Since October 7, when Hamas terrorists brutally invaded Israel and slaughtered hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians, Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah has dedicated both her weekly newsletter and much of her social media to discussing Israel, the Palestinians, and the Jewish state’s ongoing war against the Hamas terror organization.
However, despite being an award-winning journalist, Attiah’s published pieces and social media posts are chockful of misleading statements, baseless opinions, and a skewed analysis that serve only to construct a narrative that is solely bent on tarnishing the Jewish state.
In particular, the three key ways by which Karen Attiah develops her toxic narrative is through the implicit justification of Hamas’ attack, the manipulation of language as well as the twisting of facts and history.
"If Israel proceeds to make good on its threats to turn Gaza into flattened pavement, it’s all the more clear that 'never again' does not apply to Arab or Muslim lives," Karen Attiah writes. https://t.co/SFu0RtCU0l
— Washington Post Opinions (@PostOpinions) October 14, 2023
‘Between Dismissive and Giddy’: Karren Attiah’s Reaction to October 7
In her first Washington Post newsletter following the October 7 massacres, Karen Attiah referred to Hamas’ attack as “horrific,” “unprecedented,” and a “nightmare.” On Twitter, she reposted an update on the number of Israeli deaths with the comment “My god.”
However, in light of her robust activity on social media in the days following October 7, it appears that the above is merely a lip service condemnation while her deeper feelings about Hamas’ invasion are much more sinister and alarming.
As one analyst put it, Attiah’s reaction to October 7 “fell somewhere between dismissive and giddy.”
Viewing Hamas’ brutal assault as an expression of decolonization, Attiah reportedly reposted a now-deleted tweet that exulted in the attack: “What did y’all think decolonization meant? vibes? papers? essays? Losers.”
Similarly, Attiah also reposted a tweet that declared “Settlers are not the victims here and never will be.”
On October 8, in response to a tweet that downplayed the value of “armed struggle,” Attiah tweeted “There are a lot of people going off of vibes and feel-good platitudes about decolonization and resistance, not actual historical knowledge and research about the global south.”
That same day, she also tweeted that “We are forced to see state violence as justified + moral, while violence by non-state actors isn’t. This is changing.”
There are a lot of people going off of vibes and feel-good platitudes about decolonization and resistance, not actual historical knowledge and research about the global south. https://t.co/KkdqbW85UY
— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) October 8, 2023
Even more than two weeks later, when a large extent of Hamas’ atrocities had been made public, Karen Attiah felt it necessary to repost a tweet by Marc Lamont Hill that read “So many university academics who insist upon doing performative, virtue signaling ‘land acknowledgements’ at every public event are eerily silent as real liberation struggles are happening. Guess decolonization really is a metaphor for some folk…”
In her first newsletter following the Hamas attack, Attiah decried the fact that “People using the terms ‘decolonization’ and ‘liberation’ in describing Palestinians’ struggle for human rights have had their remarks taken out of context and have been accused of championing Hamas’s brand of terrorism.”
While she might believe there is some distinction to be made, it appears from her social media history that Karen Attiah’s reaction to Hamas’ terrorism is at best ambivalent and at worse exultant.
Related Reading: Media Whitewash Hamas & Parrot Terror Group’s Talking Points
From ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ to ‘Never Again’: Karen Attiah’s Misuse of Language
One of the ways in which Karen Attiah frames her anti-Israel narrative is through the use (and abuse) of evocative language in describing Israel’s military response to Hamas’ brutality.
Throughout her newsletters, Attiah refers to the IDF’s defensive military action as “atrocities,” “collective punishment,” “genocidal,” and the “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”
She also recently tweeted that it was “not a war against Hamas. This is Israel waging a colonial-style, punitive massacre against Palestinians.”
This is not a war against Hamas.
This is Israel waging a colonial-style, punitive massacre against Palestinians.
— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) November 11, 2023
In addition to her use of direct language, Karen Attiah also uses insinuations to negatively associate Israel with some of the darkest events in modern history.
In one newsletter, Attiah wrote that “The last time millions of people were targeted and trapped based on their identity, the world said ‘never again.’”
