Key Takeaways:
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The Washington Post’s Middle East bureau closures mark a sad moment for journalism, but also underscore the consequences of years of ideology-driven coverage and fiscal mismanagement rather than rigorous, fair reporting.
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Systematic anti-Israel bias shaped The Post’s reporting through loaded framing, euphemistic language that whitewashed terrorism, moral equivalence that diminished Israeli suffering, and persistent skepticism toward Israeli claims while granting credibility to Hamas-linked sources.
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A newsroom culture problem—including editors and reporters with openly hostile views toward Israel—helped turn a legacy outlet into a platform for demonization and delegitimization of the Jewish state, eroding trust long before the layoffs.
The world of media was recently shocked when The Washington Post announced that it was firing 300 employees, including all of those who worked for its Middle East bureaus.
As noted by Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief Zvika Klein, while it is a sad day for journalism when a legacy newspaper like The Washington Post cuts a large contingent of reporters and staff, it is also a cautionary lesson about what happens when your outlet is encumbered by ideology and fiscal irresponsibility instead of allowed to run according to the dictates of good and honest journalism.
For the past 25 years, HonestReporting has witnessed The Washington Post’s ideology-driven coverage of Israel, the Palestinians, and Middle Eastern conflicts, culminating in the building of a false anti-Israel narrative that has taken hold in the U.S. since October 7, 2023.
The Washington Post demonstrated institutional anti-Israel bias during the Israel-Hamas war in three different ways:
- The subtle (and sometimes explicit) framing of articles, leading to the promotion of an anti-Israel narrative;
- The reliance on and portrayal of anti-Israel sources as trustworthy and neutral;
- The extreme anti-Israel bias held by certain members of The Washington Post team and how that manifested in the newspaper’s coverage.
The shuttering of The Washington Post’s Mideast bureau marks a sad moment for journalism, legacy media, & the individuals who have lost their jobs.
Nevertheless, we won’t forget the many biased stories & hateful opinion pieces published by the Post over the years against Israel. https://t.co/1ITROQirnh
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 5, 2026
The Washington Post’s Subtle (And Not-So-Subtle) Anti-Israel Bias
Anti-Israel framing and manipulation of terms in its Israel-related stories helped to create a narrative for the Post’s audience that whitewashed Palestinian terrorism, diminished Israeli suffering, and called into question the legitimacy of Israel’s actions and existence.
- Throughout its Israel-Hamas war coverage, The Washington Post downplayed Palestinian terrorism by repeatedly referring to terror groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad as “militant” or “resistance” groups. This terminology weakens the violent nature of these organizations and portrays them as less of a threat than they actually are.
- In one particularly spectacular episode, The Post captioned a martyr poster for a Palestinian terrorist with two rifles in his hands as a “poster of physician Abdullah Abu Tin,” completely ignoring the weapons staring its readers in the face.
- The Post also whitewashed arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti, referring to him in one instance as a “senior militant” and “popular Palestinian political figure.” Hardly the way one should describe a terrorist leader responsible for the murder of five civilians and orchestrating other deadly attacks during the Second Intifada.
- The Post also used its platform to whitewash the phrase “Globalize the Intifada,” presenting its threat as only being of concern to “some Jews” and sanitizing it as possibly being simply an expression of support for the “struggle” for a Palestinian state (without detailing how that “struggle” usually expresses itself).
“Palestinian resistance groups.”
Say it, @washingtonpost: *Terrorists.* pic.twitter.com/t7yPMuBuEV
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 5, 2025
Diminishing Israeli Suffering
Along with its whitewashing of Palestinian terrorism, The Post also used its platform as one of the United States’ most prestigious newspapers to diminish Israeli suffering.
- The Post’s articles commonly referred to the number of Israelis killed in the October 7 attacks as including “many” civilians, while providing the Hamas-supplied number of Palestinians killed during Israel’s counterterrorism operation without noting that this includes terrorists and civilians. Thus, The Post diminished the scope of October 7 while portraying Israel as wantonly killing innocent Palestinians.
- In a similar instance of moral equivalence, The Post referred to hostage-prisoner exchanges as a “prisoner exchange” or a “prisoner swap,” minimizing the inherent evil of Hamas’ hostage-taking and also equating Israeli hostages with Palestinian terrorists who were set to be freed.
- In other reports, The Post referred to the deaths of Israeli hostages at the hands of Palestinian terrorists while in captivity, writing that passively “they continued to die,” and relegated descriptions of the experiences of tortured hostages to brief paragraphs while focusing headlines and cover images on Palestinian suffering.
