candidate Jill Stein leads Harris and Trump with Muslim voters in the key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.
The post ‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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