How The Washington Post Covered Jenin A ghastly competition with the NYT on who can be more unfair to Israel. by Hugh Fitzgerald
https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-the-washington-post-covered-jenin/
The Washington Post has been in a sort of ghastly competition with The New York Times as to which paper can be more unfair in its coverage of Israel. On the latest reporting on Israel’s fighting terrorists in Jenin, The Washington Post appears to be, by a hair, the winner. More on its performance can be found here: “Washington Post Erases Palestinian Terrorists & Strips the Context from Israel’s Jenin Operation,” by Simon Plosker, HonestReporting, July 7, 2023:
The Washington Post’s “What is happening in Jenin in the occupied West Bank, and why now?” only ensures readers don’t know what’s happening or why Israel launched its recent military operation in Jenin.
According to journalists Niha Masih and Miriam Berger: “The military incursion on July 3 and 4 into the Jenin camp left 12 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier dead and hundreds of residents injured, displaced thousands more, and destroyed roads and infrastructure throughout the urban slum.”
Who were these 12 Palestinians? The Post fails to mention that all of them were combatants. Despite the IDF’s statement to that effect and Palestinian terror organizations claiming all of the 12, this relevant information does not appear in what is meant to be a backgrounder.
Both the IDF and the Palestinians of Hamas and the PIJ agree that all 12 Palestinians who were killed in Jenin belonged to terror groups. Why did Masih and Berger fail to mention this important fact? Surely it explains – justifies—the IDF’s successful attempt to “neutralize” all twelve. As for the number of Palestinians wounded, there were not “hundreds,” as Masih and Berger so carelessly claim, but rather, fewer than 150.
As for the “destroyed roads and infrastructure,” the article fails to note that the destruction resulted from the IDF having to use heavy bulldozers to unearth the roadside bombs and other ordinances planted by Palestinian terrorists, who deliberately turned civilian areas into military infrastructure, such as a vast weapons storage facility dug under a mosque.
The Washington Post reporters failed to explain that the Palestinian terror groups had sowed many of the roads in Jenin camp with IEDs, which made it seem that the IDF, in an act of inexplicable and wanton destruction, simply dug up the roads with bulldozers to make travel inside the Jenin camp hellish for drivers.
The Washington Post does, however, note that “U.N. experts described the Jenin operation as ‘collective punishment‘ for the Palestinian people, amounting to ‘egregious violations of international law.’”
Who are these so-called UN “experts?” They happen to be led by none other than Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, who has been widely condemned for antisemitism, sympathizing with terror organizations, dismissing Israeli security concerns, and comparing Israelis to Nazis.
Shouldn’t the reporters for The Washington Post have properly attributed the remark about “collective punishment” not to unnamed “experts,” but to the most anti-Israel, and indeed antisemitic, of UN officials, the malevolent Francesca Albanese? Albanese has received plenty of criticism for her anti-Israel bias, her diseased sympathy for both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and her palpable want of sympathy for Israel, as it tries to defend its civilian population from terrorists. She has repeatedly accused Israel of apartheid, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes. She has said that Israel is “keeping captive millions of civilians.” Albanese is so extreme that she has compared Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to how the Nazis treated Jews. In her view, the Nakba is no different from the Holocaust. Yes, of course, how could we forget those Israeli death camps into which Palestinians have been herded for decades, where they have been gassed to death, or shot at the edge of open pits into which they topple, or burned alive, or smothered in cattle cars, just as happened to six million Jews at the hands of the Nazis? Strange, then, isn’t it, that the Palestinian population of Gaza and the West Bank has increased from 1.3 million in 1967 to over five million today. Genocide? What genocide?
The husband of the “impartial” Francesca Albanese, Massimiliano Calì, shares her views. He, too, has compared the Palestinians to the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto resisting the Nazis. It’s not surprising to discover that he used to work for the Palestinian Authority, where he wrote a report on Israel’s “exploitative” policies.
The Post fails to mention that the overwhelming majority of the “more than 150 Palestinians killed by Israelis this year” were either combatants or members of terrorist organizations. It then states: “Palestinian fighters say they need arms to defend themselves against the Israeli occupation and military incursions into the camp, during which Palestinian civilians, including children, have been killed.”
Every one of the 12 Palestinians killed in Jenin was a combatant; the terror groups claim all of them as fighters. Among the wounded, there were some civilians. The Post states, without comment, that the Palestinian fighters are defending themselves “against the Israeli occupation and military incursions” into the camp. Shouldn’t it have explained that Israel’s incursion was a response to months of murderous attacks on Israeli civilians, such as the Yaniv brothers, and the mother and two daughters of the Dee family, by terrorists based in Jenin? It was the terrorists that initiated the violence; the IDF was merely acting in self-defense, hoping to largely disarm the terrorists, by entering Jenin to find and destroy enormous caches of weapons hidden throughout the camp.
But Palestinian terrorists in Jenin have used their arms not “to defend themselves against the Israeli occupation,” but to launch more than 50 attacks on Israelis, both in the West Bank and inside Israel, aimed mainly at civilians.
The Post also fails to mention the 27 Israelis murdered by Palestinians since the beginning of 2023, nearly all of whom have been civilians.
The “military incursions into the camp” are the direct result of these terror attacks, prompting the IDF to root out the nest of terrorism. Tragically, children have been killed but the Post fails to mention that some of these minors were 16 and 17-year-old combatants, sent by terrorist organizations to be used as child soldiers.
The three Palestinian minors who were killed were not innocent civilians; they already belonged to terror groups that have claimed them as their fighters. They were killed while attacking soldiers of the IDF.
Instead, without the context of the Palestinian wave of terror that necessitated military action, the Post simply says that “Since last spring, the Israeli military has been launching near-daily raids on Palestinian villages and towns; its operations in Jenin have been among the most brazen and deadly.”
The IDF “operations in Jenin” have been “among the most brazen and deadly.” The tone is condemnatory. There was no mention by The Washington Post as to why the IDF has been launching “near-daily raids” on Palestinian villages and towns — a gross exaggeration, by the way, of the frequency of such attacks – which have been, of course , in response to the terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians in Judea and Samaria. The Post ought to have written that “the IDF has launched more frequent raids on terrorist hideouts in Judea and Samaria, especially in the cities of Jenin and Nablus which are hotbeds of terrorists, in response to the rise in attacks.by Hamas and the PIJ.”
In the Post’s malign presentation, Israel is the onlie begetter of violence in Judea and Samaria. It initiates “near daily” attacks against the Palestinians, not in response to the terrorist attacks that are launched virtually every day against Israeli civilians, but out of a desire by Israel’s new administration to pander to the right-wing parties on which its continued existence depends — even though the IDF attacks began long before this new administration took power in Jerusalem. When the Palestinians attack, it is always in response to prior attacks by the IDF; this “tit-for-tat” begins with the IDF, and the Palestinians only respond by offering their well-justified “resistance.” For The Post, “Palestinian terrorism” apparently does not exist.
The Post is now giving The New York Times a run for its money in the anti-Israel sweepstakes. The winner gets to face The Guardian, which will decide which paper can do the most to blacken Israel’s image. And the winner of that contest goes head-to-head with Al Jazeera. It’s quite an unsavory galère. First prize is a night in Ramallah with Francesca Albanese. Second prize is two nights in Ramallah with Francesca Albanese. But you knew that was coming, didn’t you?
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