- In one particularly malicious moment, The Washington Post initially published an article that called out the parents of hostage Omer Neutra for not mentioning the suffering of Palestinians while speaking out on behalf of the release of their son from captivity.
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Here’s @washingtonpost.
Top fold: starving Gaza babies.
Bottom line: Evyatar David is “gaunt” and suffering “a lack of food” in Hamas captivity — but somehow that’s just a detail, not a headline. pic.twitter.com/pS6im6EPrs— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 3, 2025
- In an article on the murder of an Israeli woman while she was being driven to the hospital to give birth, The Post managed to turn Israelis from victims into aggressors, focusing on how the response from local Israelis might affect Palestinians. The murder of a pregnant Israeli mother could not even be properly reported without some caveat that made the Palestinians into the true victims.
- Similarly, in response to the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., The Post decided to use it as a moment to write about “the confusion” concerning where Jews belong in a post-October 7 world, minimizing their deaths and diminishing the threat posed by those who view Israel as the embodiment of evil.
.@washingtonpost has quietly removed its horrendous tweet referring to “confusion…about where Jews belong.”
Here’s the headline and subheader, still up on the Post’s website. 👇 https://t.co/npUZWy0uON pic.twitter.com/481dDejLFY
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 25, 2025
Delegitimizing Israeli Counterterror Actions
Throughout its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, The Post continued to cast doubt upon Israeli claims, delegitimizing the Jewish state’s counterterrorism actions, while taking Palestinian allegations for granted.
- For example, one of the common terms used by The Post and other mainstream media organizations was that it could not “independently verify” Israeli claims while letting Palestinian claims (including those supplied by Hamas-affiliated bodies) enter into reports with no such qualifications.
- One of The Post’s first major investigations following the October 7 attacks was a December 2023 piece that cast aspersions on Israel’s unearthing of Hamas infrastructure inside Shifa Hospital, calling into question the validity of Israel’s operation in the large medical complex and providing cover for Hamas’ illegal use of civilian sites.
- In a particularly hideous instance, The Post visually compared Israel’s actions in Gaza to the Holocaust, implicitly turning a legitimate war against a genocidal terrorist organization into an episode of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Grotesque from @washingtonpost: a Holocaust photo used in a headline about Gaza. The suffering in Gaza is real – but it’s not the Holocaust. It’s not the Rwandan genocide. And those two aren’t the same either.
Absolutely disgusting. pic.twitter.com/KdHWhirp0e
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) July 31, 2025
Questioning Israel’s Legitimacy
It was not only Israel’s war against Hamas that The Washington Post sought to question and delegitimize. It also cast aspersions on the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel.
- In one instance, it referred to a recently-opened archaeological site that showcased an ancient Jewish pilgrimage road as ” a controversial archaeological site in East Jerusalem built by an Israeli settler group in a Palestinian neighborhood,” totally dismissing the importance of the site.
- In an even more egregious instance, an article referred to the Temple Mount as “a Muslim holy site where the al-Aqsa Mosque now stands,” with no mention of its importance in Judaism. To The Post’s credit, it eventually did update this story, writing that the Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism, but the fact that the original text had passed editorial oversight is clear evidence for the anti-Israel bias that permeated the outlet’s newsroom.
The Temple Mount isn’t only a Muslim holy site.
It’s also the holiest site in Judaism where two ancient temples stood.
But @washingtonpost isn’t interested in context. pic.twitter.com/oB6u9mLkZU
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 16, 2025
From UNRWA to Hamas: The Washington Post’s Use of Troubling Sources
In the first few weeks of the war, The Washington Post’s Instagram page treated Palestinian freelancer Hind Khoudary as a legitimate journalist, reporting on Israeli military movements. However, The Post failed to mention Khoudary’s history of anti-Israel/pro-Hamas activism, including turning in Palestinian peace activists to the Hamas authorities for having an online dialogue with Israeli activists. She was less a journalist and more a propagandist, yet The Post chose to platform her.
Hind Khoudary was by far not the only anti-Israel source treated credibly by The Washington Post throughout the post-October 7 war.
When Palestinians tried to connect with Israelis to build a better future, @Hind_Gaza turned them into Hamas. This is who @washingtonpost considers a credible journalist? #JournalistOrTerrorist https://t.co/wYPbVYKN2D pic.twitter.com/lqIT2GMRap
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 28, 2023
Other sources who are known for their animus towards the Jewish state or ties to terror groups but were presented by The Post as reliable, neutral, and trustworthy include:
- Breaking the Silence: The Israeli NGO is known for its politicized attacks against the IDF, usually based on anonymous or anecdotal claims, or evidence that is lacking in proper context.
