In The Washington Post’s “Genocide is our redline” (6/9/24, before the title was changed), there are so much manipulation, distortion, and outright lying that it’s hard to encompass it all in a short response.  Israel is not only innocent of this sick crime, but is facing an enemy that boasts in its charter about committing it.  This inversion of thought is right out of George Orwell’s 1984. 

The title is an absolute lie — even if it’s a quote from a Palestinian who makes this charge of Israel.  There is no genocide in Gaza.  And no matter how many times it’s repeated in chants, legacy media articles, legacy TV reports, many forms of social media, it doesn’t make it so.

The problem is that repetition is the mother of education, and even with this lie, it will stick.  Such is the story of the Jewish people.  It was the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels to whom the saying is attributed: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”  Also known as “the big lie,” this strategy was used against the Jewish people by the Nazis in their march to exterminate them.  Others attribute “the big lie” to Hitler’s manifesto, Mein Kampf. 

Whatever the exact source, The Washington Post can take “credit” for being part of this strategy against the Jews — falsely claiming and propagating the claim that the Jewish state is, and thus the Jews are, guilty of genocide. 

One can’t rightly be the aggressor and then claim that the other side is committing genocide when it fights back.  What an absurdity.  Hamas and Gazan civilians are getting killed because they initiated a war and are continuing to fight — even if they are losing terribly.  It’s on them.  Deaths would stop immediately if they simply surrendered.  This could be stopped at any time.  Is this fact so difficult to understand?

So where is the genocide by Israel?  Where is there a deliberate murder of the Palestinians for the sake of just killing them?  Look at October 7 to see what genocide can look like.  Fortunately, Hamas and the Gazan civilians who came along for the “fun” were stopped cold.  But not until 1,200 Israeli babies, toddlers, grandparents, women, men were purposely targeted with torture, dismemberment, burning alive — murdered in the most gruesome ways.  Thousands were injured, and over 200 were taken hostage including babies.  Who takes babies as hostages?  Worse, who sides with them? 

Washington Post: Call out Hamas, not Israel.  For accuracy and truthfulness, the article requires a disclaimer at a minimum, but why does the Post use a quote that is a lie and then repeat it throughout the article?  The Post is not disclaimer-averse — it routinely uses disclaimers when quoting what it sees as extremists. 

Why quote followers of a suicidal death cult — which is what Hamas is?  In a time where Jews have been obstructed from entering universities and are living in fear of violent rioters, does the Post realize that this is not new history, and they are once again on the wrong side of it? 

According to Wikipedia, “Antisemitic tropes or antisemitic canards are "sensational reports, misrepresentations, or fabrications" that are defamatory toward Judaism as a religion or defamatory towards Jews as an ethnic or religious group.  Since as early as the 2nd century, libels or allegations of Jewish guilt and cruelty emerged as a recurring motif along with antisemitic conspiracy theories.”  The claims of genocide against Israel fit exactly into this pattern.  Anyone who has read a modicum of history should know this — especially writers from a once-leading newspaper called The Washington Post.

The other “big lie” in the article is when the Post goes on to say that “Palestinian authorities have estimated more than 36,000 civilians, many of them women and children, have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war.”  There is ample evidence that those numbers are made up.  Many have refuted the numbers, including reports from the U.N. and investigative articles from Tablet Magazine.  Further, the 36,000 number does not distinguish between combatant and non-combatant, even though the Post claims they are “civilians.”  This requires a correction. 

Isn’t it telling that only when Jews are involved do casualty counts come into play, when in most wars it’s about battles won?  If there is a way to give a black eye to Israel, the Post is determined to find it. 

But the Post has to manipulate to get there, as top war experts agree that Israel has fought one of the most humane urban wars in history, with an approximate 1.5-to-1 civilian to combatant casualty count. 

No wonder the Post’s readership is down 50%.  If the readers want sensationalist blabber, there are many such outlets on the internet that they can peruse. 

Dr. Michael Berenhaus is a freelance activist who works to combat anti-Israel bias in the media.  He has been widely published in news sources such as The Economist, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

Image via Pxhere.