Washington Post apologizes for terrorism, atrocity

The Washington Post has always been a Democratic Party organ since its inception toward the end of the XIXth century. But now it has sunk to a new low. More than any other American big-city news organ – and nearly all such organs are guilty of this to one extent or another – The Washington Post sees fit to excuse terrorism – and even to apologize for atrocity. Recent editorial decisions leave no doubt about this – and certain people are questioning their earlier alliance with that paper.

The Washington Post pulls a cartoon

On November7, The Washington Post ran a cartoon critical of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Arabic Harakah al-Muqāwamah al-Islāmiyyah, abbreviated HAMAS), and specifically one of its leaders – the image doesn’t make clear which. Michael Ramirez, their regular cartoon artist, depicts this leader, with women and children bound to his body with several loops of rope, saying, “How dare Israel attack civilians…”

David Shipley, opinion editor at the Post, took that cartoon down, according to The Hill and Vanity Fair. Apparently several readers (actually staff, according to Erick-Woods Erickson) complained about the cartoon, crying “racism.” Shipley apologized to these unknown readers for “miss[ing] something profound and divisive” in the image.

What exactly did he miss? A Fairfax, Virginia reader with an Arabic-sounding name wrote in:

The caricatures employ racial stereotypes that were offensive and disturbing. Depicting Arabs with exaggerated features and portraying women in derogatory, stereotypical roles perpetuates racism and gender bias, which is wholly unacceptable.

Lay aside whether Arabs have slightly larger noses than non-Arabs. Does this reader really think non-Arabs (and non-Muslims) don’t know that Islam routinely relegates women to “derogatory, stereotypical roles”? Besides, that reader misses – or wants to hide – the larger point. Which is that HAMAS uses its civilian population as a shield. It locates communications, command and control facilities in hospitals, schools, and mosques. Considering the role of schools and mosques in Muslim societies, the second and third uses are probably appropriate. The hospital use is not. More to the point: that cartoon should have stayed. Taking it out hides an important truth. (Not to mention that the concept civilian is in fact foreign to Islam.)

Other examples of antisemitic slant

More recently, on Thanksgiving Day, The Washington Post ran a report on people who “have lost their jobs, or faced criticism or backlash, for their criticism of Israel.”

According to Fox News, that criticism has extended to apologizing for atrocity, or blaming Israel for it. CNAV has noticed this before, and this goes beyond “journalists” embedded with HAMAS when they committed their atrocities.

This criticism probably best expresses the outrage at such a slant:

Yesterday Becket Adams, writing in National Review, also rounded on the Post.

If “democracy dies in darkness,” good journalism dies in the care of radical journalists and lousy editors.

That first part refers to the Post’s motto.

At issue was a report that appeared on November 19, charging that the Israel Defense Forces deliberately fired on a Doctors Without Borders convoy evacuating premature babies from an unnamed hospital. This version of the report appears courtesy of the Wayback Machine – because the Post had to correct it later. The reason: Doctors Without Borders (In French, Médecins sans frontières, abbreviated MSF) never blamed the IDF for the attack on their convoy. So The Washington Post inserted that detail, then had to take it out. The Post also quoted a casualty figure for Gaza casualties – a figure that came from the HAMAS-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health.

Adams also noted that the Post, like The New York Times, promoted the false report that Israel had targeted a hospital with a missile. The missile, which fell on a parking lot, was a Palestinian misfire.

Further criticism

Matthew Kassell, writing in The Jewish Insider, summarized further criticism of The Washington Post, for their handling of stories about:

• Exchanges of hostages HAMAS took on October 7, for known terrorist operatives in Israeli prisons,
• Premature Palestinian infant now in the care of Israeli hospitals,
• The attack on the MSF convoy mentioned above, and
• The true extent of casualties on the Gaza side in the Fourth Arab-Israeli War.

These two posts illustrate the criticism:

CNAV would add this: Becket Adams said “something is wrong” at the Post. Well, something has always been wrong at that paper. A Democrat founded it, so it began as a Democrat rag in the term of President Rutherford Hayes. Eugene Meyer’s tenure as owner was the only time the Post was anything but a Democratic rag. When he died, his daughter Katherine Meyer Graham and son-in-law Phil Graham returned it to the Democratic fold. Katherine Graham was a personal friend of Saul (Rules for Radicals) Alinsky, and paid tribute to him in the pages of the Post.

But since Jeff Bezos bought the paper in 2013, it’s gotten worse. The Washington Post played its sordid role in the Nick Sandmann controversy. How much that cost it in a settlement with Sandmann, a judge won’t let anyone say. But even that pales in comparison to its apparent decision to apologize for atrocity.