Washington Post spreads Hamas propaganda

To the surprise of no one.

The lead headline in yesterday’s Washington Post (paper edition) blared, “Israel targets Gaza’s hospitals.” Below that, the Post added, “Military says facilities are Hamas redoubts.”

The headline is false in two respects. First, Israel isn’t targeting hospitals. It is targeting the terrorists who use the hospitals and the tunnels Israel believes, with good reason, are under them. If Israel were targeting Gaza hospitals, the hospitals would be rubble.

Second, “targeting” implies, at a minimum, that the hospitals are under attack. But as one reads the Post’s story, one finds that this isn’t what’s happening. Instead:

Israeli tanks launched assaults around Gaza City’s overcrowded hospitals Friday. . .

At least seven hospitals reported being under siege or in proximity to the fighting in Gaza City. . .

The Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, confirmed it had surrounded several hospitals and demanded they be evacuated.

(Emphasis added)

Fighting “around” or “in proximity to” a hospital isn’t “targeting” a hospital. Neither is “surrounding a hospital.”

Perhaps realizing that the paper edition headline is false, the internet version states, ”Fighting rages around Gaza’s hospitals as civilians flee for safety.” That’s closer to the truth. But anyone who received the paper edition would have read the Post’s lie, in bold letters at the top of the front page.

The Post’s sub-headline — “Military says facilities are Hamas redoubts” — also betrays the Post’s pro-Hamas bias. When the Post spouts casualty figures provided by Hamas, it vouches for (and doubles and triples down on) the credibility of the source — even though that source is a terrorist organization that the Post itself effectively found provided false information about an explosion at a Gaza hospital last month.

But when the IDF says that Hamas uses hospitals for military purposes, the Post professes pure agnosticism — as if the statement is as likely to be false as true,

That’s dishonest. An article in the same edition of the Post, but buried deep inside the paper, reports that the Israeli government has shared with the U.S. its intelligence showing that Hamas uses hospitals for military purposes. The Post further reports that the Biden administration found this intelligence “credible.”

How is it that the Post accepts uncritically much of what the Biden administration says, but is unwilling to accept statements from the administration that favor Israel and contradict Hamas?

And, quite apart from anything the Biden administration has concluded, why would the Post be skeptical of statements that Hamas is using hospitals to shield Hamas fighters and/or resources? Hamas is a band of terrorist cutthroats that has built an underground city to shelter its fighters, facilitate attacks on Israeli civilians, and store huge amounts of weaponry, while leaving the population of Gaza without bomb shelters. It’s a band of terrorist cutthroats that built a tunnel entrance under the bed of a child.

Clearly, it places the safety and well being of its terrorists far ahead of the safety and health of civilians in Gaza.

Indeed, it’s common knowledge that Hamas uses hospitals, schools, and mosques for military purposes — so common that in 2014, the head of the Post’s own London bureau reported from Gaza that the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City was “a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who could be seen in the hallways and offices.” (Hat tip, Ed Morrissey).

If the Post won’t credit the IDF or the Biden administration, it should at least believe one of its bureau chiefs, who reported from Gaza.

Furthermore, in the back-pages story I referred to above, the Post acknowledges that Amnesty International, no friend of Israel, found that in 2014 Hamas tortured political opponents on the grounds of al-Shifa hospital last year. This fact, too, supports the view that this is a Hamas facility.

The Post quotes that two American doctors who work (or worked) at al-Shifa hospital. They say they never saw military activity or Hamas members at the hospital. Put aside the likelihood that anyone working in a Gaza hospital is anti-Israel and is able to work there at the sufferance of Hamas which controls Gaza and its health ministry.

The fact, if true, that doctors haven’t seen military activity in the wards where they work and don’t see people they know to be with Hamas there doesn’t show the hospital isn’t being used by Hamas or that tunnels are underneath the hospital. I don’t understand Israel to be saying that Hamas is launching rockets from operating rooms or that people are parading through these rooms displaying Hamas insignia. After all, it is a war crime to use a hospital for military purposes.

This leads me to a final (for today) example of the Post’s egregious pro-Hamas, anti-Israel bias. In both of the Post’s stories discussed above, the paper strongly suggests that Israel is committing war crimes in connection with the Gaza hospitals. But neither story points out that it’s a war crime to use hospitals to try and shield combatants.

Yet, this is what the IDF and the Biden administration believe Hamas is doing and what one of its top journalists said Hamas did in the past.

Clearly, the Post has it in for Israel. Clearly, that bias causes it to promote Hamas’ propaganda. (I’ll discuss another example of its bias tomorrow).

I hope Jewish subscribers have noticed (it’s possible). I wonder whether many of them will cancel their subscriptions (it’s unlikely).