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Under New Editor, the Wall Street Journal Is Misreporting Facts About Israel
Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker is making changes at the venerable publication, pushing more “life-style stories with snappy headlines” in the news section — and she’s reportedly downsized, if not gutted, the standards desk that handles corrections. She’s eliminated an editing team “responsible for prepublication review of sensitive stories.”’
The new direction, as described in a National Review story, resonates alarmingly for many readers of the newspaper who have long counted on its fact-focused, serious coverage, but find something very different today. For many, the increasingly skewed, factually shoddy coverage of Israel is a striking indicator of the wider shift in the paper’s tenor and content.
Reporter Omar Abdel-Baqui could be the poster child for this new Wall Street Journal.
One “sensitive” story of his with far too little fact-checking and editorial oversight was a June 15 account focused on the disappointments of young Gen Z Palestinians. Much of the bias of the piece stems from relentless omission of critical information. The online title, “Gen Z Palestinians See Door Slamming Shut on Coexistence with Israel,” perfectly conveys the deceptions and distortions that follow.
What the article fails to mention is that many Palestinians are themselves the door-slammers. There’s no hint in the story that the Palestinian leadership has repeatedly refused an independent and peaceful state next to the Jewish State of Israel. There’s no suggestion the melancholy Gen Z Palestinian teens who are cast as buffeted by upheaval and uncertainty should blame their own autocratic leaders for ruining their lives. (The print version was similarly titled: “Gen Z Palestinians Have Little Hope for Peace.”)
Striking photographs accompany the story. A 15-year-old girl fully clothed in black, and wearing a keffiyeh, poses floating on her back in the Persian Gulf, gazing skyward — as if in a fashion spread. A displaced Gazan from a wealthy family, the young woman also appears elsewhere in the online version of the story standing fully clothed in the water, expressionless. This could be Teen Vogue.
Abdel-Baqui recounts various harsh political events that have ostensibly shaped the lives of the young woman and fellow Palestinian teens, but he continuously omits facts key to an accurate understanding of how Palestinians themselves are culpable for their circumstances. Thus Abdel-Baqui writes:
“Though their parents recall an era of hope amid the 1990’s Oslo Accords, the latest breakthrough agreement between the two sides, Palestinians under the age of 25 – who comprise most of the population – say the door to coexistence with Israelis always felt barely ajar. It has been slammed shut since Oct. 7.”
The repetitive door metaphor omits how exactly that “era of hope” and “door to coexistence” surrounding Oslo was blocked.
There is no mention of Palestinian terrorists blowing up Israeli buses, cafes, and religious events in the wake of the 1993 Oslo agreements. The terror attacks began only six months after the September 1993 agreement — in 1994 in Afula, Hadera, and then Tel Aviv. The bloodletting intensified in 1995 and 1996, when gruesome mass bombings occurred in Jerusalem, Ramat Gan, Beit Lid, and elsewhere. All the while, Israel continued attempting to implement Oslo measures aimed at getting to an “end of the conflict” predicated on Yasser Arafat’s false pledge to resolve disagreements peacefully.
Obviously, there’s no suggestion in the article that Gen Z parents were wishing their ruthless, corrupt leaders had been different human beings and accepted Israel’s extended hand. So reference to the parents wistfully recalling an era of Oslo peace only to be let down is an egregious deception characteristic of the entire piece.
In relaying the pain and disappointment of other Gen Z Palestinians, Abdel-Baqui refers to the sealing off of the West Bank after October 7 and how it prevented friendly Palestinian interaction with Israelis, and before that, the building of a “barrier across much of the military-occupied West Bank” because of a “Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada.”
The reporter notes that Israeli “skepticism grew during the Second Intifada when Palestinian militants launched suicide bombings across Israel and deepened after Oct. 7, leading many Israelis to conclude they can’t trust Palestinians.”
Once more, there’s not the slightest hint by the Wall Street Journal reporter that the Second Intifada and the security barrier were results of Palestinian rejection of coexistence and peace. The Gen Z’ers and their families are cast as innocents simply looking for an open door if Israel would only offer one. The formulation is a lie insofar as it overlooks critical facts such as those cited above and many related ones.
Abdel-Baqui could have written a genuinely significant story probing the predicament of young Palestinians betrayed by “leaders” like Yahya Sinwar who, far from promoting their safety and happiness, use them as shields for Hamas gunmen, situating rockets, and tunnel openings in their family homes. As is well known, Hamas fighters themselves hide in tunnels while leaving Palestinian women and children exposed to Israeli targeting of the terrorists and their rocket launchers and other military hardware.