By invoking the terminology “never again,” Attiah is drawing a direct and baseless comparison between Israel’s military struggle against the Hamas terror group and Nazi Germany’s attempt to destroy European Jewry during the Holocaust.
In a later newsletter, Attiah implicitly compares Israel to the French in Algeria. Here, too, the comparison is absurd as France was a colonial power ruling over the native population while Israel is the embodiment of an indigenous population’s return to sovereignty in their ancestral homeland.
The Nazis trapped millions of Jews & transported them to their deaths.
Israel is helping Palestinians escape while rooting out Hamas evil that’s ACTUALLY perpetrating atrocities based on identity.
How dare @washingtonpost allow @KarenAttiah's antisemitism to infect its pages. https://t.co/biLeEPboRT pic.twitter.com/IBZ7F3kJ1d
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 14, 2023
A third way that Karen Attiah misuses language to further her anti-Israel narrative is by questioning the use of certain terminology.
For example, in one newsletter, she questioned the use of the term “human shields” when describing Hamas’ cynical use of Gazan civilians as cover for its terrorist activities.
To her mind, the term
means any Palestinian is a possible vector for violence, an unwitting Trojan horse for terrorism. You know the thing about shields and armor? Shields are allowed to be penetrated and broken, so long as the enemy is vanquished. Is this how we should be talking about people, human beings?
This quote reveals a lot about Karen Attiah’s mindset: If Israel is unable to fight Hamas due to the latter’s use of humans shields (a viewpoint not based in international law), then any Israeli response is to be condemned. Ultimately, this rewards Hamas’ violation of human rights while punishing Israel for its defense of its citizenry.
Related Reading: Washington Post Column Pushes ‘Genocide’ Libel
Karen Attiah’s Misuse of Facts & History
One of the most concerning issues with Karen Attiah’s analysis is her reliance on misleading statements and skewed facts to support her troubling narrative.
Several examples of Karen Attiah’s loose grip on the facts include:
1) In one piece, Attiah claims that “the angry discourse in response to the Oct. 7 attack has been undeniably anti-Arab and Islamophobic in nature, and utterly dehumanizing.”
This statement completely ignores the rise in antisemitism following the October 7 massacres / Israel’s response. Only four days after the publication of Attiah’s piece, the ADL noted an almost 400% increase in antisemitic incidents since October 7.
2) In another piece, Karen Attiah claims that “Black writers and civil rights leaders have a long history of seeing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of the Black struggle for freedom and resistance to violent imperialism.” She then lists such leaders as Malcom X, Muhammad Ali, and Huey Newton.
However, to make her case, Attiah purposefully ignores the history of Black and civil rights leaders supporting Israel and Zionism, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Bayard Rustin, and John Lewis.
Related Reading: Black History Month: Dr. King, Black Lives Matter… and Israel
3) Attiah claims that in 2018, Marc Lamont Hill “was removed as a commentator from CNN after expressing solidarities with Palestinians.” This minimizes what Hill actually did, which was call for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea,” which many interpret to mean the dismantling of the Jewish state.
4) In her latest piece, Karen Attiah claims that the Israel-Palestine issue is “a fundamentally British colonial project.” Throughout the piece, she attempts to portray Israel as being the creation of British imperialism by citing the Balfour Declaration, a couple pronouncements by Winston Churchill, and the 1922 British Mandate.
However, in order to present this overly simplistic picture, Attiah has to ignore the fact that Britain severely limited Jewish immigration in 1939, it abstained from the UN partition vote in 1947, it battled Zionist militias fighting for independence in the late 1940s, it did not recognize Israel until 1950, and the British-trained forces in Jordan and Egypt were part of the invasion of Israel in 1948.
Karen Attiah appears to hold a rigid worldview, which focuses on observing reality through the lenses of race and decolonization. However, by viewing the world this way, Attiah is forced to disregard certain facts that do not fit neatly into an ideological box.
This not only leaves her analysis lacking in credibility but also deprives her readers at The Washington Post of the proper nuanced and intelligent analysis that they deserve.
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Photo Credits:
- Atia Mohammed via Flash90
- Ecrusized via Wikimedia Commons
