The Post Gets it Wrong... Very Wrong.

By Yousef Munayyer

The Washington Post’s pro-Israel bias is on full display this morning.

An unsigned editorial and a column are so out of touch with reality that they explain exactly why the Post’s readership has dropped significantly over recent years. Surely, technological advances and the availability of other news sources grab the eyes of readers, but is it simply competition that has sunk the Post’s numbers, or the newly available ability of readers to realize just how slanted the Post’s coverage is?

Today’s Editorial and Opinion page put that question to rest. A Post editorial argues that the Obama administration is to blame for the spat with Israel. Here are a couple gems from the editorial that was so treacherous it should make most American’s cringe:

Mr. Obama and his advisers appear determined to prove that they will not be pushed around by Israel. The public scoldings also send a message to Palestinian and Arab leaders who have been demanding assurances that the United States will use its leverage in the new peace negotiations.

Can you imagine? How dare America not want to be pushed around by Israel? Oh the gall of these Americans. How dare they demand their requests be respected by a much smaller nation that they have supported blindly for decades? And those “demanding” Arabs, they think the US should use its leverage when Israel doesn’t meet its obligations, what do they think America is, a free country? An even-handed mediator?

And then:

A larger question concerns Mr. Obama's quickness to bludgeon the Israeli government. He is not the first president to do so; in fact, he is not even the first to be hard on Mr. Netanyahu. But tough tactics don't always work: Last year Israelis rallied behind Mr. Netanyahu, while Mr. Obama's poll ratings in Israel plunged to the single digits.

There’s Barack Hussein Obama coming after the Israelis again, you should be concerned. If tough tactics don’t work, what have kid gloves accomplished over the past 20 years of “peace process”? During this time, Israel continued its colonization of the West Bank and the number of Israeli settlers in Palestinian territory has only doubled. But, wait, the poll numbers... Well it is pretty clear that Barack Obama will not win an election in Israel, he will just have to console himself with being President of the United States of America. If the Israelis don’t like an American President because he refused (slightly) to pander to their demands then they should find another ally.
I am also starting to wonder if Richard Cohen is on hiatus or has secretly disappeared and some 5th grader has assumed writing his columns. Cohen is irked by the naming of Dalal Mughrabi Square. Mughrabi was responsible for an operation that ended in a shootout and nearly 40 people dead. This he equates with Israel’s settlement expansion saying that it to shatters confidence in the process. But does Israel not name places for Jewish terrorists who murdered countless Arabs? Cohen disagrees:

I am aware that terrorism is the warfare of the weak, and I am aware also that Jews used terrorism against the British before Israel became a nation in 1948. But even those rare instances of terrorism were directed against the military and when they were not -- the massacre of Arabs at the village of Deir Yassin -- they were condemned by the Zionist leadership. To my knowledge, there is no square in Israel named for the mass murderers of civilians. Palestinian society, in contrast, honors all sorts of terrorists.

It’s amazing that Cohen, or his 5th grade ghostwriter, is able to get so much wrong in such little space. Jewish terrorism was not solely directed against military targets; in fact the majority of Jewish terrorism targets in pre-state Israel were directed against Arab civilians. Bus bombs and bombs thrown in Palestinian markets left hundreds of Arabs dead long before the Jewish terrorists turned against the British. And Deir Yassin? The Haganah, under the Zionist leadership, facilitated the massacre and did not prevent it.

Finally, I think I know where Richard Cohen must be. He is probably sitting at a café on Jabotinsky St. in Tel Aviv, sipping cappuccino on the roadway named for the founder of the Irgun – a Jewish terror organization that killed scores of Palestinian civilians. Perhaps he is even reading the Jerusalem Post, where this column, and the above mentioned editorial, should have been published.

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