If “democracy dies in darkness” – The Washington Post’s Trump-era slogan – then journalism dies in superficiality and bias by omission.
On February 9, reporters Mike DeBonis and Robert Costa published a story under the headline “Republicans accuse Muslim lawmakers of anti-Semitism.” In other words, the story centered not around the anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic statements and actions of two Democratic members of Congress – Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) – but about an alleged “larger GOP effort to drive a partisan wedge into the traditionally nonpartisan relationship between the United States and Israel.”
But Democrats don’t actually need Republicans to spotlight Omar and Tlaib’s trafficking in anti-Jewish canards to divide them. A growing intra-party split was already visible at the 2012 Democratic National Convention when its chair, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, was compelled to overrule three negative voice votes to reinsert a declaration into the party’s platform that Jerusalem is Israel’s “indivisible, eternal capital.” He was jeered from the floor for his effort.
No Republican machinations sparked the 2010 speech by Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim elected to Congress, implying that American foreign policy pivoted on what was good for Israel.
No Republican machinations caused Ellison to oppose additional funding for Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system during Israel’s 2014 war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. He also called for Israel to stop blockading Gaza even though Hamas had rejected several Egyptian-brokered Israeli ceasefire proposals. Ellison went on to serve as Democratic Party deputy chair in 2017-18.
The Washington Post has falsely told readers that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is “meant to apply pressure on Israel to change its policies toward the Palestinian population.” In fact, though, BDS founder Omar Barghouti has made plain that it opposes “a Jewish state in any part of Palestine.”
A few weeks ago, The Washington Post reported that GOP members spotlighted a telephone call from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn, The Washington Post said, “has come under intense criticism for tolerating anti-Semitism in his ranks.”
That’s a cream-of-wheat way of putting it. What Corbyn is criticized for, including by Jewish Labour Party members, is enabling hostility within Labour towards the Jewish state and Jews. Corbyn himself hosted Hamas representatives to tea at Parliament and invited others from Iran’s Lebanese surrogate, Hezbollah.
The Washington Post also neglected to mention that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) campaigned for the Labour Party chairman in 2017, one year after Sanders nearly won the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
In a February 12 story, “House leadership condemns freshman’s Israel comments,” The Washington Post also managed to erect a strawman, arguing that “Republicans are seeking to use unequivocal support for Israel as a political litmus test.” Of course, neither Republican nor Democratic support for Israel has been unequivocal. Ronald Reagan, for example, condemned Israel’s 1981 bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak.
So, yes, democracy may die in darkness, but three-dimensional journalism vanishes in two-dimensional reporting.