Two recent reports by The Washington Post neatly encompass everything that is wrong with both the newspaper's coverage of the Israel-Islamist conflict and the paper's journalism itself.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Both dispatches appeared on the same day, May 10, and both were filed by the newspaper's Jerusalem bureau.

In a news report on an IDF counter-terrorist operation, the Post treated a terrorist-linked entity as a credible source. While ostensibly about IDF strikes aimed at taking out leaders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Gaza-based terror group, the article uncritically quoted casualty claims by "Palestinian health officials."

Later, the Post noted that "four women and four children were among those killed in the morning strikes, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry."

Yet, notwithstanding its innocuous sounding name, the "Palestinian Health Ministry" is run by Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group. It has a long history of lying to journalists, who – for some inexplicable reason – are more than willing to parrot its claims.

In a July 7, 2021 report for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, entitled "The Media in the 2021 Gaza War," Middle East analyst Lenny Ben-David noted that a "Hamas government body, the Health Ministry, was a primary source for international media outlets on the number of Gaza's dead and wounded" in that conflict. However, the statistics supplied by the Ministry were "unreliable."

Ben-David pointed out, "A study on Gazan casualties in the 2014 war published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs uncovered a Health Ministry official, Ashraf al-Kidra, who served as the 'keeper of the statistics.' Al-Kidra used a very broad definition of civilians, saying the term applied to 'anyone who had not been claimed by one of the armed groups as a member.' "

It makes perfect sense that a terrorist group would lie and manipulate casualty statistics for propaganda purposes. Indeed, that's part and parcel of what terrorist groups do across the world. Hamas itself has acknowledged as much. For example, in a 2018 interview, Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar admitted to Al-Jazeera that the group believed in "deceiving the public" for propaganda purposes.

Moreover, Hamas encourages civilian casualties.

The terror group has always targeted Israeli civilians and employed Palestinian human shields – a double war crime. The group has used schools to hide its weaponry, equipment and fighters. As recently as the 2014 conflict, Hamas used ambulances as "transport vehicles" and hospitals as "command centers." During the 2021 war, the group was infamously caught using the building that housed Associated Press offices for operations – a war crime that was obfuscated by news outlets like The Washington Post.

In short: Hamas runs the Health Ministry and it is in their interest both to encourage civilian deaths and to lie about them.

Why the Post's Jerusalem bureau seems to think it's in their reader's interest to treat Hamas-run entities as credible is a question worth asking.

As Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington DC-based think tank, noted, "If you are a journalist citing 'ministry of health' statistics out of Gaza, you might want to take some time off and reconsider your professional standards for sources."

Regrettably, the Post isn't interested in taking time off from misleading readers. The newspaper's story on the counter-terrorist operation came complete with a pull quote from Ismail Haniyeh, a top Hamas operative, which called terrorism "resistance."

Worse still, the Post continued its own well-worn habit of supplying misleading casualty statistics, claiming that "this year has been one of the deadliest in recent memory for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank."

The paper asserted that "since January, at least 95 casualties have been killed by Israeli security forces or settlers," whereas only "17 Israelis and one foreign national have been killed by Palestinians." But the overwhelming majority of Palestinians killed have been terrorists – a fact that was documented by nonpartisan think tanks like the FDD, among others, long before the Post's May 10 report.

Indeed, as the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center has highlighted, many of the slain Palestinians have been claimed by the terrorist groups themselves. By contrast, all of the Israelis were murdered by terrorists – and all, except one, were civilians.

It is abhorrent to conflate the victims of terrorists with slain terrorists when listing casualties.

Additionally, the Post's claim that "violence has intensified this year between Israel and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza under Netanyahu's new government" is misleading. As FDD's Schanzer and Joe Truzman detailed in a Feb. 24, 2023 Washington Examiner op-ed, the uptick in violence can be traced back to 2021 – before the current Netanyahu government.

Indeed, as the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) pointed out in a Nov. 18, 2021 op-ed, the violence has more to do with internal Palestinian upheavals than Israel's latest coalition. Current Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas reigns but barely rules. The PA-controlled West Bank is increasingly fragmented and Iranian-proxies like Hamas sense an opportunity to make inroads in the areas controlled by Fatah, their erstwhile rival.

But as CAMERA has noted, the Post doesn't really cover Palestinian internal matters unless Israel can be blamed. Palestinians are but cannon fodder for their columns. This attitude, and the Post's brazen contempt for basic journalistic standards, were evidenced in the Jerusalem bureau's other May 10 report.

That dispatch, entitled "A year after journalist's fatal shooting, report finds pattern of Israel inaction," regurgitated claims made by the Committee to Protect Journalists that, since 2001, the IDF has been responsible for the deaths of 20 reporters.

Yet according to CAMERA's Arabic department, no fewer than eight of those "reporters" have been linked to US-designated terrorist groups, serving their propaganda and media arms. Their levels of affiliation vary. As CPJ's own report notes, some worked for media outlets associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and others for Hamas.

One, Muhammad al-Bishawi, was killed inside the "Palestinian Center for Studies and Media" in Nablus, which even CPJ calls "a Hamas information office," during the assassination of Hamas official Jamal Mansour. According to his biography for the Hamas-affiliated students movement, of which he was a member, Bishawi was working at the center and Mansour was his boss. Another "journalist," Khaled Riyadh Hamad, was an operative of Hamas's Al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas itself refers to him as a "martyred Jihad warrior of Al-Qassam") and was buried wrapped in the movement's flag.

Sameh al-Aryan, Mahmoud al-Kumi, Ahmed Abu-Hussein, Yousef Abu-Hussein and Hussam Salama all worked for media outlets associated with the PFLP or Hamas.

CPJ itself notes as much, but The Washington Post failed to mention this salient fact.

Those who work for the media arms of terrorist groups like al-Qaida's Inspire Magazine or the Islamic State's Dabiq are certainly not considered "journalists" – even by the Post. Curiously, this standard is dropped when the terrorist groups in question have Israel as their primary target.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The PFLP and Hamas and their propaganda entities routinely celebrate the murders of Israeli civilians. That they're considered "reporters" by the CPJ is disqualifying.

The Post omits other relevant information, notably the fact that CPJ's report covers multiple wars and at least two intifadas (one of which lasted nearly five years and cost more than 1,000 Israelis their lives). Reporting from combat zones is inherently dangerous, particularly when terrorist groups use human shields or disguise themselves as journalists.

Indeed, although the newspaper doesn't mention it, there have been several instances of terrorists pretending to be journalists. In 2018, the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center published an open-source report entitled "Palestinians use indications of media affiliation to protect themselves during anti-Israel military activities and terrorist attacks," which documented this phenomenon. And as recently as the summer of 2022, a Palestinian journalist named Ghufran Hamed Warasneh attempted to stab IDF troops.