What is it like for teenagers to live in that world?
How do Gen Z Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank feel about a regime that rejects peaceful coexistence and leaders who seize Israeli children, young women, and elderly hostages and torment them, some in underground dungeons? What exactly have they been taught about Jews? Did Abdel-Baqui ask any of them how they felt about the mass rape of young Israeli women on October 7? Have young Palestinians been so indoctrinated in Jew-hatred that rape, murder of children, and hostage-taking are acceptable? That would have been a worthwhile question to probe and report.
Perhaps as well, given the widespread belief that Jews are interlopers in the land of Israel, it would have been worthwhile to probe what Gen Z’ers make of the countless archeological sites and artifacts literally everywhere in the region marking the long and ancient Jewish presence there. They’re told Jews have no history in the land and must be expelled. Wouldn’t these questions have been important and informative for readers?
Instead of fresh insight, Abdel Baqui’s story hewed to immutable touch points of an immutable fable of total Palestinian innocence in the face of Israeli malevolence. Predictably, in the fable, Jewish settlers and settlements are invoked as major elements of Palestinian victimization. Again, the facts are incomplete, distorted, and false, both in the broad suggestion that it is overwhelmingly non-violent Palestinians on the receiving of gratuitous settler violence, but also in factual details of history.
Abdel-Baqui recounts the deplorable killing of Bilal Saleh by settlers in November 2023 in a period shortly after October 7, when fear and anger on the part of Israelis at the unprecedented Hamas atrocities and the jubilation of West Bank Palestinians over the massacre had fueled tensions. That crime is completely inexcusable — and was treated as such by Israel. But there’s no context provided to explain that the area has been radicalized and militarized, with a massive inflow of arms and the growth of Iranian-supported militias threatening to set off a larger conflict. There’s no mention that most of the Palestinian casualties have been gunmen killed in clashes with Israeli military, or Palestinians killed when shooting, hurling IED’s, stabbing, ramming or otherwise assaulting Israelis. In this tense environment, civilians are sometimes tragically caught in the crossfire.
Nor is there reference to the brutality inflicted on innocent Jews in the West Bank and the mortal dangers they face as in the case, for instance, of the Dee family, a mother and two daughters murdered in April 2023 as they drove in the Jordan Valley to a family gathering. They were shot first from a distance, and when the vehicle crashed, the Palestinian terrorist circled back to shoot them again at close range. There’s no reference to the recent kidnap and murder of a young Israeli shepherd. Such information obviously would offer context to Abdel-Baqui’s one-dimensional fable.
Indicative of the shoddy reporting on settlements, a photo caption asserts that “the number of Israeli settlements in the West Bank has ballooned since the 1990’s.”
The opposite is true. The large majority of existing settlements were founded in the 1970s and 1980s (a total of 116), with just seven added in the 1990s and another five in the last 24 years up to the recent present when there has been “tentative” recognition of a possible four of five additional settlements. Thus, there are about 133 settlements with nine or ten founded “since the 1990’s.” The intent of the Journal’s claim is seemingly to suggest rampant Jewish settlement expansion — regardless of the facts.
When alerted that the rate of growth in the number of Israeli settlements has not “ballooned since the 1990’s” but rather declined dramatically compared to earlier decades, the Journal corrections editor refused to correct or clarify.
CAMERA noted in communication with the Journal that the reporter was likely conflating the supposed addition of new settlements with population increase within existing ones which has, indeed, occurred, and urged editors to correct the record on the error. The Journal was, however, content to misinform readers, injecting in the private correspondence reference to counting “illegal outposts”– which are not “settlements” and were not referenced in the original problematic photo caption — and citing the partisan claims of Peace Now.
The lesson of the exchange was the striking indifference of the Journal to adhering to professional standards mandating accuracy.
More serious is another uncorrected error Journal editors have chosen to promote in their coverage. The news pages have rhetorically awarded the West Bank to the Palestinians — having decided to refer to the West Bank as “Palestinian land” or “Palestinian territory.” Of course, the land is not Palestinian but rather disputed until, per the Oslo Accords to which the Israelis and Palestinians are signatories, there is a negotiated agreement on the disposition of the territory.
