It would appear that having a documented history that has included comparing Israel to Nazi Germany does not preclude one from offering their opinions on the editorial webpages of The Washington Post, a publication that prides itself on a self-stated commitment to fairness.
Mariam Barghouti, who describes herself as a “writer and researcher based in Palestine,” was recently invited to share her views with Washington Post readers in a piece titled, “Another group recognized Israel’s Palestinian apartheid. How will the world react?”
Barghouti, who has also previously written for and contributed to outlets including The New York Times, The Guardian and Newsweek, came to HonestReporting’s attention last year after we uncovered a series of now-deleted tweets, such as one in which she asserted that “Israel has been beating Hitler at his own game since 1948” and another that referred to former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as being “nothing more than a war criminal and a Nazi.”
Such remarks are evidence of anti-Jewish bigotry and are a breach of the IHRA’s internationally-recognized working definition of antisemitism, specifically making comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis and claiming that Israel’s very existence is in itself a racist endeavor.
The IHRA definition has been either adopted or endorsed by dozens of countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Italy, Sweden, Spain and Germany.
In her latest piece, Barghouti accuses the Jewish state of maintaining a “deep essence of apartheid”; suggests that Jerusalem’s decision to designate six Palestinian NGOs is part of a campaign to “discredit and vilify” critics; and claims that Israel “weaponizes charges of anti-Semitism to manipulate and gaslight.”
There are a number of points that deserve to be noted in response to such allegations.
For starters, the accusation of apartheid, which has been primarily promulgated by three organizations – Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem – has previously been thoroughly debunked by HonestReporting.
In addition, two of the organizations, Amnesty and HRW, that have spread this libel have been accused of having a fixation on alleged misdeeds by Israel. For example, when Amnesty released its widely-publicized report last month, an analysis of its Twitter account over the next six days revealed it had posted no fewer than 132 tweets accusing the Jewish state of perpetrating various crimes, compared to just 13 about every other human rights issue in the world.
Human Rights Watch released a 5,000-word report about Israel in December last year in which it claimed Israeli law enforcement responded to outbreaks of violence in May in an “apparently discriminatory manner.” Yet the same document completely ignored what had been described as “pogroms” by Arab-Israelis against Jews and their property during the same period.
In April, HRW penned a 213-page report that peddled the “apartheid” canard and a third 6,500-word report was released in May that accused Israel of “war crimes” for its response to the barrage of indiscriminate rocket fire by Hamas during last year’s conflict.
The NGOs that Barghouti claims Israel has unfairly targeted have proven links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terror group by most of the western world.
Finally, there is an irony in Barghouti accusing Jerusalem of weaponizing antisemitism when she has manifestly spread anti-Jewish hatred online.
Just yesterday – mere hours before a Palestinian gunman murdered five people in the central city of Bnei Brak and amid a wave of terrorism over the past week – Barghouti tweeted that every year around the time of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Israel becomes “charged with intensified aggression” to create circumstances whereby Palestinians face violence or “the fear and crippling anxiety of anticipated attacks.”
Israel has managed to ensure that every Summer, every Ramadan is charged with their intensified aggression, they have socially engineered the circumstances we live under to ensure that we are facing either their violence or the fear and crippling anxiety of anticipated attacks.
— مريم البرغوثي (@MariamBarghouti) March 29, 2022
The Washington Post publishing Barghouti as an authoritative voice on matters pertaining to the Jewish state is therefore deeply troubling.
At present, the outlet includes an ethics policy that runs to nearly 4,500 words and includes an obligation that its journalists will not write, tweet or post anything that could be objectively seen as reflecting any racial bias.
It is an ethics policy that apparently does not apply to its guest contributors.
With this in mind, we call on The Washington Post to hold all of those whose opinions it publishes to the same standard: racism by individuals should be not justified by allowing their work to appear in the op-eds column.
We ask our readers to contact The Washington Post to demand that Mariam Barghouti’s article be removed from the publication’s site immediately.
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