All of this seems relevant to the Post's report. But the paper seems incapable of telling the difference between terrorists and journalists, or terrorists and credible sources. That is a fact worth noting.

Featured on JNS.org, this article was first published by CAMERA. 

The post Does the Washington Post trust terrorists? appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

"History," as Mark Twain allegedly observed, "doesn't repeat. But it does rhyme." This adage is worth bearing in mind when looking at press coverage of the new government in Israel.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

After five elections in three years, a seemingly stable governing coalition has finally been formed with Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu at its head. This marks Netanyahu's third time as prime minister. The 73-year-old first entered the premiership in 1996. He has already surpassed David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister and a founding father, as the longest serving premier in the Jewish state's history.

In short: Netanyahu is a known quantity. And like countless prime ministers before him, he has made concessions to other political parties and leaders to form a ruling coalition. Such is the nature of parliamentary government, be it in Israel or elsewhere.

But many pundits are arguing that Israel is in peril. Take, for example, the Washington Post. In the span of one month, the newspaper's global opinion section has run two columns by Gershom Gorenberg darkly warning that the new "Israeli government is dangerous." Like others, Gorenberg highlights issues that he has with several members of some of the smaller parties included in the coalition. His concerns are shared by others, including Israelis and some who have good faith criticisms.

But the hyperbole is noteworthy. And it is hardly original.

Indeed, in 2011 Gorenberg wrote an entire book called "The Unmaking of Israel," in which he argued that Israeli democracy was under threat. Of course, in the intervening twelve years there hasn't been a shortage of elections or transfers of power. Indeed, there have been more elections in the 12 years since the book appeared than in the twelve years prior to its publication. One of the central claims of that book is the impending disenfranchisement of Arabs Israelis. Yet, subsequent years have seen political parties comprised largely of Arabs Israelis be decisive in electoral outcomes and key to forming coalitions.

Nor is Gorenberg alone in his predictions of doom and gloom. Countless pundits and analysts of varying motives and backgrounds have asserted that the end is near. For some, democracy seems to only be under threat when they don't get their desired electoral outcome. In these instances, exaggerated claims about the impending death of Israeli democracy set a worrying precedent. "It's only a democracy if my party/person wins" is hardly a healthy outlook that is conducive to a free and democratic society.

There's also a long history of such claims being made about Israel. More than four decades ago, several pundits also offered apocalyptic predictions about Israel's future.

The year 1977 was, by any metric, a watershed year in Israeli political history. For the first time, a ruling coalition was formed by the right. Since its recreation in 1948, the Jewish state had been led by the Labor Party and governed by coalitions dominated by the left. For three decades Israel was – arguably – effectively under one-party rule – although even then noteworthy concessions were made to other political parties, including religious ones.

Yet, 1977 witnessed the rise of Likud leader Menachem Begin. He was the political heir of Ben Gurion's chief political opponent in pre-state Israel, Ze'ev Jabotinsky. Ben Gurion had unfairly branded Jabotinsky a "fascist" – even disgustingly comparing him to Adolf Hitler. Regrettably, such discourse is still evident today in some circles.

Begin's election ushered in a new age. But many in the press were apoplectic.

The New York Times, for example, referred to the Likud as "ultraconservative" and Begin as "strident." These descriptions weren't meant to be complimentary. The newspaper's May 22, 1977 report also warned that the new coalition would severely hamper the prospects for peace in the region. Begin, the New York Times warned, had "hardline" views which didn't augur well for peace negotiations.

And, the Times added, "Arab figures agreed that the Likud victory would make a Middle East settlement more difficult to achieve."

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

A July 17, 1977 New York Times dispatch claimed: "Israel is sorely troubled." Begin, the Times story implied, had a troubling background. He had "terrifying credibility" as one Israeli analyst told the newspaper. The Washington Post seemed to concur. A May 19, 1977 report asserted that in the Knesset Begin had "ruled with an iron fist." After all, he had been "the leader of a violent Jewish terrorist group" during the era of British rule.

As for peace, the Times offered another prognostication:

"Some argue that Begin may be the right man at the right time for the difficult job of persuading the Israelis that major territorial concessions must be made, just as Richard Nixon was the man who made accommodation with Peking palatable. The problem with that line of thought is that the Nixon record is one of ideological shifts dependent upon changes in the political climate – pragmatism, for want of a nastier word. So far – and the record substantiates it over the years – Menahem Begin says what he means. And that, understandably enough, is disconcerting to those who sift through his utterances looking for nuances that could mean at least the readiness to contemplate something at least a little different from what he says."

The conventional wisdom was wrong – and not for the first time, as the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) has documented. Begin played a key role in the first major peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, popularly known as the Camp David Accords. And Begin proved willing to cede land in exchange for peace, as he did with a staged withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, which concluded in April 1982. And far from being a transitory leader, Begin held power for more than six years and brought a political realignment to Israel with ramifications that are still felt today. A key component of that realignment, and of Likud's victory, were the Sephardim, many of whom felt alienated and neglected by the Labor Party.

By any measure and metric, Israel today is more diverse, wealthier, and more powerful than it was at the time of its founding. But this hasn't stopped some, including former US President Barack Obama, from idealizing the past and hailing a "golden age" – one led by the Labor Party – that, for many Israelis, never existed. But the past tells us that humility, and not hyperbole, is usually a safer bet.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

The post Israeli democracy is far from dying appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

On Aug. 5, 2022, Israel launched a military operation to take out the leaders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Gaza-based, Iranian-backed terrorist group. Dubbed "Operation Breaking Dawn," the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) preemptively struck top PIJ operatives who were planning a major attack. On Aug. 7, 2022 an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire was declared.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

It is worth examining how one major US newspaper, The Washington Post, covered the conflict.

The Post's Aug. 5 dispatch, "Israeli strikes in Gaza kill senior militant leader, at least nine others" detailed the opening stages of the operation. Jerusalem bureau chief Steve Hendrix and reporters Shira Rubin and Hazem Balousha pointed out that the IDF strikes were launched after "several days of threats from militants in Gaza after the arrest of an Islamic Jihad leader in the West Bank earlier in the week."

Yet, "militants" is hardly an accurate description of PIJ, a US-designated terrorist group that calls for a Jewish genocide and Israel's destruction. As CAMERA has previously detailed, numerous news outlets, including the Washington Post, have a long-evidenced tendency to minimize the terrorist groups whose chief target is the Jewish state, often referring to them as "militants" instead of using a more precise term.

The Post also continued another long-running tradition. The newspaper uncritically cited casualty statistics provided by the "Palestinian Health Ministry" but failed to inform readers that that entity is wholly controlled and directed by Hamas, the US.designated terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip and which sometimes cooperates with its sometime rival, PIJ. Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad are backed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, the world's foremost state sponsor of terror.

