Even at its best, the Huffington Post is a leftist organ. And when it comes to covering Israel, the Huffington Post is not at its best.
The Huff Watch blog does a terrific job of calling out the Huffington Post for its extreme anti-Israel bias. As Huff Watch has shown, that bias manifests itself in:
* The incitement of hatred against Israel, by prominently posting inflammatory allegations* against the Jewish state, and particularly the IDF — then failing to post, or burying new information that proves Israel’s innocence
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* Publication of user comments containing anti-Semitic hate, libels and conspiracy theories, often submitted in direct response to this incitement — even though the Huffington Post claims it prohibits such comments and that it won’t publish them
* Whitewashing and ignoring the savage acts of, and statements by, militant Islamists
* Selecting and cropping pictures of Palestinians and Ahmadinejad that them in the most favorable light, while doing the exact opposite to Netanyahu, the Israel Defense Force, and other Jews
The most recent manifestation of the Huffington Post’s bias involves the assassination of Lt. Col. Dov Harari, a highly-regarded veteran of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and father of four, who was ambushed and murdered by the Lebanon Armed Forces, with suspected involvement by Hezbollah. Harari’s death was originally reported to be the result of an IDF incursion into Lebanese territory, to trim a tree, which resulted in a cross-border firefight. But soon it was discovered that both Harari and the tree were on Israel’s side of the border, and that the IDF had scheduled this activity well in advance with U.N. and Lebanese authorities.
An LAF general later openly admitted that he gave the sniper the order to fire. And Lebanon’s prime minister issued a statement, standing by his general, and threatening more violence against Israel.
The Huffington Post was quick, of course, to publish the original, false version of the story, which placed Lt. Col. Harari on the Lebanese side of the border. When that narrative was quickly discredited, it removed that story, then briefly published a story claiming the U.N. “disputed” Lebanon’s claims. It placed that story mid-way down on a secondary page, below stories about a parasailing donkey and Chinese prostitutes.
The Huffington Post chose not Include the AP’s corrected caption of its photo or any of the in-depth reports on the matter by prominent Israel-focused media watchdogs that were available at the time. Nor did it promote this story via “teasers” throughout the site, as it does when Israel is accused of wrongdoing.
In short, as Huff Watch concludes, “if one wasn’t looking for an update to this story, one would not have found it.”
Finally, of course, the Huffington Post made no effort to humanize the Israeli Jew who was murdered by Israel’s enemies. This stands in contrast to the way it often treats those who die in the ongoing fight against Israel. For instance, as Huff Watch recalls, the Huffington humanized Furkan Doğan — one of the “peace activists” killed on the Gaza terror flotilla. Doğan claimed, in the hours before the ambush of the IDF, that his objective was to become “a martyr,” a claim also made by militant Islamists on the ship. The Huffington Post neglected to include this information in its story.
How should we explain the Huffington Post’s virulent anti-Israeli reporting? My assumption is that it represents the intersection of ordinary leftist thinking about Israel and Huffington’s desire to market her site abroad, especially in the Middle East.
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