We get the largely unreadable Washington Post because my husband must have a hard-copy paper with a sports section to read with his morning coffee. To say its reporting stinks is to overpraise it. Still, Saturday morning I saw the first glimmer of actual reporting, relegated as it was, nevertheless, to the ever-lefty fluff of the Style Section: “News from the frontline of culture,” per the Post’s website. The article by Paul Farhi is not on the Post website, and I had to go to sfgate to find it available online.  It seems to me the Post has done what it could to bury it. Here’s why -- it exposes the rot in journalism today.

NBC News broke the news last week that more than 40 White House interns had sent an extraordinary letter to President Biden opposing the administration's support of Israel's military action in Gaza. So did HuffPost, when it reported Monday that 140 interns on Capitol Hill had sent an open letter protesting the war; it alleges that members of Congress have suppressed a wave of constituent support for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza.

The twin stories touched off a small wave of follow-up coverage, much of it portraying the purported letters as a rebuke to Biden and both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Except the letters, and the news stories about them, left a few important questions unanswered -- namely, who wrote them and whether the number of people reportedly supporting them actually did so.

In each case, it was impossible to identify or enumerate the letters' purported signatories. The stories said supporters declined to make their names public. That left open claims that dozens of people stood behind the underlying sentiments. The letters are part of a trendlet of anonymous protest letters purportedly written by people connected to the administration and federal government. All of the letters were sent without the names of signatories.

The New York Times, for example, reported last month that 500 political appointees and staff members representing 40 government agencies, including the Departments of State and Defense, expressed their opposition to Biden's support for Israel.

Several days earlier, Foreign Policy magazine first reported that 370 employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development had signed a petition urging Biden to call for an immediate cease-fire (later news stories said the number of signatories at USAID had grown to 1,000).

In both cases, the letters were sent anonymously. The USAID letter explained that employees had withheld their names out of "concern for our personal safety and risk of potentially losing our jobs," according to the Times.

He continues with other media citing these letters as signs of widespread dissent against Israel’s conduct, without a confirming source of a single signatory. He noticed the same thing that I and the Wall Street Journal did: that the petitions of the “White House interns” begins “we the undersigned” even though neither is signed. ”Isn’t it rich that the White House interns’ letter supporting Palestine opens with “We, the undersigned” -- but was sent anonymously? How’s that for showing the courage of their convictions?”

The White House believes these letters seemingly written by the same person originated from an “outside source,” and note that before running with the story, NBC never sought a comment from the White House. There’s some reason to believe they were written by a doctor in San Francisco, “according to a database search.”

A few days ago, a group identifying itself as Administration insiders held a vigil outside the White House calling for a cease-fire. Once again, they might be anyone, as they hid their identities. 

Political appointees and Biden administration staffers held a vigil in front of the White House on Wednesday to call on President Joe Biden to support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

More than three dozen people, including political appointees, administration staffers and civil service career staff, attended the early evening vigil in front of the White House. The participants wore sunglasses and masks to conceal their identities . 

Once again, CNN accepted their self-identification without questioning it.

It’s hard to believe such journalistic malpractice is not deliberate -- an effort to appeal to the leftists in the President’s party to pressure Israel to bow to the thugs of Hamas with whom their obvious sympathies lie. It’s equally hard to discount the notion that the editors of the Washington Post have gone to great efforts to downplay Farhi’s justifiable critique.

Elsewhere, mostly masked protestors are blocking roadways and bridges to the great annoyance of motorists, and jeopardizing the health of patients in ambulances and schoolchildren in buses. In too few cases have law enforcement officers hauled them off and jailed them. To my knowledge only Florida has the guts to make it legal for drivers to go on through these lines. (I would, with the memory of what happened to Reginald Denny when he stopped his truck during a riot in Los Angeles.)

As goes the mainstream media, so go the usual foundation supported featherbrains.

Responding to the usual Carnegie Foundation, nonsense, Hussain Abdul-Hussain writes:

"Please, oh please, stop feeding our Islamist beast by justifying its terror. Islamist beast has been killing us, non Islamist Arabs, long before it started massacring Jews. Islamists killed Nobel peace prize winner Sadat in 1981. Islamist Iran celebrates this crime until today. Also, always remember that the first Hamas massacre was to kill 350 PA Palestinians in 2007 to take over Gaza.

I know that you think America, Israel, non-Islamist Arabs, are the evil military industrial complex and that you think of yourselves as honest Westerners who woke up and saw the light, but you haven’t.“

As the war in Gaza exposed its perfidy, contributions to UNRWA have been frozen by Switzerland. Other arms of the UN are just as bad. Once again Hussain Abdul-Hussain swats at it.  To avoid unnecessary destruction when blowing up the tunnels, Israel is pumping them full of sea water. Naturally this invokes UN condemnation (this time the absurdly named UN Human Rights Council) to Hussain’s disgust:

”Civilians in tunnels? And by civilians I guess the UN means Yahya Sinwar and Mohd Deif? Goods in tunnels? By goods I assume the UN means rockets? UN is Hamas.

Quote

UN Human Rights

@UNHumanRights

Dec 14

#Gaza: Israel’s flooding of tunnels with saltwater could have severe adverse human rights impacts, some long term. Goods indispensable to civilian survival could also be at risk, as well as widespread, long-term & severe environmental damage. Civilians must be protected.” 

The White House so far does not seem to be buying into the temper tantrums on the highways, the obnoxious behavior at so many colleges and universities, and the puerile nonsense of unsigned petitions and vigils by those ashamed to show their faces or reveal their names, though the organized pro-Hamas crowd and the useful idiots they’ve ensnared into joining them seem determined to do this. We’re starting again to hear nonsense about a negotiated two-state solution. This was rejected, as it must be, by Israel and anyone who believes it has a right to exist in peace. Even Bill Maher gets how stupid a call for a negotiated settlement is:

“All wars end with negotiation, but it's hard to negotiate when the other side's bargaining position is "you all die and disappear."

The White House also is signaling it wants the war over in a month. This is inconsistent with the stated wish of both Israel and the U.S. to limit as far as possible civilian casualties. (Do not doubt for a second Israel could have flattened Gaza in a day with far fewer military casualties if speed were the only question.)

Let’s hope these calls for a negotiated settlement and a sped-up resolution of the war are simply sops to the ill-informed progressive wing of the party to keep them at bay long enough to resolve the conflict as it must be resolved: With the utter defeat of Hamas and elimination of its leaders.