The Post did note that tensions had been "growing" in the region after a "spate" of terrorist attacks perpetrated by Palestinians. In response, the IDF has been carrying out anti-terrorist raids. It was during one of these raids, the Post told readers, that "Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot, most likely by an Israeli soldier, according to investigations by the Palestinian Authority, the Washington Post and several international media organizations." However, this tidbit is noteworthy for what it doesn't say.

As CAMERA highlighted in a JNS op-ed, the PA's investigation claimed that Israel intentionally murdered Shireen Abu Akleh with a Ruger Mini-14 rifle – a weapon that the IDF isn't even known to field or use. The PA reached this conclusion despite not having access to any of the rifles. And the PA itself refused to cooperate with US and Israeli calls for a joint investigation, even refusing to turn over the bullet – effectively ending the clean chain of evidence that is required for an unbiased review of what happened. CAMERA has previously highlighted these inadequacies to Post staff but received no response.

Similarly, CAMERA has asked Post staff if the newspaper's investigation, which included audio analysis, accounted for the use of muzzle breaks, suppressors and different barrel lengths—all of which can change the audio signature. The Post did not respond.

Indeed, the newspaper's Aug. 5 dispatch even used the exact same language that terrorist groups use to sanitize their anti-Semitic violence. Discussing the IDF's counterterror raids, Post stenographers called Jenin, a town in the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank, an "area known for armed resistance." The decision to regurgitate language used by murderous terrorists is risible and should give every Post subscriber reason for a rethink.

The Post's Aug. 7 report repeated many of the same mistakes, once again treating claims by the "Palestinian Health Ministry" as credible and failing to fully inform readers of its Hamas ties. A "spokesman" for "Gaza's Interior Ministry" was also quoted – and yet again the newspaper failed to tell readers that this too is a Hamas entity. By contrast, Jews who seek to pray at the Temple Mount – the holiest site in Judaism – were described as "politically active" and others were called "far right."

Many Palestinians killed during "Operation Breaking Dawn" died when rockets fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad fell short. In one instance, footage shared by the IDF clearly shows PIJ rockets falling short and killing several Palestinians, including children, in Jabaliya.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The video footage is quite clear and organizations like CAMERA have documented the toll that Islamic Jihad's rockets have taken on Palestinians. But the Post only briefly notes this fact, writing:

"In the refugee camp of Jabaliya, in the northern Gaza Strip, an explosion on Saturday night killed at least four children. The Israeli military, which shared satellite footage of rocket fire from the enclave, said that the fatalities were the result of a failed Islamic Jihad rocket launch and that it did not conduct an airstrike at the time of the blast. It said it was still investigating the circumstances of an explosion in Jabaliya on Sunday morning."

But perhaps the most inflammatory aspect of the Washington Post's coverage of "Operation Breaking Dawn" was the headline of the paper's Aug. 8 report: "Israel cheers its wins, Gaza mourns its dead as cease-fire holds." This neatly summarizes the Post's narrative-driven reporting: Gaza, without independent agency, suffers while Israel grotesquely celebrates. Yet, few Israelis are celebrating having to live next to an enclave whose ruling powers reject peace and seek a Jewish genocide.

Indeed, as CAMERA's Tamar Sternthal has documented, more than one million Israelis were forced to flee and hide, often with their children and other loved ones, in bomb shelters. That should be news. But not for the Washington Post, which perennially ignores the plight of Israelis subjected to Jew-hatred and terror, while often personalizing Palestinians who experience loss because of their rulers' fanatical anti-Semitism.

The same dispatch repeats all of the Post's previous errors and omissions, referring to the Gaza Strip as merely "militant-controlled." And once again the Post failed to note that many – perhaps most – of the Palestinians killed in "Operation Breaking Dawn" died because of terrorist-launched rockets falling short. Operatives for Hamas were once again uncritically quoted as merely "Palestinian officials" and the "Gaza Health Ministry." Incontrovertible footage provided by the IDF of rockets falling short was described by the Post as merely a "dispute" – effectively placing the claims of US-designated terrorist groups on equal footing with Israeli officials.

To the Post's credit, the Aug. 8 report did end by highlighting and describing Iran's support for PIJ, noting that the Islamic Republic gave the group its "full support" during the fighting. The dispatch did also, if briefly and belatedly, note the specifics that led the IDF to launch the operation in the first place.

The battle began, the newspaper told readers, when "Israel launched preemptive airstrikes against Islamic Jihad, which it said had positioned snipers and antitank missiles at the border to kill Israeli soldiers and civilians." Amazingly, it took the paper several days – until the very end of "Operation Breaking Dawn" – to reveal these details to readers.

Washington Post coverage of "Operation Breaking Dawn" showcased the newspaper's well-worn habit of misleading omissions and minimizing the aims and objectives of terrorist groups while willingly disseminating propaganda pushed by genocidal anti-Israel terrorist organizations. The suffering of Israelis is, like the willingness of these groups to sacrifice their own people, largely ignored.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

The post Breaking Dawn, as reported by The Washington Post appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Iran, it has often been said, is willing to fight to the last Arab. The Islamic Republic's long-standing policy of using Arabs to fight its proxy wars has been, it seems, extended to the Jewish state. And Israeli Arabs are paying the price.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Many of Israel's Arab communities have seen a spike in violent crime in recent months and years. In 2013, for example, there were 58 homicides. But by 2020, that number stood at 97 – an astounding increase. That year, The Times of Israel observed, was officially Israeli Arabs' "deadliest year in recent memory."

The epidemic of violence attracted considerable coverage from news outlets, both foreign and domestic. The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others, have devoted news and editorial space to the crime spree. Much of the press attention, however, has focused on the supposed social inequities – both real and imagined – which have allegedly fueled the violence.

"The wave of violence," The Washington Post claimed in an October 2019 report, "has prompted outrage in the country's Arab communities, near-daily protests and accusations that law enforcement protects some Israelis more than others." Two years later, an October 2021 New York Times dispatch warned that "killing of Arabs by Arabs has soared," but "the prevailing assumption, an official said, was 'as long as they are killing each other, that's their problem.'"

The news media narrative is clear: Even when Israeli Arabs shoot each other, it is somehow and in some way still the fault of the Jewish state.

The post Iran is willing to fight to the last Israeli Arab appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

"One of the lessons that we learn from studying Jewish history," the historian Paul Johnson observed, "is that anti-Semitism corrupts the people and societies possessed by it." Lebanon offers a tragic case in point.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Aug. 4 marked the one-year anniversary of the Port of Beirut explosion, in which a large amount of ammonium nitrate exploded, killing at least 218 people, injuring hundreds more and leaving thousands homeless. The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that Hezbollah – the Iranian-backed, US-designated terrorist group – may be to blame. And Lebanon's government, which is de facto controlled by Hezbollah, shows little interest in allowing a fair and impartial investigation.

