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One of the central tenets of antisemitism is the idea that Jews are responsible for all the evil in the world. Der Sturmer, the Nazi Party rag, summed this idea up: “the Jews are our misfortune.” Today that idea has been revamped for a more liberal era and more polite company. Now it is the Jewish state that is responsible for all the world’s ills. And the Washington Post, once a bastion of liberal thought and investigative journalism, is here to tell you why.
The lack of democracy in the Middle East? Well, that problem can be laid at the footsteps of the Jewish state and the United States, according to Post columnist Shadi Hamid (“How Israel and the United States suppress democracy in the Middle East,” May 13, 2024). The United States supports “repressive regimes, backed and armed with billions of dollars of U.S. economic and military aid.” Why do they do this? For Israel (of course).
Israel, Hamid writes, “stands at the center of the region that the United States helped form.” And “the decision to elevate Israel’s security interests above almost everything else, however well-intentioned, has distorted American policy.” The Jewish state “might be the region’s only established democracy, [but] Israel is a staunch opponent of democracy in the rest of the Middle East.”
According to Hamid, Arab populations tend to be anti-Israel so it follows that both Washington and Jerusalem have to back repressive authoritarian governments—“American client states” as he calls them—to prevent them from having a say. He adds: “That Israel prefers autocrats over democrats has been a source of tension with the United States.” Hamid states that “most of the more than 20 senior George W. Bush and Obama administration officials that I interviewed for my book ‘The Problem of Democracy’ recounted Israeli officials’ irritation whenever the United States would flirt with taking a more forthright pro-democracy stance in the region.”
One example that Hamid offers is the Egyptian regime of Gen. Abdel Fatah El-Sisi. And, for reasons that will be explained shortly, this is a very telling example for the Post columnist to give. But the gist of his argument is clear: the Jewish state is responsible for the lack of democracy in the Middle East. This is a common, if old and tired, argument for anti-Israel activists to make. The problem with it is simple: it overlooks the entire history of the Middle East. And it overstates Israel’s role and impact in the region. Other than that, it’s fine.
Israel was founded in 1948. It was, and is, a democracy. Prior to Israel’s founding, there were no major democracies in the region. Egypt, ruled by King Farouk and, before him, other descendants of Muhammad Ali, wasn’t a democracy. Nor was the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, known today as Jordan. Ditto for Iraq, then ruled by Hashemites, as well. And ditto for Syria, Lebanon, and various states in the Gulf and northern Africa. The modern nation of Turkey, founded by Atatürk and ruled at the time by his associates, was arguably the most Western-leaning and liberal Middle Eastern nation at the time. Yet, it too was repressive, imprisoning, and torturing dissidents and persecuting religious minorities. All these countries were ruled by dictatorships long before Israel was created. So too was the Ottoman Empire, which ruled over the region for centuries prior. Blaming the Jewish state for the lack of democracy in the Middle East is ahistorical. But it is very much on brand for the Washington Post of today.
To be sure, Egypt, Iraq, and Transjordan, were heavily influenced by the British at the time—just as Syria and Lebanon retained heavy French influence. Yet this can hardly be laid at the doorstep of some sort of Western proto-Zionism; all these countries attacked the fledgling Jewish state at its founding, and all received, to varying degrees, support from their colonial masters for doing so. Indeed, as the historian Benny Morris recounted in his history of the 1948 War, the British actively aided Transjordan in its war against the Jewish state.
Nor can it be said that the U.S. has supported dictatorships out of some sort of pro-Israel impulse. Far from it. In fact, many in the U.S. government, including the CIA and State Department, initially backed Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Free Officers movement in Egypt, in their bid to oust Egypt’s King Farouk. Nasser was hardly pro-Israel; he waged a decades long war against the Jewish state, supporting Palestinian terrorist groups and launching no fewer than three wars against the nation in less than two decades of rule. Yet, Nasser had the active backing, indeed friendship with top CIA officials like Kermit Roosevelt, a prominent anti-Zionist.
As Hugh Wilford documents in his excellent 2013 book, America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East, Roosevelt was involved in a project called American Friends of the Middle East—a CIA-backed front group whose entire goal was to attack Israel and defame it in Western press. And, as the journalist Ian Johnson recounted in his 2010 book A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Muslim Brotherhood, the U.S. even actively supported former Nazi collaborators, including allies of Amin al-Husseini, the founding father of Palestinian nationalism, during the Cold War. Support was also extended to Muslim Brotherhood elements, whom the U.S.-viewed as a useful foil against the atheist Soviets. Are we to believe that they were pro-Israel?