Nevertheless, the Journal is standing by an erroneous statement by Yaroslav Trofimov from December 1, 2023, that Israel “has maintained military occupation over Palestinian territories since 1967.” Indeed, the paper has doubled down, and is now regularly publishing this factually false terminology. as Abdel-Baqui did repeatedly on July 19, 2024
Previously on May 17, 2020, the publication had promptly corrected the same error, noting that “a Page One photo incorrectly referred to those parts of the West Bank as Palestinian territory. Under the Oslo accords, sovereignty over the West Bank is disputed, pending a final peace settlement.” Many other outlets, including the The New York Times, have made similar errors and then set the record straight. The Los Angeles Times just recently corrected the same error
Over the past year, however, and with increasing frequency, possibly coinciding with changes under Emma Tucker, the news pages have declined to address substantive errors that are corrected by other news outlets. Moreover, the tilt of the errors has been markedly in one direction– towards denigrating Israel’s position in the conflict with the Palestinians.
Regarding the false characterization of the entire West Bank as Palestinian, Journal editors have been blunt, telling CAMERA point blank:
“We accept the use of Palestinian territories to refer generally to the West Bank and Gaza.”
CAMERA asked in response: “Given the Journal’s delineating of the West Bank as ‘Palestinian territories’, can you cite … the date and terms of the agreement under the Oslo Accords when the PA and Israel reached a Final Status agreement on the challenging disposition of that territory after Israel’s withdrawal from 40% of the West Bank per Oslo II? What are the territorial lines agreed on under that Final Status Agreement that apply to the remaining 60% of Area C that you designate ‘Palestinian territory’”?
The Journal did not address the questions raised but replied: “The articles are accurate; there aren’t any errors to correct.”
The contempt of Journal news editors for readers and for the norms of ethical journalism in deeming it their prerogative to assign disputed West Bank territory to their preferred party appears to be part of the new regime under Emma Tucker.
Accuracy, impartiality,, and accountability — the precious components of honorable journalism on which a public relies to learn about the world and to help shape reasoned response to events — are on the wane in the news pages of the Wall Street Journal.
Andrea Levin is Executive Director and President of CAMERA, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, where a different version of this article first appeared.
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China and Egypt Launch Joint Military Drills Near Israeli Border Amid Rising Regional Tensions
China and Egypt have launched their first-ever joint air force drill, “Eagles of Civilization 2025,” at an Egyptian airbase. Photo: Screenshot
China and Egypt launched a large-scale joint military exercise this week near the Israeli border, described by Chinese media as a “historic” first of its kind, aimed at deepening military cooperation amid rising regional tensions.
The joint drills — dubbed “Eagles of Civilization 2025” — began Sunday at an Egyptian Air Force base about 100 kilometers (62 miles) west of the Gulf of Suez and are expected to run through mid-May.
According to Israel’s Channel 12, the drill features Chinese J-10C fighter jets, refueling planes, and KJ-500 early warning aircraft, along with Russian-made MiG-29s flown by Egypt.
This exercise “is the first joint training between the Chinese and Egyptian militaries, which is of great significance to promoting pragmatic cooperation and enhancing mutual trust and friendship between the two militaries,” the Chinese Ministry of National Defense said in a statement.
Egyptian officials said the joint drills, aimed at strengthening military ties, will combine theoretical and practical training to enhance combat doctrines.
“The training will also involve joint aerial sorties, planning exercises, and simulated air combat management operations to exchange expertise and enhance the skills of the participating forces,” an Egyptian armed forces spokesperson said in a statement on social media.
Some experts view Beijing’s growing relationship with Cairo as the country’s latest move to expand its military presence in the Middle East and Africa, challenging the United States as its influence in the region stalls. This move could also help China strengthen ties with regional partners as the country faces mounting economic sanctions from Washington.
While details about Egypt’s military buildup remain unclear, “satellite images have shown the movement of tanks and battalions that exceed the limits set by the Camp David Accords,” Mariam Wahba, research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told The Algemeiner.
Under the peace treaty, Egypt can request permission from Israel to deploy more than the 47 battalions allowed. However, some estimates suggest that there are currently camps for 180 battalions.
“The Camp David Accords have long been a pillar of peace and stability in the Middle East,” Wahba explained. “A breakdown of the agreement would have serious implications, not just for Israel and Egypt but for the broader region.”
“It could embolden actors like Iran and its proxies to exploit tensions and could lead to increased militarization along Israel’s southern border,” Wahba told The Algemeiner.