Indeed, Lebanon is in dire straits.

The Associated Press reported on June 30 that the country's pound had taken a "nose dive," and banks had clamped down on withdrawals and transfers while hyperinflation had "flared." Lebanon is also enduring a shortage of medical supplies and drugs. An energy crisis has affected Internet connectivity, resulting in businesses closing their doors and reduced government services. Beirut's International Airport has ceased to function normally, and hospitals and clinics have had to close. Wages have stagnated and in many instances declined. Gunfights have erupted over gas shortages, as armed smugglers attempt to meet the needs of a growing black market.

Writing for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Jacques Neriah, the former deputy head of assessment for Israeli military intelligence, observed that "Lebanon's middle class has been wiped out." The nation, wrote Neriah, finds itself in extreme poverty with the "former middle class" making "up part of the 50% of Lebanese who have fallen into poverty in the last year."

It's worth asking how the Levantine state got into such a predicament.

Constructed from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, Lebanon was ruled by the French until it was given independence in 1943. The state's multi-confessional structure, in which power was shared between Christians and Shia and Sunni Muslims, resulted in a tenuous balance that began to show signs of decomposition a little more than a decade after statehood.

Nonetheless, for the first three decades of its independence, Lebanon enjoyed a reputation as the "Paris of the Middle East," and was both a top tourist and cultural destination. During the 1960s, the country was synonymous with five-star hotels, was home to legendary cafes and nightclubs, and was frequented by Hollywood celebrities and models.

An Egyptian dictator and a Palestinian terrorist would help undo it all.

Arab nationalism, embodied by Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, was repudiated by Israel's victory in the Six-Day War in June 1967. The forces of Fatah – a Palestinian movement formed in 1959 in Kuwait – began to gain ground, particularly after a battle against Israeli forces on March 21, 1968.

To regain its hold and credibility, Nasser began to boost Fatah and its leader, Yasser Arafat. Soon, Arafat gained control of the Palestine Liberation Organization, an umbrella group that Nasser had created in 1964 to coopt Palestinian nationalism for his own ends. As the new head of the PLO, Arafat proved to be vastly more devious and ambitious than Ahmad Shukeiri, the organization's inaugural leader.

After the Six-Day War, Arafat and the PLO were given safe haven in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which they used to plan and perpetrate attacks against Israelis. But the PLO succeeded in setting up a "state within a state," threatening Jordan's stability. Eventually, after a bloody battle with Jordanian forces, in September 1970 the PLO was forced out of the kingdom.

However, Arafat and his henchmen had set their sights on another nation to use as a forward operating base: Lebanon. Nasser had pressured Lebanon's government to allow PLO operatives the use of Southern Lebanon. Unofficially known as the Cairo Agreement, the accord placed more than a dozen Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon under the control of the PLO. With the PLO losing Jordan as a primary base of operations, Arafat's influence in Lebanon only grew. As the military historian Richard Gabriel observed, "the seeds of the future conflict in Lebanon were sown."

A half-century – and more – of bloodshed would follow.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The influx of Palestinians and the growing power of the PLO, whose coffers were filled with money from the oil-rich Gulf States and the Soviet Union, were contributing factors to the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon. The internecine conflict began in 1975 and lasted 15 years, devastating the country.

The Palestinian terrorist groups contributed immeasurably to the destruction. Their attacks on Israel, as well as on Jews living abroad, prompted two Israeli incursions, beginning with the more limited "Operation Litani" in March 1978 and the more extensive "Operation Peace for Galilee" in June 1982. The latter achieved its objective of expelling the PLO from Lebanon, but failed to achieve the more ambitious goals of some Israeli cabinet officials, like Ariel Sharon, who wanted a peace agreement signed and ratified between the Jewish state and a Christian government in Lebanon.

Other viciously antisemitic terrorist groups would soon take the PLO's place.

As the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) documented in both The National Interest and The Jerusalem Post, in the 1970s the PLO helped train the nucleus of what was to become Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' (IRGC) Quds Force. This entity would soon birth Hezbollah, a genocidal, antisemitic terror group that, like the Quds Force and the PLO, sought the destruction of the Jewish state.

Hezbollah would gain in both power and popularity, launching attacks against the West and Israel. The terrorist organization would use its base in Lebanon to perpetuate and plan attacks, while simultaneously fighting with the Israeli Defense Forces in Southern Lebanon.

Other terrorist groups, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Al-Qaida, would receive training from the IRGC in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. And the wreckage created by these groups would extend far beyond Lebanon's shores and the Middle East.

Armed, equipped and funded by the mullahs in Tehran, Hezbollah would, like the PLO before it, create a "state within a state," helping turn Iran's imperial dreams into the Middle East's nightmare.

Analysts Tony Badran and Jonathan Schanzer have observed that Lebanon, once a safe haven for terrorist organizations, is now "fully intertwined with one." Hezbollah, Badran noted in December 2020, "is the state."

Indeed, Lebanon's President Michel Aoun is "backed by Hezbollah," as even The Washington Post acknowledged. Aoun, who also serves as commander in chief of the Lebanese Armed Forces has declared that Hezbollah's growing arsenal is "not in contradiction with the state."

In the four decades since its rise, Hezbollah has taken a broken country and managed to make things even worse. Wars, state-sponsored crime and misuse of copious amounts of international aid have followed. While the failure of Lebanon has many causes, it can fairly be said that antisemitism has played a key role in the country's deterioration.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org

The post Antisemitism helped destroy Lebanon appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Writing in Politico magazine, Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky proclaim that "elections have consequences" and herald that US President Joe Biden "will end the Trump sugar high for Israel and Saudi Arabia."

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Both Miller and Sokolsky have decades of public service to their credit, serving in Republican and Democratic administrations alike. Their years of service should be commended. But both, regrettably, have failed to learn either from their experience or from recent events.

First, Miller and Sokolsky assert that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have the "two biggest egos" in the Middle East. While certainly subjective – and prime ministers and princes are not usually known for their humility – this claim omits the dictatorship in Tehran, where both the power and likeness of Iran's self-styled "Supreme Leader," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are omnipresent.

It is unsurprising that the two analysts omitted Khamenei. The rest of their op-ed reveals an inability to recognize the strategic challenges that confront the United States in the Middle East.

