The Washington Post has published a series of biased articles in recent days. In these articles, the Washington Post demonstrated that it is no friend of the State of Israel and one of its closest allies in the Muslim world, Azerbaijan. By attacking Israel and Azerbaijan, the Washington Post has demonstrated that it is not a balanced newspaper, which respects the contributions of America’s allies.
In one of the articles titled “Israeli forces used civilians as human shields in Gaza,” the Washington Post citing the anti-Israel NGO Breaking the Silence claimed that Israel abducts Palestinian civilians and uses them as human shields to detect booby-traps during their operations in the Gaza Strip. Relying solely upon Palestinian testimony, anonymous sources, and an anti-Israel organization, the Washington Post accused Israel of committing war crimes.
NGO Monitor noted that Breaking the Silence has a long history of accusing Israel of war crimes, often based on anonymous sources and anecdotal evidence. In the aftermath of the brutal Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, Breaking the Silence tweeted, “Hamas’s attack and the events unfolding since yesterday are unspeakable. We could talk about their cruel and criminal actions, or focus on how our Jewish-supremacist govt brought us to this point.”
Interestingly, the Washington Post article that featured Breaking the Silence was critical of IDF conduct based on anonymous sources and anecdotal evidence but was silent on the plight of the remaining Israeli hostages, of which only about 50 are believed by the Israeli intelligence officials to still be alive. They also did not discuss how Hamas was using civilian institutions like UNRWA schools, hospitals, and mosques to store weapons and fire at civilian targets in Israel.
In another biased article titled “Entire northern Gazan population at imminent risk of death,” the Washington Post accused Israel of killing at least 50 children in Jabaliya while attacking Hamas and that a polio drive by the UN in Gaza City was also targeted by the Jewish state. The article also cited the Hamas-backed Gaza Health Ministry as claiming that at least 43,341 people have been killed in Gaza during the war and 102,105 injured. The article did not discuss the plight of the residents of Israel except in a brief paragraph at the end, claiming that 1,200 Israelis were massacred on October 7 of last year. They do not mention the present plight of the residents of the Jewish state at all.
A recent survey of Washington Post articles highlights that the newspaper blindly accepts Hamas and Hezbollah propaganda, without fact-checking. As the pro-Israel advocacy group CAMERA noted, “Israel is battling more than Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Jewish state is also facing press coverage almost as criminally bad as the terrorist group itself. And few outlets have been worse than the Washington Post. On several recent occasions, the newspaper’s coverage of Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed terror organization that de facto controls Lebanon, has been replete with omissions and misrepresentations.”
For example, a recent article in the Washington Post proclaimed, “Nearly a quarter of all buildings in 25 Lebanese municipalities near the Israeli border had been damaged or destroyed as of Saturday, according to an analysis of satellite data by The Washington Post — illustrating the far-reaching toll of Israel’s land and air war against Hezbollah.” However, they had nothing to say about how Hezbollah has also destroyed civilian life in northern Israel, including burning much of the forests and agricultural land in the area.
Israel is not the only US ally that the Washington Post loves to attack. Azerbaijan has also been a victim of the Washington Post’s venom. In a recent article, they proclaimed: “When the nations that are parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change decide who will host the annual climate conference, the criteria include a country’s infrastructure, climate commitments, political stability, and financial resources. But not democracy or human rights — or, apparently, whether blessing a particular regime with the privilege will embarrass the organization and the climate diplomats it assembles. The result is repeated instances of “greenwashing” some of the world’s most repressive rulers and most enthusiastic extractors of fossil fuels. The upcoming U.N. Climate Change Conference, COP29, opens Nov. 11 in Azerbaijan. This is the third in a row in a dictatorship and the second in a row in a petrostate.”
The problem with this statement is that Azerbaijan is not a dictatorship. The former Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren was once an election observer in Azerbaijan and he confirmed that the elections were held fairly when he was there in an exclusive interview. Furthermore, Azerbaijan is one of the most progressive states in the region, with a strong tradition of multi-culturalism, religious pluralism, and tolerance of the other. In Azerbaijan, churches, synagogues, and Zoroastrian temples peacefully co-exist beside mosques. Freedom of religion and freedom of speech is widely respected in Azerbaijan. However, the Washington Post still calls Azerbaijan a “dictatorship” that does not respect “democracy and human rights.” Instead of attacking Azerbaijan, they should be attacking Iran and its proxies, who do everything in their power to trample upon human rights. But the Washington Post has demonstrated that they are a biased source of information, that does not value America’s allies.
The Washington Post is not alone in this. The European Parliament just passed a resolution blasting Azerbaijan, making similar arguments to what was put forth in the Washington Post article. This demonstrates that the Washington Post is not alone in its mistreatment of Western allies, who stood beside America in the war against the Taliban and provided Europe with energy security in the wake of the war in Ukraine. However, while we average citizens cannot control what the European Parliament does, we can demand that the Washington Post, as one of DC’s main newspapers, start to have balanced coverage. The inherent bias against Israel and Azerbaijan in the Washington Post must come to an end.