Egypt’s military buildup, reportedly in response to Israel’s presence at the Philadelphi Corridor and concerns over a potential mass Palestinian exodus into the country, along with Jerusalem’s control of the corridor, could both breach the 1979 peace treaty.
Last month, China, Russia, and Iran held a three-day naval drill in the Gulf of Oman, conducting joint operations in Iranian territorial waters, strengthening their defense cooperation and bolstering their presence in the region.
China’s growing ties with Egypt come at a time when Egyptian relations with Washington are strained, following US President Donald Trump’s proposal to relocate Palestinians from the Gaza Strip — potentially to Egypt and other Arab countries — during reconstruction efforts after the war, a plan Cairo has strongly opposed.
“This is a reminder that our partners have options,” Former US CENTCOM Commander Gen. Joseph Votel told The War Zone. “China is positioning itself as a viable military supplier and strategic partner” in the region.
In a rapidly shifting Middle East marked by rising tensions and competing regional power blocs, China and Egypt’s deepening cooperation could reshape regional power dynamics, challenging American influence and diminishing Israel’s strategic flexibility.
Israeli defense officials have previously expressed growing concern over Cairo’s military buildup and armed presence in the Sinai Peninsula.
These concerns come amid escalating tensions between Jerusalem and Cairo since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, particularly over the Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border, where Egypt has demanded Israel withdraw its forces.
Earlier this year, Jerusalem accused Egypt of violating their decades-old peace treaty, while also raising concerns about Cairo’s expanding defense capabilities.
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Pro-Palestine Demonstrators Blast Sanders as ‘Genocide Denier’
US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks to the media following a meeting with US President Joe Biden at the White House in Washington, US, July 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) has been targeted by left-wing protesters over his supposedly insufficient support for Gaza.
Pro-Palestine activists crashed one of Sanders’s “The Fighting Oligarchy” rallies in Bakersfield, California last week to grill the senator about his position on the Israel-Hamas war. During Sanders’s speech, activists associated with United Liberation Front for Palestine (ULFP) berated Sanders for his reluctance in accusing Israel of committing so-called “genocide” against the civilians of Gaza.
“Are you going to call it a genocide, when it’s a genocide?” the activist bellowed.
“And you defend Israel when Palestinians are being killed every single day and all you do is criticize Netanyahu! Israel does not have a right to exist or fight while Palestinians are dying,” she continued.
Other protesters then interrupted Sanders’s speech, condemning the progressive lawmaker as a “liberal Zionist,” accusing him of being “complicit with ICE,” and castigating him for voting in favor of the confirmation of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“Bernie, why don’t you let your fans know that you’re a settler, that you occupy Palestinian land?” the activist said.
Sanders does not possess dual citizenship with Israel. However, rumors about Sanders, who is Jewish, possessing Israeli citizenship have circulated around the internet since his 2015 presidential campaign.
In recent weeks, anti-Israel protesters have grown increasingly critical of Sanders over his refusal to adopt more adversarial rhetoric against the Jewish state. Last week, Sanders incensed progressives after authorities removed an activist which unfurled a flag reading “free Palestine” during a tour stop in Idaho.
During that rally, Sanders said, “Israel, like any other country, has the right to defend itself from terrorism, but it does not have the right to wage all out war against the Palestinian people” and “not one more nickel to Netanyahu,” triggering more outrage among his leftist supporters.
Sanders, who is among the most vocal critics of the Israel-Hamas war in the federal government, spearheaded a number of failed efforts to implement a partial arms embargo on the Jewish state, citing supposed “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza. However, progressive activists have grown increasingly vocal about their dissatisfaction with Sanders’s position on Israel, complaining that the senator has isolated his criticisms to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has refused to repudiate Israel’s existence.
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Harvard Sues Trump Administration Over Massive Cuts Amid Campus Antisemitism Crisis
US President Donald Trump, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick attend a cabinet meeting at the White House. Photo: Nathan Howard via Reuters Connect.
Harvard University filed suit against the Trump administration on Monday to request an injunction that would halt the government’s impounding of $2.26 billion of its federal grants and contracts and an additional $1 billion that, reportedly, will be confiscated in the coming days.