Iran is the main threat plaguing the US in the region. Long listed as a chief state sponsor of terrorism, the Islamic Republic has, in recent years alone, plotted to blow up a restaurant in Washington, DC, murdered US servicemembers in Iraq and Afghanistan, planned attacks at major US airports and power grids, and sheltered and supplied both Al-Qaida and Al-Qaida in Iraq, the progenitor of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Tehran has also acted as arguably the greatest imperialist power in the world, with its proxies seizing power in Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, and to a different extent, Syria.

While Iran lacks the conventional military power of previous US adversaries like the Soviet Union, it has shown no great reluctance to export its ideology and to act as a foil against the West. The US won the Cold War against the Soviets thanks in part to regional alliances and allies – both democratic and undemocratic. Allies are also required to fight back against Iran. As Middle East analyst Mike Doran observed in a Feb. 4 Wall Street Journal op-ed: A "normal policy" in the region "would respect the fundamental commandment of statecraft: strengthen friends and punish enemies."

While this dictum seems like common sense, it escapes Miller and Sokolsky, both of whom incorrectly assert that when it comes to the Trump administration and Saudi Arabia and Israel: "Never in the history of US relations with either country has so much been given with so little asked for in return – and with so much bad behavior swept under the rug."

Indeed, a key part of the Trump administration's strategy was to rely on these regional allies to counter Iran – all while seeking to reduce the US footprint in the Middle East. And both Israel and the Saudis have been fighting Iran and its proxies in battlefields across the Middle East.

The two analysts also assert: "Without making Israel earn US favors with any concessions of its own, the Trump administration orchestrated a campaign of maximum pressure on Iran; declared Jerusalem Israel's capital and opened an embassy there; turned a blind eye to Israel's settlement expansion; recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights; promulgated a peace plan that all but conceded 30 percent of the West Bank to Israel before negotiations with Palestinians had even begun; downgraded US diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Authority; drastically curtailed US assistance to the Palestinian people; and perhaps most significantly, made a major effort to facilitate normalization between Israel, the Gulf states and other Arab countries."

Trump, however, didn't "declare" Jerusalem to be "Israel's capital." He merely recognized reality and implemented the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act – a two-decades-old piece of congressional legislation, passed with bipartisan support, which acknowledged that Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish state. Recognizing "Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights" was similarly recognizing reality as well as the strategic need to deny a key area to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Iran. Would Miller and Sokolsky have preferred that the Golan go to the genocidal Assad – thus rewarding another state sponsor of terror who helped ferry men and materiel to murder Americans in Iraq? Had the Golan gone to Syria in the 1990s – something which many of Miller's colleagues pushed for – it would've likely wound up in the hands of ISIS.

Nor did the administration "downgrade US diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Authority." Rather, the PA itself effectively chose to do so when it refused to stop paying salaries to terrorists and declined to resolve outstanding issues in bilateral negotiations – actions which violated the Oslo Accords that Miller, among others, helped broker.

 Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

Finally, it is true that the Trump administration helped foster peace between Israel and several Muslim nations. But it is odd to view this as a "gift from the United States." Not only do the Abraham Accords help shore up US collective security in the region – thus serving American regional interests – but peace between Israel and Arab states is a longstanding objective of the United States. Indeed, it was also one of the chief goals of self-styled "peace processers" like Miller who tried for three decades and, with the exception of Jordan (whose Hashemite rulers had secret relations with Israelis that predated the Jewish state's formal recreation in 1948), failed to achieve it.

Three-plus decades of "peace processing" and very little peace to show for it. One can't begrudge Miller and his like-minded colleagues for trying, but one can certainly lament their failure to learn from the past.

Miller and Sokolsky also lament US arms sales to the Gulf allies, authorized, in part, as part of the Abraham peace process. Yet, as CAMERA has noted, arms sales were part of previous peace agreements. Indeed, American military aid to Egypt – promised as part of a peace deal with Israel – was among the largest in US history. That aid wasn't meant just as a reward for reaching peace with the Jewish state – it was also meant to assist a US ally in the war against Soviet aggression. Similarly, military aid to the Gulf states is also meant to help counter Iranian imperialism.

Elsewhere, the two analysts speculate that a "reset" in relations with the kingdom and Israel "would likely focus on injecting real accountability for actions Israel takes on the ground toward Palestinians and some conditionality with respect to US assistance should Israel ignore American expectations."

Biden, they suggest, could "call for a comprehensive settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, opposing all construction beyond the 1967 lines, including east Jerusalem, as inconsistent with international law. The US would not expend effort defending Israel in the UN and other international organizations from actions resulting from its settlement activities. And Washington would enforce its longstanding determination that no US government funds could be used to support settlement activity and establish a monitoring mechanism to ensure compliance with this requirement. Biden would also make clear that any Israeli initiative designed to annex territory would result in severe consequences, including a potential cut-off of assistance or recognition of Palestinian statehood."

To a great extent, this laundry list is a repeat of the Obama administration strategy which, as Shany Mor noted in a recent Mosaic article, was the first in decades to fail to produce substantiative Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. By any and all accounts, it failed. Such actions only alienated a key ally while simultaneously emboldening shared enemies like Iran and Assad.

As Mor observed, American peace processers like Miller have shown that they are more motivated by moral impulses than policies informed by reality and history. With decades of failures to their credit, their advice reads more like a list of what not to do and can—and should – be safely ignored.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org

The post In 'Politico,' peace processors offer bad advice appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

The PA, which rules over the majority of Palestinians, has prohibited all Palestinian NGOs from cooperating with foreign funders who want to put anti-terror clauses in their funding. And, as the blogger Elder of Ziyon has documented, "if any Palestinian NGO signs a clause" saying "that they will not hire or fund terrorists, they will be prosecuted under Palestinian law." In an Oct. 13 blog, the blogger highlights a story that many missed.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter 

The head of the PA's Civil Society Organizations Commission, Maj. Gen. Sultan Abu al-Enein, warned NGOs not to accept funding that was conditional on their forswearing terrorism. As Palestine Today reported:

"Abu Al-Enein said that there are intense contacts that some countries or international institutions are making, through civil work, to sign documents that harm the fundamentals of our Palestinian people, in return for financing their programs and societal and cultural activities.

He said that the acceptance by some civil institutions of this conditional funding would be a blow to the steadfastness positions announced by the Palestinian leadership at the level of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the national and Islamic action factions."

Al-Enein warned that organizations who accept the conditional funding would be guilty of "national betrayal and a departure from the national ranks, and will not pass without punishment." Authorities "will work to prosecute these institutions … and expose those in charge of them in front of the Palestinian public." These threats – Palestinian leaders have a history of persecuting those who support "normalization" instead of violence and these threats illustrate a growing concern on the PA's part.

And the PA has reason to be worried. Some Palestinian NGOs have links to terrorist organizations – a fact that several European donors are finally seeking to address.