- Mahmoud Bassal: A popular source for The Washington Post and other news organizations, Bassal is the spokesperson for Palestinian Civil Defense. However, both he and his organization have ties to Hamas, and he is even accused of being a member of the terror group’s Zeitoun Battalion (which is never mentioned in reports on him).
- The International Association of Genocide Scholars: Despite it being revealed that this organization lets anyone join for $30, it was still presented by The Post as “the world’s oldest and largest association of genocide scholars.”
- Samidoun: An organization that has been exposed as having ties to the PFLP terror group. According to The Post, it’s merely “an activist network supporting Palestinian prisoners.”
- UNRWA: The controversial UN agency for Palestinian refugees has not only been a continuous source for The Post, but it was even granted a fundraising ad on the newspaper’s website, where it presented itself as a humanitarian organization in need of subscribers’ donations.
The IAGS was exposed as an organization that anyone with $30 could join.
Its genocide resolution was voted on, without debate, by a small minority of its membership.
So why is @washingtonpost still using this as “proof” of anything? https://t.co/cR7GTqOWJA pic.twitter.com/0ji0VVKMu3
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 17, 2025
From Top To Bottom: The Anti-Israel Bias of The Washington Post’s Employees
The steady stream of anti-Israel narratives in The Washington Post’s reporting was clearly impacted by the strongly-held views of several editors, journalists, and opinion writers at the newspaper.
As HonestReporting noted in July 2024 at the time of her resignation, Sally Buzzbee’s tenure as The Post’s executive editor was responsible for a rise in anti-Israel bias. Aside from echoing Hamas propaganda and whitewashing attacks against Israel, one of the most damning anti-Israel steps taken under Buzzbee’s watch was her refusal to seriously investigate the anti-Israel campus protests that spread like fire in the wake of the October 7 attacks and the resulting war.
One likely reason for this is that Buzzbee’s own daughter had been taking part in these disturbances. Did the daughter learn her anti-Israel activism from her influential mother?
Washington Post’s Sally Buzbee is stepping down from her role as Executive Editor. pic.twitter.com/VHa6WpPjd2
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) July 5, 2024
Another long-standing member of The Washington Post staff whose anti-Israel invective bled into her work for the prestigious newspaper was columnist Karen Attiah.
Within the first month following the barbaric attacks of October 7, 2023, both Attiah’s social media and pieces for The Post were full of theoretical legitimizations of the Hamas attack as a liberation struggle, references to Israel’s war against Hamas as “genocidal” and “ethnic cleansing,” Holocaust inversion, and historical revisionism.
Even though HonestReporting highlighted Attiah’s extremist rhetoric as early as November 2023, it was only in September 2025 that she was finally fired for comments about murdered political activist Charlie Kirk. The Post was evidently fine with her using the newspaper as a platform for anti-Israel hate, propaganda, and misinformation.
Good. Riddance.
Karen Attiah promoted hatred and violence against Israel – which should have cost her job at the Washington Post a very long time ago.
See the 🧵 below that includes HonestReporting’s exposé of Attiah’s worst expressions of anti-Israel hate. https://t.co/d7h0eD2SaT
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 15, 2025
Another example of The Washington Post turning a blind eye to the extreme anti-Israel viewpoints of their employees is the case of Heba Farouk Mahfouz.
A Cairo-based reporter who worked for The Post since 2016, Mahfouz has a long history of posting extreme anti-Israel views on social media, including equating Zionism with racism, referring to Israel as an “illegal state,” supporting Hamas (or, as she put it, “the resistance”), and backing Hezbollah’s attacks against Israel.
Despite Mahfouz’s sordid social media history being brought to the attention of The Post by HonestReporting, Eitan Fischberger, and others, it appears that Mahfouz was allowed to continue reporting on Israel up until the recent closure of the Cairo bureau.
🚨 BIASED REPORTER, BIASED REPORTING
The Washington Post has entrusted coverage of the Israel-Hamas war to a journalist who has publicly praised Hamas and Hezbollah.
Her name: Heba Farouk Mahfouz. pic.twitter.com/oSQ45t2qUj— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) April 6, 2025
It should be noted that not every Israel-related article in The Washington Post was infused with anti-Israel bias, and not every journalist who wrote about Israel for The Post held deeply anti-Israel views.
However, as the above demonstrates, there was enough to turn it from a prestigious news outlet into a platform for terror apologetics and demonization of the world’s only Jewish state.
While the closure of The Post’s Israel bureau (as well as several other foreign bureaus) might be a sad moment for journalism, it is clear that the newspaper had long given up on its dedication to the principles of “truth” and “fairness” when it came to its Israel coverage.
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