Smoke rises after Israeli air strikes on Gaza. Photo: Reuters/Amir Cohen
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has relied on several local journalists to cover the Israel-Hamas war.
One of these contributors is Fatima AbdulKarim, a Ramallah-based Palestinian journalist who was associated with the WSJ before the war.
However, a look at AbdulKarim’s social media and previous reporting makes it clear that she is not an impartial observer (as one would expect from a professional journalist), but rather someone who publicly promotes the Israeli “apartheid” slander and parrots the views of controversial organizations that are highly critical of Israel and leaves out important context in their reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing”: Fatima AbdulKarim’s view of Israel
In several social media posts, Fatima AbdulKarim has accused Israel of committing the crimes:apartheid” And “ethnic cleansing” against the Palestinians.
She has also written several articles for +972 Magazinea far-left news outlet that accuses the Jewish state of a variety of crimes, has opposed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism, and has published numerous articles supporting the boycott Israel movement.
In harmony with +972 MagazineAbdulKarim’s articles for the site have accused Israel of crimes against Palestinians, glossed over Palestinian terrorism as “resistance,” and claimed that Israel is occupying Gaza (even though Israel withdrew all of its soldiers and citizens from Gaza in 2005). ).
Echo of Breaking the Silence, B’Tselem & DCI-Palestine
On social media, Fatima AbdulKarim shared Posts by several organizations known for demonizing Israel, including Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem.
Both Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem have spread the slander of apartheid, accused Israel of committing war crimes, and spoken out against Israeli policies at the international level.
Fatima AbdulKarim also wrote and shared positively about it Posts from Defense for Children International-Palestine, an organization that claims to defend children’s rights but has ties to the terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, supported BDS and participated in an International Criminal Court campaign to investigate Israel.
Fatima AbdulKarim’s biased journalism
In both her social media posts and her written articles, Fatima AbdulKarim’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is riddled with omissions of context and biased observations.
Examples for this are:
- In May 2021, a group of Palestinian rioters stoned an Israeli car driving past Jerusalem’s Old City, causing the driver to lose control and crash into one of the rioters. However, in her tweet When AbdulKarim reported the incident, he only showed the accident, giving the impression that an Israeli driver had deliberately rammed his car into an innocent Palestinian.
- On November 23, 2022, AbdulKarim tweeted about a terrorist attack that had struck Jerusalem, calling it an “explosion” (even though there had been two separate bombings) and omitting the fact that a person had already been there confirmed when she was killed in the attack as she tweeted.
- End of November 2022, Abdulkarim tweeted that Ghazi Naasan had been killed in an IDF attack near Ramallah, but omitted the salient fact that he had allegedly thrown a Molotov cocktail at Israeli soldiers before being shot.
- In a October 8, 2023 tweetAbdulKarim established a moral equivalence between those killed in Hamas’s atrocities and those killed in Israel’s retaliatory strikes against Hamas.
- In an opinion piece dated October 10, 2023 for The guardAbdulKarim compared Hamas’ October 7 atrocities to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
- In an article about the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades for +972 MagazineAbdulKarim ignores the organization’s history of shootings and suicide attacks against Israeli civilians during the Second Intifada.
- In the same article, she also discusses Operation Defensive Shield, which the IDF conducted in 2002, but does not mention the wave of terrorist attacks that preceded that operation.
- In another article, AbdulKarim refers to the IDF’s shooting of Ahmad Bani Shamsa in 2021, portraying his death as the result of indiscriminate Israeli shooting. She omits the IDF’s claim that he threw an explosive at Israeli soldiers.
The Wall Street Journal, To his credit, he took a principled stance and supported Israel’s right to self-defense and its pursuit of a just war.
Although Fatima AbdulKarim is entitled to her opinion, someone who has a proven bias against Israel and allows her partisan views to influence her journalism is the best person to help the WSJ cover the war between Israel and Hamas ?
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog focused on anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias – where a version of this article first appeared.
Source : www.algemeiner.com