Many of these "nonprofits" have been exposed by NGO Monitor, an organization that researches NGOs operating in the realm of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Several have ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation for Palestine (PFLP), which is designated as a terrorist group by the United States, the European Union, Canada and Israel. One infamous example, highlighted by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) and others, is the Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P).

As NGO Monitor has documented, the president of DCI-P's General Assembly, Nasser Ibrahim, is the former editor of El Hadaf, the PFLP's weekly publication. DCI-P board members and employees, past and present, include no fewer than 10 individuals with links to the PFLP. For example, the secretary of DCI-P's board, Fatima Daana, is the widow of the commander of PFLP's Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades. One DCI-P employee, Hashem Abu Maria, was celebrated by the PFLP as a "commander" of the terrorist group after his 2014 death.

DCI-P's questionable links haven't prevented the group from being uncritically cited by some major news outlets. Indeed, per a leaked version of their itinerary, Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) intended to meet with DCI-P officials in their summer 2019 trip to Israel, which was subsequently canceled. Regrettably, DCI-P has even made it to the Hill itself. Despite the links to the PFLP, the group has been cited favorably as a source in legislation sponsored by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.).

Indeed, as further evidence of how pervasive the problem is that planned trip to Israel, which was labeled as "Palestine" in the itinerary, was sponsored by Miftah, a Palestinian nonprofit organization that has praised suicide bombers and published op-eds claiming that Jews consume Christian blood.

As CAMERA noted at the time, amid all the news coverage of Omar's and Tlaib's planned trip, Miftah's troubling history was often overlooked. Worse still, Miftah's founder, Hanan Ashrawi, a former PA Minister of Higher Education, has continued to appear as a talking head on major news networks.

Several countries and entities contribute to Palestinian NGOs in hopes of advancing peace. But it is clear that many of these organizations are doing the precise opposite. Yet there are signs that some foreign donors are waking up.

In July 2020, for example, the Dutch government halted $9.4 million in funding to the Union of Agricultural Work Committee (UAWC), which a USAID audit has described as the "agricultural arm" of the PFLP. Recent years have also seen Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and others cut funds to NGOs that are involved in "racist, anti-Semitic or hate incitement actions," as the Swiss Parliament noted in March 2017.

It is both damning and revealing that many Palestinian civil-society organizations have links to, or vocally support, those whose stated aim is the destruction of the world's sole Jewish state. The PA, however, clearly wants it this way. And until there is a reckoning with the PA and its own objectives, its hate for Israel will remain endemic and widely broadcast. Indeed, in some cases, it might even be tax-deductible.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

 Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post 'Only terrorists need apply' for Palestinian NGOs appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

In a 997-word dispatch, the Post's World Views columnist, Ishaan Tharoor, engages in heavy-handed historical revisionism, omitting key facts and details about Israel, Palestinians, international law and the so-called "peace process." Tharoor darkly warns, "Israeli authorities may cross the geopolitical Rubicon" as "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu still appears bent on beginning the annexation of territory in the West Bank."

   Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

But Tharoor's terminology is inaccurate. As the renowned international law scholar Eugene Kontorovich has noted: "Annexation in international law specifically means taking the territory of a foreign sovereign country." And neither the Jordan Valley nor the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) belongs to a "foreign sovereign country."

Elsewhere, Tharoor refers to the land in question as "Palestinian territories." But this is also inaccurate. No sovereign Palestinian Arab state has ever existed. Indeed, as The Wall Street Journal, among others, noted in a May 16, 2020 correction that was prompted by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis: "Under the Oslo accords, sovereignty over the West Bank is disputed, pending a final peace settlement."

No final peace settlement has occurred, as Palestinian Arab leaders have rejected numerous US and Israeli offers for statehood in exchange for peace, in 2000 at Camp David, 2001 at Taba, and 2008 after the Annapolis Conference, among other instances. More recently, the Palestinian Authority, which rules the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), has rejected US proposals to restart negotiations in 2014, 2016, and 2019.

As part of the 1990s' Oslo peace process, Israel withdrew from much of the West Bank and supported—indeed, helped fund—the creation of the PA, the first instance of limited Palestinian self-government in history. In exchange, Palestinian leaders promised to refrain from supporting terrorism, to recognize Israel's right to exist, and engage in bilateral negotiations—promises that they soon broke. The PA has refused US and Israeli demands to end its "pay-to-slay" program, which pays salaries to those who attack and murder Jews. Many of the murderers are memorialized as "martyrs" with streets and sports teams named after them. And the PA's official media routinely denies Israel's right to exist, referring to all of the Jewish state as "Palestine."

Indeed, on June 16, 2020—the same day that Tharoor's column appeared—two important, but overlooked, stories broke. AFP reported that PA leader Mahmoud Abbas ordered his security services to destroy documents that, the news agency speculated, might give Israelis proof of the Authority's support for terror. Meanwhile, The Times of Israel reported that the European Union canceled a grant to a Palestinian nonprofit, the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Rights and Residency, which had "refused to sign a so-called anti-terrorism clause that would obligate it to ensure that none of the funding goes to members of terrorist organizations." The Post failed to report either of these developments.

But curiously, in a nearly 1,000-word article warning that "annexation" could doom the chance for a Palestinian Arab state—creating "a Palestinian Bantustan, an archipelago of disconnected islands of territory"—Tharoor completely omits the real reason for the lack of a Palestinian state: Palestinian rejectionism and support for terrorism.

Regrettably, this is par for the course for Tharoor. As CAMERA has highlighted, the World Views columnist has authored no fewer than three-dozen articles on the Jewish state, nearly all of them blaming Israel for the lack of a Palestinian state. Not once has he so much as hinted at the culpability of Palestinian leadership.

Instead, Tharoor resorts again to old habits, warning that with "annexation" the "specter of entrenched apartheid looms." This is not the first time that Tharoor has used the apartheid canard. For example, in a Sept. 17, 2019 column, The Washington Post columnist warned of a "shadow of apartheid" in Israel's upcoming elections. Instead, that election witnessed record turnout from Israeli Arabs—disproving Tharoor's entire thesis less than 48 hours after it was published.

Indeed, more Arabs vote in Israel than in the neighboring PA, which hasn't held elections in more than a decade. Jews are forbidden, under penalty of death, to rent or own land in areas ruled by the PA That is actual apartheid. But it's not what Tharoor, who has previously labeled terror supporter Issa Amaro a "Palestinian Gandhi," wants to write about.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

Tharoor's claim, that Israel applying sovereignty to parts of the West Bank and the Jordan Valley violates "international law" is also incorrect. The League of Nations Palestine Mandate, adopted later by the United Nations, calls for "close Jewish settlement on the land" west of the Jordan River in Article 6. The UN Charter, Chapter XII, Article 80, upholds the Mandate's provisions. The 1920 San Remo Resolution and the 1924 Anglo-American Convention also enshrined Jewish territorial claims into international law.