In the complaint, shared by interim university president Alan Garber, Harvard says the administration bypassed key procedural steps it must, by law, take before sequestering any federal funds. It also charges that the Trump administration does not aim, as it has publicly pledged, to combat campus antisemitism at Harvard but to impose “viewpoint-based conditions on Harvard’s funding.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the administration has proposed that Harvard reform in ways that conservatives have long argued will make higher education more meritocratic and less welcoming to anti-Zionists and far-left extremists. Its “demands,” contained in a letter the administration sent to Garber — who subsequently released it to the public — called for “viewpoint diversity in hiring and admissions,” the “discontinuation of [diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives],” and “reducing forms of governance bloat.” They also implore Harvard to begin “reforming programs with egregious records of antisemitism” and to recalibrate its approach to “student discipline.”
Harvard rejects the administration’s coupling of campus antisemitism with longstanding grievances regarding elite higher education’s “wokeness,” elitism, and overwhelming bias against conservative ideast. Republican lawmakers, for their part, have maintained that it is futile to address campus antisemitism while ignoring the context in which it emerged.
Speaking for the university, Harvard’s legal team — which includes attorneys with links to US President Donald Trump’s inner circle — denounced any larger reform effort as intrusive.
“The First Amendment does not permit the Government to ‘interfere with private actors’ speech to advance its own vision of ideological balance,” they wrote in the complaint, which names several members and agencies of the administration but not Trump as a defendant. “Nor may the government ‘rely on the ‘threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion … to achieve the suppression of disfavored speech.’ The government’s attempt to coerce and control Harvard disregards these fundamental First Amendment principles, which safeguard Harvard’s ‘academic freedom.’”
The complaint continued, arguing that the impounding of funds “flout not just the First Amendment, but also federal laws and regulations” and says that Harvard should have been investigated by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to determine whether it failed to stop and, later, prevent antisemitism in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act — a finding that would have warranted punitive measures. Rather, it charges, the Trump administration imposed a “sweeping freeze of funding” that, it contends, “has nothing at all to do with antisemitism and Title VI compliance.”
Garber followed up the complaint with an exaltation of limited government and the liberal values which further academia’s educational mission — values Harvard has been accused of failing to uphold for decades.
“We stand for the truth that colleges and universities across the country can embrace and honor their legal obligations and best fulfill their essential role in society without improper government intrusion,” Garber said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “That is how we achieve academic excellence, safeguard open inquiry and freedom of speech, and conduct pioneering research — and how we advance the boundless exploration that propels our nation and its people into a better future.”
For some, Harvard’s allegations against the Trump administration are hollow.
“Claiming that the entire institution is exempt from any oversight or intervention is extraordinary,” Alex Joffe, anthropologist and editor of BDS Monitor for Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, told The Algemeiner on Tuesday. “It would seem to claim, at least by extension, that the government cannot enforce laws regarding equal protection for individuals — namely students in minority groups — and other legal and regulatory frameworks because they jeopardize the institution’s academic freedom.”
He continued, “Moreover, the idea that cutting voluntary government funding is de facto denial of free speech also sounds exaggerated if not absurd. If an institution doesn’t want to be subjected to certain requirements in a relationship entered into voluntarily with the government, they shouldn’t take the money. Modifying a contract after the fact, however, might be another issue … At one level the Trump administration is simply doing what Obama and Biden did with far less controversy, issuing directives and threatening lawsuits and funding. But the substance of the proposed oversight, especially the intrusiveness with respect to curricular affairs, has obviously touched a nerve.”
Harvard’s fight with the federal government is backed by its immense wealth, and the school has been drawing on its vast financial resources to build a war chest for withstanding Trump’s budget cuts since March, when it issued over $450 million in bonds as “part of ongoing contingency planning for a range of financial circumstances.” Another $750 million in bonds was offered to investors in April, according to The Harvard Crimson, a sale that is being managed by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
A generous subsidy protects Harvard from paying exorbitant interest on the new debt, as investors can sell most bonds issued by educational institutions without being required to pay federal income tax.
Other universities have resorted to borrowing as well, issuing what was reportedly a record $12.4 billion municipal bonds, some of which are taxable, during the first quarter of 2025. Among those which chose to take on debt are Northwestern University, which was defunded to the tune of $790 million on April 8. It issued $500 million in bonds in March. Princeton University, recently dispossessed of $210 in federal grants, is preparing an offering of $320 million, according to Forbes.
“If Harvard is willing to mortgage it’s real estate or use it as collateral, it can borrow money for a very long time,” National Association of Scholars president Peter Wood told The Algemeiner on Tuesday. “But it could destroy itself that way.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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