But Palestinian terrorists in Jenin have used their arms not “to defend themselves against the Israeli occupation,” but to launch more than 50 attacks on Israelis, both in the West Bank and inside Israel, aimed mainly at civilians.
The Post also fails to mention the 27 Israelis murdered by Palestinians since the beginning of 2023, nearly all of whom have been civilians.
The “military incursions into the camp” are the direct result of these terror attacks, prompting the IDF to root out the nest of terrorism. Tragically, children have been killed but the Post fails to mention that some of these minors were 16 and 17-year-old combatants, sent by terrorist organizations to be used as child soldiers.
Instead, without the context of the Palestinian wave of terror that necessitated military action, the Post simply says that “Since last spring, the Israeli military has been launching near-daily raids on Palestinian villages and towns; its operations in Jenin have been among the most brazen and deadly.”
Indeed, Palestinian terrorism is remarkably absent from The Washington Post’s historical overview.
Jenin is, according to the Post, “known as a hub of armed Palestinian resistance.”
The sad reality is that Jenin is known as a hub of terrorism dominated by terror organizations such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both proscribed by most Western states. Their stated aims to murder Israelis and Jews, and destroy Israel in its entirety — the goal is not simply “resistance” as the Post claims.
Referring to the Oslo Accords, the backgrounder contends: “Instead of Palestinian statehood, fighting continued. Israeli forces retook control of the [Jenin] camp for more than one week in 2002, during a deadly raid that leveled much of the camp as part of a wider clampdown.”
Fighting did not simply continue after Oslo. Israelis were subjected to a massive campaign of Palestinian terrorism, including deadly suicide bombings that finally forced the Israeli government to launch Operation Defensive Shield in 2002. This was not a “wider clampdown” but a military operation to restore security for Israeli civilians who were being killed and injured on a near daily basis.
The Washington Post’s theme of erasing Palestinian terrorism from the Israeli motivation to deal with Jenin continues: “Once-fringe Jewish supremacists and settler activists now have key roles in Netanyahu’s government overseeing policing and policies concerning Palestinians and the West Bank. Netanyahu, who needs to stay in power to fight corruption charges, is under increasing political pressure to clamp down on Palestinians.”
So, in the Post’s eyes, the violence is not a result of Palestinian terrorism (that predated this Israeli government) but of simple politics, and “pressure to clamp down on Palestinians.” The piece falsely claims the target is not Palestinian terrorism but Palestinians in general, adding an additional layer of malevolence to Israeli government motivations.
Where the Post does eventually mention Palestinian terrorism, it does so in the context of a false moral equivalence between attacks on Israeli civilians and Israeli responses. A Palestinian car-ramming attack in Tel Aviv and Hamas rockets fired from Gaza are part of a “familiar tit-for-tat [that] accompanied Israel’s attacks on Jenin.”
Washington Post readers deserve better than an article claiming to give background on Jenin that erases Palestinian terrorism, its Israeli victims, and the real reasons behind Israel’s military operation.
The author is the Editorial Director of HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
