More anti-Israel propaganda from the Washington Post
My view is that news outlets should report things that are actually happening now and occasionally things that might well happen in the future (e.g. Biden’s weakness might prompt challenges from prominent Democrats). The Washington Post, for all of its leftist bias, generally confines its reporting to these two categories (the peddling of the Trump/Russia collusion hoax is a dishonorable exception).
However, when the cause is promoting anti-Israeli narratives, the Post is happy to add a third category to its reporting: bad things that Israel might be doing now. Hence, this report called “The punishing military doctrine that Israel may be following in Gaza.” (Emphasis added)
The doctrine the Post claims Israel “may be following” is called the “Dahiya Doctrine.” According to the Post, it holds that when Israel responds to attacks, its primary goal should be to inflict lasting damage, no matter what the cost in civilian lives, on the city or village from which the attack came. Halting or reducing the enemy’s capacity to launch more attacks should only be a secondary goal. In other words, the priority is punishment, not crippling the enemy.
It’s obvious, however, that Israel isn’t following the so-called Dahiya Doctrine in Gaza. Otherwise, Israel would not have dropped leaflets imploring residents of Northern Gaza to head south. It would have reduced to rubble the hospitals Hamas uses for military purposes and/or builds tunnels under. It would not be pausing its attacks every day to allow residents to flee.
If the goal were punishing Gaza, not crippling Hamas, the Post would be able to point to targets Israel has deliberately hit that have no military purpose. The Post doesn’t point to any.
Only at the very end of the Post’s report do we learn that the former Israeli colonel who helped formulate the Dahiya Doctrine says he doesn’t think it applies today. Everything Israel has targeted is explicitly military, he says. As I noted, the Post presents no evidence to the contrary.
The author of the Post’s article, Ishaan Tharoor, manifests his bias in more ways than just writing a story about what he thinks (or wants us to believe) might be happening in Gaza. Tharoor asserts that the war has claimed more than 10,000 lives in Gaza, including 4,000 children. He doesn’t bother to cite a source for this figure, which almost certainly comes from Hamas, via the Gaza health ministry it controls.
Usually, the Post at least has the decency to cite that source, though not enough decency to refrain from vouching, falsely, for its reliability.
Tharoor also relies on a rabidly anti-Israel source — “Palestinian- American scholar” Rashid Khalidi — who accuses Israel of engaging in “collective punishment” and “probable war crimes.” Khalidi is an activist who hates Israel, which deported him a few years ago.
And speaking of war crimes, Tharoor never discloses that it’s a war crime for fighters to use civilians as shields against attacks — something Hamas is doing and, indeed, has made into a (dark) art form. His only mention of war crimes is Khalidi’s unsupported accusation against Israel.
Here are some other examples of recent anti-Israel propaganda from Tharoor, a Yale grad who majored in “history and ethnicity, race and migration”:
Israel presides over a new Palestinian catastrophe
Israel’s war in Gaza and the specter of ‘genocide’
Israel makes a desolation and may call it peace
The brutal logic of tying colorful pieces of string around children’s wrists in Gaza
Israel says Hamas ‘is ISIS.’ But it’s not. [Note: it’s worse than ISIS]
Israel’s bombing of Gaza undercuts the West’s Ukraine moralism
As Israel ramps up war with Hamas, backers cheer destruction of Gaza
No element of this anti-Israeli drumbeat appears in the Post’s op-ed pages. All of it purports to be “analysis.” All of it is rubbish.
I could spend the next week deconstructing each piece, but your patience would likely run out even before mine would. Tharoor’s baseless speculation about “the military doctrine Israel may be following in Gaza” should be enough to persuade anyone with lingering doubts that the Post, having given a forum in its news section to this 30-something ideologue posing as a foreign policy expert, hates Israel.
Beyond infuriating.
Given his name, might he be Arab?
I was in Israel Oct 7-8. Had to shelter etc when the missiles came. Of greater interest, on Oct 5 I went into Jordan to visit Mt Nebo and Amman. Gazing over the valley it was interesting my guide couldn’t bring himself to say the word “Israel.” He could talk about Palestine a lot. He was very much an example of man in the street. Hatred of Israel is now baked into their DNA. Notwithstanding this horrible bias, Israel has to be guided what it believes are in its best interest. It’s a matter of survival, not academic debate
I can’t even force myself to read the Washington Post. I don’t know why you torture yourself, Paul. I understand that you live and worked in the Beltway, but the Post has ZERO credibility outside that bubble. Spare yourself the unnecessary torture.