The Huffington Post headline drew the ire of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Photo: Screenshot.

A headline carried by the Huffington Post super-blog that read simply “Israel Strikes Again” has drawn criticism from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angles based Jewish human rights group that “promotes human rights and dignity, stands with Israel” and “defends the safety of Jews worldwide.”

The headline, which  linked to a story about recently reported Israeli strikes in Syria aimed at preventing the flow of advanced weaponry to terror group Hezbollah, according to US and Israel officials, provided no context regarding the strike. The story was accompanied by a picture of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu smirking and clapping, and appeared on Sunday afternoon as the main headline on the publication’s much visited homepage.

“President Obama underscored Israel’s right to strike inside Syria; a leader of Syria’s rebels went on Israel’s Channel 2 to thank Bibi and company for weakening Assad,” said Associate Dean Abraham Cooper in an email to The Algemeiner, “Apparently all that’s not enough for today’s Huffpost editors. They even trotted out a picture of PM Netanyahu scowling while headlining—Israel strikes again.”

“Never mind,” continued Cooper, “Bet you the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and millions of internally displaced are praying Israel strikes again and again.”

Huff-Watcher, an anonymous blogger dedicated to highlighting bias on the Huffington Post also criticized the  headline writing in an email to The Algemeiner, “Leave it to HuffPost to once again use such a biased, decontextualized, Israel-as-aggressor headline.”

There is “no context,” Huff-Watcher wrote  “Why is Israel ‘striking’ Syria?  Every responsible ‘newspaper’ in the world is saying something about the reason.”

Huff-Watcher contends that the headline lacking context is not new for the Huffington Post when it comes to reporting on Israel. “This is nothing new.  It is part of HuffPost’s continuing pattern of whipping up hatred against Israel and Jews, through egregiously decontextualized headlines and headline imagery, ignoring the preceding attacks that made Israel’s military response necessary, then falsely depicting Israel as the aggressor,” the blogger writes.

At the time of publication the Huffington Post had not yet responded to The Algemeiner’s request for comment.