The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has relied on several local journalists to serve as contributors to its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.
One of these contributors is Fatima AbdulKarim, a Palestinian journalist based in Ramallah who has been affiliated with the WSJ since before the war.
However, a look at both AbdulKarim’s social media and past reporting makes it clear that she is not an impartial observer (as one would expect of a professional journalist working for a foreign news outlet) but rather someone who has publicly promoted the Israel “apartheid” libel, parrots the views of controversial organizations that are highly critical of Israel, and omits vital context in her reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
‘Apartheid’ & ‘Ethnic Cleansing’: Fatima AbdulKarim’s View of Israel
In several social media posts, Fatima AbdulKarim has accused Israel of committing the crimes of “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing” against the Palestinians.
She has also written several articles for +972 Magazine, a far-left news outlet that has accused the Jewish state of a wide variety of crimes, has opposed the IHRA definition of antisemitism, and has published numerous articles supporting the boycott Israel movement.
In line with +972 Magazine’s political outlook, AbdulKarim’s articles for the site have accused Israel of crimes against the Palestinians, have whitewashed Palestinian terrorism as “resistance,” and have claimed that Israel occupies Gaza (even though it removed all its soldiers and citizens from the Strip in 2005).
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Echoing Breaking The Silence, B’Tselem & DCI-Palestine
On social media, Fatima AbdulKarim has shared posts from several organizations that are known for demonizing Israel, including Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem.
Both Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem have spread the apartheid libel, accused Israel of committing war crimes, and advocated against Israeli policy in the international arena.
Fatima AbdulKarim has also written positively about and shared posts from Defense for Children International-Palestine, an organization that purports to defend children’s rights but has ties to the PFLP terror organization, supports BDS, and has taken part in a campaign for the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel.
Fatima AbdulKarim’s Biased Journalism
In both her social media posts and written articles, Fatima AbdulKarim’s reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is rife with omissions of context and biased observations.
Examples of this include:
- In May 2021, a group of Palestinian rioters stoned an Israeli car passing by the Old City of Jerusalem, causing the driver to lose control and crash into one of the rioters. However, in her tweet about the incident, AbdulKarim only showed the crash, making it seem as if an Israeli driver deliberately rammed his car into an innocent Palestinian.
- On November 23, 2022, AbdulKarim tweeted about a terror attack that had struck Jerusalem, referring to it as an “explosion” (even though there had been two separate bombings) and omitted the fact that one person had already been confirmed as killed in the attack by the time that she tweeted.
- In late November 2022, Abdulkarim tweeted that Ghazi Naasan had been killed during an IDF raid near Ramallah but omitted the salient fact that he had reportedly thrown a Molotov cocktail at Israeli soldiers prior to being shot.
- In an October 8, 2023 tweet, AbdulKarim created a moral equivalence between those killed in the Hamas atrocities and those killed in Israel’s retaliatory strikes against Hamas.
- In an October 10, 2023 opinion piece for The Guardian, AbdulKarim likened the Hamas atrocities of October 7 to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
- In a piece about Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades for +972 Magazine, AbdulKarim omits the organization’s history of shooting and suicide bombing attacks against Israeli civilians during the Second Intifada.
- In that same piece, she also discusses Operation Defensive Shield, which the IDF conducted in 2002, but makes no mention of the wave of terror attacks that preceded this operation.
- In another article, AbdulKarim references the IDF’s shooting of Ahmad Bani Shamsa in 2021, portraying his death as the result of indiscriminate Israeli fire. She omits the IDF’s assertion that he had thrown an explosive at Israeli soldiers.
The Wall Street Journal, to its credit, has taken a principled stance and backed Israel’s right to self-defense and its pursuit of just war. While Fatima AbdulKarim is entitled to her opinions, is someone who has proven to be biased against Israel and who has allowed her partisan views to affect her journalism, the best person to help the WSJ report on the war between Israel and Hamas?
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