Tell the WaPo to Stop Covering for Their Bigoted, Hateful Likud Blogger

Hi everyone, I’m back.

Each time I go into the hospital I come out to even more outrageous shenanigans on the part of not only the Israeli government, but their proxies here in the U.S. and even the Obama administration.

Jennifer Rubin works for the Washington Post for one reason- so she can amplify the Israel Lobby party line. Everything else she writes is just filler to try to make it look like she’s some sort of political writer. She’s not. Her whole professional life has been dedicated to one thing- anti-Arab, pro-occupation, anti-peace demagoguery. That’s why she was hired at the Post and thus far, she hasn’t disappointed. I mean, where else but in the American MSM could you use your Washington Post twitter feed to promote genocide against Palestinians?

In fact, in a very short time she’s managed to rival my other favorite media figure, the NYT’s Jerusalem Bureau Chief, Ethan Bronner, for flagrant conflicts of interest, ethical lapses and contempt for Palestinians. Of course, Bronner pretends to be an objective journalist while Rubin was hired by the Post to provide political commentary and reporting. That said, it doesn’t excuse Rubin because even those that provide commentary for the nation’s [supposed] top tier news outlets should have to comport with basic ethics and at least attempt to base their commentary on something resembling facts. But hey, not Rubin.

Here’s Rubin’s latest hit piece on behalf of the Israel Lobby [via Think Progress]:

The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin this week in two separate posts smeared CAP and its bloggers as “anti-Semitic” and “anti-Israel.” In her first post highlighting a recent Politico piece — which was originally titled “Liberal think tank harbors Israel haters” but subsequently changed to “Uncovering the anti-Israel enablers” — Rubin, without offering any evidence, said our “views are not merely anti-Israel, they are anti-Semitic” and that our writing is “fiction for Israel haters.” Rubin posted a follow-up story the next day, noting Progressive Policy Institute senior fellow Josh Block’s role in it and added, again without offering any evidence, that CAP bloggers promote “out-and-out anti-Semitic hate speech”:

Block is a self-identified Democratic activist whose pro-Israel credentials are well known. He’s actively worked for years to elect scores of Democrats. Of course he wants the anti-Israel left to be exposed. Of course he wants pro-Israel Democrats on record as distancing themselves from the CAP-housed bloggers who peddle in anti-Israel attacks and out-and-out anti-Semitic hate speech.

Again, Rubin offered no proof of these charges. But she promoted Block’s claim that “the European Union’s accepted definition of anti-Semitic hate speech applies to much of the CAP bloggers’ rhetoric, such as holding Israel to a dual standard while demonizing the Jewish state.”

More on this story here.

Here is my email to Washington Post Ombudsman Richard Pexton, whom I seem to write to about once a month, complaining about the Post’s shitty, biased, coverage of everything:

Mr. Pexton,

I am wondering, was Jennifer Rubin hired for any other reason than to serve as an echo chamber for far-right, fringe, anti-Arab, anti-free speech, anti-Palestinian hawks? Reading the Post has become tiresome- it’s just one ethical controversy after another with the likes of Rubin. The pages of the Post have become nothing but hawkish, pro-Likud foreign policy views. Does the Post really think that such views don’t get get enough airtime in the U.S. mainstream media? As far as I can tell, it’s the ONLY view that gets aired. Thus, the notion that Rubin brings any sort of “balance” to the Post as a conservative is a bunch of tripe. Balance? Whom is she balancing at the Post? Fred Hiatt? Jackson Diehl, Richard Cohen? Give me a break. Yes, she throws in some short posts daily where she shills for her GOP friends and uses her lofty perch to tar those whom she and her friends disagree with. Her contact list for quotes seems to consist mainly of her personal friends and house guests (Rachel and Eliot Abrams, Noah Pollak, Bill Kristol etc.), whose intolerant and often hateful views she promotes under the banner of the Washington Post.

Rubin’s latest screeds, naturally, involve tarring huge swaths of people as anti-Semites simply because she disagrees with them on the issue of Israel. Lets be honest- this is really Rubin’s main purpose in her working life- to use her various writing gigs (and behind the scenes work at the Emergency Committee for Israel)- at Commentary, now at the Post, to lash out at anyone who dares to try to open up the debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She represents the worst in American political debate (or lack thereof). She serves as an echo-chamber for the most fringe elements of the anti-Arab, so-called “pro-Israel” (but ironically, not really) right. How many times is the Post going to cover for Rubin’s rabid anti-Arab rhetoric knowing full well if she were targeting any other group, she’d have been long gone by now? And yet, the Post offers her endless cover. I wonder why that is Mr. Pexton? What is it, exactly, about Ms. Rubin that makes her so worthy of the Washington Post’s protection?

Can you imagine the Washington Post hiring an Arab, or even God forbid, a Palestinian-American blogger who wrote about Israelis and Jews with the same venom Rubin directs at ALL Arabs or anyone she deems as their “sympathizers”? It would never happen, ever. And that says a lot about the Post’s commitment to objective journalism or even balanced commentary. There is NO ONE at the Post who balances out Rubin’s far, far, far right foreign policy views on the Middle East and you and the rest of the Post staff know it.

Please stop rationalizing Rubin’s hatred and unprofessional writing as merely being about left vs. right or pro-Israel vs. anti-Israel. In doing so, you are complicit in Rubin’s demeaning, hateful demagoguery.