September Daze: The Washington Post’s Peculiar Israeli-Palestinian Commentary

Eric Rozenman
CAMERA Media Analysis
17 September '10

The Washington Post’s skewed sense of what’s newsworthy about Israel and Jews, displayed just before and after Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, also afflicted the newspaper’s commentary pages. The Post ran four Op-Ed columns by outside contributors between September 2 and 7. One was from a chronic Israel basher, two by Palestinian apologists of selective veracity, and one that, being factual and experience-based was essentially pro-Israel. (CAMERA has documented The Post’s Op-Ed page tilt before, including "Study: On Nation’s Op-Ed Pages, Israel’s Voice is Stilled," Feb. 5, 2008.)

A string of falsehoods

The most dishonest of the three anti-Israel and/or pro-Palestinian outside commentaries was George Bisharat’s "A true one-state solution" (September 3). Bisharat, an obsessive anti-Israel Op-Ed writer, is a law professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law in San Francisco when he isn’t posturing at the Institute for Palestinian Studies. In The Post he again presents a series of falsehoods as facts. Among them:

* "More than 35 laws" discriminate against "Palestinian citizens of Israel."

There are no "Palestinian citizens" of Israel. There are Jewish, Arab (Muslim, Christian and Druze), Circassian and other Israeli citizens of Israel. Aside from the fact that military service is voluntary, not mandatory, for Israeli Arabs, all Israelis enjoy equal civil rights. Israel’s supreme court includes an Arab justice, 12 of the 120 members of parliament are Arabs, Arabs serve in the cabinet, diplomatic corps and hold senior ranks in the military. Some years ago an Israeli Arab was Miss Israel.

* "A de facto one-state reality has emerged with Israel effectively ruling virtually all of the former Palestine." Except during British Mandatory Palestine (1920 - 1948) there was no "former Palestine," no country or province by that name. Jordan, created by Great Britain in 1921, rules 77 percent of former mandatory Palestine, Israel about 16 percent.

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