It should also be noted, and is no less important, that many Middle Eastern nations, such as Syria and eventually, for a time, Egypt, were Soviet client states. They were dictatorships and they were, to put it mildly, anti-Israel. When Israel is factored out of the equation, a simple, and unpleasant truth emerges: many Middle Eastern countries have been led by autocrats before Israel existed and were led by autocrats irrespective of whether they recognized Israel or waged war on the Jewish state. In the Middle East, democracy is not the norm—and that’s hardly Israel’s fault, nor is it that of the United States.
Indeed, when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Gazans voted for the repressive and highly undemocratic Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group. Hamas hasn’t held elections since. The U.S. doesn’t support Hamas. Nor does Israel. They’re fundamentally undemocratic all on their own. Blaming Israel or the United States for the lack of democracy in the Middle East is a convenient way to overlook some decidedly unpleasant truths—truths that predate Israel’s founding and speak volumes about much of the region.
It is curious that Hamid doesn’t mention the example of Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot. It is equally curious that he seldom, if ever, writes anything negative about Qatar, a backer of the Brotherhood and a dictatorship itself. And it’s particularly interesting that he singled out Egypt’s Sisi, a foe of the Brotherhood. Of course, Hamid used to work for the Brookings Institute, whose financial links to Qatar are a matter of record. Hamid is hardly alone in this; as a recent National Review article noted, in recent years, the Post has hired numerous staffers with ties to Qatari-linked entities, be it Brookings, Al Jazeera, the Qatar Foundation, or others.
When it isn’t warning about the nefarious Jewish state, the Washington Post is, Der Sturmer-like, warning about undue Jewish influence.
In a May 16, 2024 article, the Post claimed that a group of prominent business leaders expressing concerns over campus antisemitism offered “a window into how some prominent individuals have wielded their money and power in an effort to shape American views of the Gaza War, as well as the actions of academic, business and political leaders—including New York’s mayor.” That sure is a lot of influence and power! And it sounds nefarious!
The article, headlined “Business titans privately urged NYC mayor to use police on Columbia protestors, chats show,” posited that powerful, pro-Israel, business leaders used WhatsApp to convince New York City Mayor Eric Adams to use police to crush campus “protesters.” The problem? The entire gist of the article is false. One senses a theme here when it comes to the Post and bending the truth in service of an anti-Israel narrative.
As the New York City Mayor’s office told Jewish Insider:
“Let’s be very clear: Both times the NYPD entered Columbia University’s campus — on April 18th and April 30th — were in response to specific written requests from Columbia University to do so. Prior to these operations, Mayor Adams consistently stated that Columbia is a private institution on private property and that assistance would be provided only upon request.”
Further: “Any suggestion that other considerations were involved in the decision-making process is completely false, and the insinuation that Jewish donors secretly plotted to influence government operations is an all too familiar antisemitic trope that the Washington Post should be ashamed to ask about, let alone normalize in print.”
On X, formerly known as Twitter, Fabian Levy, a spokesperson for the Mayor’s office, upbraided the Post for saying Jews “wielded their money & power in an effort to shape American views,” noting that it “is offensive on so many levels.”
It is offensive. But it is also in keeping with the Washington Post’s brand. Once well-regarded, the newspaper has steadily earned a reputation for being “Al Jazeera on the Potomac,” as some critics have asserted. Indeed, the May 16, 2024 Jewish Insider write up was the fourth such critique of the Post’s coverage of Israel to appear in the publication in the last six month. National Review, Commentary, and other major publications have all published pieces in the last few months noting the Post’s current trend away from serious journalism and towards something else.
Indeed, in the seven months since Hamas perpetrated the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, the Post has consistently regurgitated casualty statistics provided by the terrorist group and defended doing so, minimized and denied the rapes and sexual violence carried out by Hamas, and labeled the massacre—the worst slaughter of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust—merely a “bad thing” that “doesn’t justify other bad things.” The Post has, on multiple occasions, met the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. Post columnists have also minimized the rampant antisemitism taking place on college campuses. That’s quite the record.
Yet, antisemitism is more than conspiracy theories about Jewish influence, or blaming Jews for a lack of democracy. It is also, by its very nature, obsessive.
The Post’s Chris Richards used a May 12, 2024 review of Neil Young rock concert to insert some curious anti-Israel commentary. A concert review. Richards asserted that police “across our country were brutalizing college student’s protesting Israel’s war on Gaza.” But Israel didn’t declare “war on Gaza.” Rather it is engaged in a defensive war against Iranian proxies, including, but not limited to, Hamas. CAMERA even clarified this point—that saying “Israel is at war with Gaza” is incorrect—in an interview with the Washington Post’s Paul Farhi on Oct. 17, 2024.
But facts don’t seem to matter to the Washington Post. Narrative does. And that narrative—that the Jewish state is uniquely evil and unjust—is rampant at the newspaper. Both readers and advertisers alike should take note.