"We live in a time," Bernard Lewis observed, "where great energies are being devoted to the falsification of history." Regrettably, that falsification often starts with what the late Post publisher Philip Graham called "the first rough draft of history": journalism.

 Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

The post Washington Post amnesia on Israel and 'annexation' appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Ninety-five percent of American Jews have a "strongly positive" view of Israel, according to an August 2019 Gallup poll. The pollster noted that this was "significantly more pro-Israel than the overall national averages of 71% favorable views of Israel and 21% favorable views of the Palestinian Authority."

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Similarly, a 2013 Pew survey observed: "76% of Jews (identified by religion) said they were at least somewhat emotionally attached to Israel. In addition, almost half said that caring about Israel is an essential part of being Jewish (with most of the rest saying it is important although not essential) and nearly half reported that they had personally traveled to Israel."

In short: American Jewry is, except for a minuscule minority, pro-Israel. Yet, the American media often chooses to give a megaphone to Jews that actively oppose, or are hypercritical of, the Jewish state.

The Washington Post, for example, gives inordinate column space to the tiny fraction of Jews, American and otherwise, who are against the right of Jewish self-determination. In a Sept. 20, 2019 tweet, Mairav Zonszein of +972 magazine cheered that her publication was "all up in The Washington Post opinion pages today," with two pieces from the same organization appearing on the same day. Zonszein proudly noted that editors of "mainstream outlets" were no longer editing out or tweaking her use of the term "apartheid."

As NGO Monitor has documented, "972's articles promote a marginal agenda from the fringes of Israeli discourse, thus presenting a distorted sense of the debate in Israel." The blog-based magazine "promotes the Durban strategy to demonize and delegitimize Israel" and its writers and contributors have accused the Jewish state of "apartheid," "ethnic cleansing" and "racism." Indeed, the magazine's content is completely self-discrediting and its donors are largely foreign and anti-Israel.

A previous editor-in-chief, Noam Sheila, referred to his critics as "the Jewish KKK" and in May 2012, +972 published a cartoon that depicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raping US President Barack Obama and eating his limbs. In May 2019, they published an article titled "By going vegan, Israelis can avoid talking about human rights."

Elsewhere, The Post has published opinion pieces by Jewish Voice for Peace, described by the Anti-Defamation League as "a radical anti-Israel activist group that advocates for a complete economic, cultural and academic boycott of the state of Israel." JVP, ADL's report on the group notes, has celebrated Palestinian terrorists like Rasmea Odeh and Marwan Barghouti.

As ADL highlighted: "According to a Pew research report from 2017, a majority of American Jews state that they are 'attached to Israel and that caring about Israel is either "essential" or "important" to what being Jewish means to them.' JVP's rhetorical drumbeat promoting the view that Zionism and supporting Israel is of a piece with white supremacy, racism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, has the effect of demonizing this constituency of US Jews."

The Post, nonetheless, has given a platform to JVP members, particularly in its Outlook section. The newspaper has published Rebecca Vilkomerson, the group's then-executive director, and Post columnists like Ishaan Tharoor and Eugene Scott have cited the group as representative of "progressive American Jews" – overlooking that most American Jews are both left-leaning and supportive of Israel. JVP is fringe.

But that's not how The Washington Post sees it. The newspaper wants to believe, facts to the contrary, that many Jews are disdainful of the Jewish state. Why? Because The Post believes that they should be. In its worldview, Israel is largely responsible for the lack of peace. And Arabs, The Post's coverage implies, are without agency or responsibility.

On Sept. 25, 2019, Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, announced that he would soon set a date for elections. Abbas's announcement is newsworthy; the PA hasn't held elections since 2006 and Abbas himself is in the fourteenth year of a four-year term. Several leading news outlets covered his remarks, including Times of Israel, Haaretz, and The Jerusalem Post. The Washington Post, however, did not.

Instead, the newspaper published a 1,000-word "report" about how "Palestinian artists in the locked-down Gaza Strip are inspired by works they may never get to see."

Indeed, when the newspaper isn't busy painting either Israeli Arabs or Palestinian Arabs as victims, it's omitting key facts.

Take, for example, the newspaper's Sept. 25, 2019 report "Are Arab Israelis having their moment." The dispatch, by correspondent Ruth Eglash and Jerusalem bureau chief Steve Hendrix, noted that a "surge of Arab voters proved decisive in denying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the parliamentary seats he needed" in Israel's September 2019 elections.

Arab citizens of Israel enjoy equal political rights and are equally represented in leading industries and government, including the Knesset, where the Arab-led Joint List is the third-largest party. In fact, for the second time in six months, more Arabs voted in the Jewish state than in neighboring Arab countries. Nonetheless, The Post uncritically quoted the leader of the Joint List, Ayman Odeh, who claimed: "No one will give us the equality that we deserve, so we are going to take it for ourselves."

The newspaper also noted that some in Israel have concerns with the Joint List – but The Post didn't offer any details as to why this might be the case.

As Tablet magazine documented in a Sept. 23, 2019 report, "The Joint List, sadly, remains a vehemently anti-Zionist party whose members have often expressed their support for convicted terrorists." Reporter Liel Liebovitz noted that Joint List member Haba Yazbak has praised convicted terrorists on Facebook and supported an Arab citizen of Israel who was indicted for spying on behalf of Hezbollah, the Iranian-controlled Lebanese terrorist group.

The party's co-leader, Mtanes Shehadah, "started 2019 by posting a photo of himself hugging Samir Sarsawi, a terrorist who had spent 30 years in jail for throwing hand grenades on Jewish pedestrians in Haifa. Shehadah called Sarsawi 'a political prisoner.' He was introduced to voters at an event earlier this year that began with attendees singing the Palestinian national anthem and offering greetings to Azmi Bishara, the former Arab MK who fled the country after being accused of spying for Hezbollah, and Bassel Ghattas, another Arab MK who has served a prison sentence for smuggling cellphones to a convicted Palestinian terrorist."

Another top Joint List member, Ahmad Tibi, was previously an adviser to archterrorist Yasser Arafat. Tibi has consorted with genocidal dictators that seek Israel's destruction, like Syria's Bashar Assad. And in 2012, the Knesset's Ethics Committee reproached Tibi for "cheering on terrorism and violence" after he gave a speech in Ramallah that referred to Israelis as "occupiers" and slain terrorists as "martyrs."

Yet, The Post consistently omits this crucial context, preferring instead to cast Israeli concerns as overblown and the Arabs as victims. The newspaper isn't about to let facts get in the way of its narrative.

This article first appeared on the CAMERA website and is reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

The post The Washington Post doesn't let facts get in its way appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

As Washington Examiner editor Seth Mandel detailed in a must-read Twitter thread, Kagan's argument is a "master class in straw men, undefined terms, nut-picking, outsourcing and historical ignorance."

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Kagan cites "Israeli foreign policy," which he claims has been trending in an "anti-liberal direction," as evidence of the Jewish state's budding authoritarianism. For proof, he lists several very different governments that Israel has varying degrees of relations with. Israel has worked to establish ties with Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro, Poland's Law and Justice Party, and Russia's President Vladimir Putin. Israel, he notes, has also "consistently provided strong support for" Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. It has also offered a Chinese state-owned firm a contract on Haifa Port and "provided a state visit" for the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte.

Kagan even throws India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the United Kingdom's new prime minister, Boris Johnson, into the mix. Somehow, by establishing close relations with these democracies, Israel is being fundamentally anti-democratic.

Worse still, the writer fails to note that much of the West, including the United States, has ties to many of these same countries. Plenty of Western nations hold state visits for less than reputable leaders and do business with Chinese state-owned firms, including charter members of what Kagan questionably considers to be the "Western liberal order," like France and Germany. Indeed, anti-Semitism is skyrocketing in many of the countries that constitute the European Union.

Kagan fails to explain why Israel – and Israel alone – should be held to a different standard.

The writer's decision to castigate Israel for establishing close relations with its Arab neighbors is particularly bizarre. Israel doesn't have the luxury of picking and choosing its regional alliances. All three countries he names are, as the United States has recognized, crucial to countering Iran, which seeks regional hegemony and Israel's destruction. All three were once hostile to Israel, and in years past either directly attacked or supported attacks against the Jewish state. It's odd that Kagan would lament Israel having better relations with them.

As for Russia, Israel has little choice: The country is active in Syria, on Israel's border – a fact that occurred, in large measure, because America and the "Western liberal order" allowed it to happen without pushback. Israel must deal with the consequences of that decision. For Israel to strike the Iranian-backed terror groups that reside in Syria requires relations with Russia. Without such contacts, a larger-scale conflict could break out.

Contrary to what Kagan asserts, relations with illiberal nations are hardly new. As Mandel points out, in the early years of its existence, Israel established ties with the Shah's Iran, and the military dictatorships of Turkey and imperial Ethiopia. Then, as now, democracy wasn't in abundance in the Middle East, and Israel made do with the alliances that it could get in an often-hostile part of the world. Israel has made alliances with illiberal countries – just as the United States did in World War I (czarist Russia) and World War II (Stalin's USSR). Indeed, America even militarily assisted illiberal governments during the Cold War and the first US-Iraq war – all during what Kagan considers the golden period of the US-led international order.

A worthy ally

Regrettably, Kagan's commentary is replete with historical revisionism.

The writer asserts that Israel was of limited value to the United States during the Cold War and was reliant on the United States for protection. But this overlooks key assistance that Israel provided – and still provides

During the Cold War, Israel furnished the United States with key intelligence, including Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev's 1956 secret speech denouncing Stalin – the existence of which "changed history," as some commentators have noted. In a daring 1966 operation, Israel also secretly captured a Soviet-built Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21, the most advanced Soviet fighter plane at the time, and shared it with the United States.

Indeed, during the Cold War, Israel was the only American ally to successfully fight two generations of Soviet allies and equipment on battlefields. Not France, which worked to undercut NATO, or West Germany, which at times appeased and colluded with Soviet-backed proxies, including Palestinian terrorists.

More recently, Israel prevented both Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Syria's Bashar Assad from having nuclear weapons. As Yaakov Katz noted in his recent book Shadow Strike, the United States was grateful that it didn't have to contend with a nuclear Saddam during "Operation Desert Storm," and Assad's nuclear arsenal could have conceivably fallen in the hands of the genocidal Islamic State during Syria's Civil War.

Israel still continues to demonstrate its value to the US militarily, sharing intelligence that former CIA head Gen. Michael Hayden has labeled "nothing less than exquisite." And unlike other alliances and aid, defense technology created in Israel is shared with the United States and is, per law, used to employ thousands of Americans.

More broadly, Kagan's argument shows a stunning unfamiliarity with Israeli history. By every major metric, the Israeli electorate is broader and more diverse than it has ever been. More Arabs and non-Jews vote, and hold positions of power, than at any point in Israeli history, with greater rates of representation in leading industries and fields from the military to medicine. Indeed, as the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently noted, the number of Arab engineers in Israel's high-tech industry has risen nearly 20-fold in only 11 years.

And Israel's elections are often closer and more narrowly fought than in the nation's early years – a fact evidenced by the second election in six months, a "do-over." Indeed, for the first three decades of its existence, a single party, Mapai, dominated Israeli politics, winning every single election from 1948 until 1977.

And by every metric, Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, had far greater power than any of his successors, including current premier Benjamin Netanyahu. Indeed, the current election is occurring because some other political parties declined to form a government with Netanyahu at the helm – triggering another round. That's not growing authoritarianism and the centralization of political power, but the opposite.

The plural in 'peace partners'

Kagan's four-page broadside was part of a larger effort to attack and demonize the Jewish state in the runup to the Sept. 17 election.

A Sept. 16 Washington Post editorial asserted that Netanyahu's election would end the possibility for a Palestinian state. But in hundreds of words, the newspaper failed to mention that it is the Palestinian Authority, which hasn't held elections in more than a decade and is ruled by an actual dictator, which refused US and Israeli offers for statehood and peace in 2000, 2001 and 2008, among other instances. And it is the PA that has refused to quit paying salaries to those who carry out terror attacks, atrociously referred to as "Palestinian resistance" by Kagan in his Post piece.

Regrettably for both Israelis and Palestinians, The Post doesn't consider Palestinian illiberalism – well embodied by PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, who is serving the 15th year of a four-year term – to be worth column space. As the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America noted after the last Israeli election, The Post has almost quit reporting on Palestinian politics altogether. Indeed, a recent job posting for the newspaper's Jerusalem bureau doesn't even mention it as a subject that they expect staff to cover.

Similarly, The Post also regurgitated Politico's claim, which was based on anonymous sources, that Israel was spying on the Trump administration. The Post failed to mention that the Los Angeles Times had already discredited Politico's report.

In June 2018, Netanyahu sent a letter to the ailing Post columnist Charles Krauthammer shortly before his untimely death from cancer. The Israeli premier hailed the writer for harnessing his "formidable intellect" and "immense learning" "to defend liberty and the Jewish state." In his writings, Krauthammer had "slain the hypocrisy and slanderers of Israel" with "consistency and conviction."

For those who value such things, Krauthammer's presence at the newspaper is sorely missed.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

The post The Washington Post smears Israel appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.