Israel Matzav

Condemning one of its own

It's probably just as well that I don't write for the Washington Post. Looking at how they have publicly attacked fellow blogger Jennifer Rubin, who writes for them, for retweeting a blog post written by 'Bad Rachel' Abrams (whom I have had the privilege of meeting), you have to wonder what the thought process is over at WaPo. This is their ombudsman commenting on Jennifer's retweet.

But in this case Rubin told me that she did agree with Abrams. Rubin said that she admires Abrams, has quoted her a lot, thinks she’s an excellent writer and endorsed the sentiment behind the Abrams blog post. Rubin said, however, that she did not see it as a call to genocide against all Palestinians: “The post expressed an understandable desire for righteous vengeance against the kidnappers and human rights abusers of Gilad Shalit. It is a sentiment I share. If I were writing on The Washington Post Web site, I would not have used that language. . . but the sentiment underlying it — that the captors deserve the final penalty -- is one that I share.”

Abrams’s post is so full of dashes it’s hard to follow, but the subject of her run-on sentence does appear to be “captors” not Palestinians in general. The language is so over the top, though —“child-sacrificing savages,” “devil’s spawn,” “pimped out by their mothers,” “unmanned animals” — it’s easy to how some people might see it as an endorsement of genocide. Furthermore, other posts on Abrams’s blog also refer to Palestinians with a broad brush.

Rubin suggested that the letters I received denouncing her retweet were part of an “orchestrated campaign to get The Washington Post to fire a pro-Israel blogger.”

It is true that a lot of the letters did call for Rubin’s firing. I’ve received lots of letters objecting to her conservative views since I came here in March. Many of them call for her firing. Regular readers of the ombudsman will know that I defended Rubin back in July. I think The Post needs conservative voices to balance its many liberal ones.

It is also true that two groups did seem to be driving some of the reader reaction to the retweet. One was a Al-Akhbar English, a Middle East-focused Web site, where Max Blumenthal (son of journalist and Clinton White House aide Sidney Blumenthal) denounced the Abrams blog post and Rubin’s retweet and encouraged people to contact me. The other was J Street, a liberal American Jewish group frequently at odds with the conservative Emergency Committee for Israel. J Street denounced Abrams’s blog post as an “unhinged rant filled with incitement and hate speech.”

Sorry, but I hope that the IDF and the Mossad will hunt down and kill everyone who was involved with Shalit's kidnapping. Just like they did after the Munich Olympic massacre. And I see nothing wrong with saying so. (And yes, that's how I understood Rachel's post). Is the Post suggesting that we ought to forgive terrorists? South African minister Desmond Tutu - a notorious Israel hater - suggested this week that we ought to forgive the Nazis (may their name be obliterated). Does the Post agree with that sentiment too?

Philip Klein also wonders what's going on at the Post (Hat Tip: Instapundit).

To most people, wishing for the death of terrorists is pretty non-controversial stuff. But then again, those people don't live in the bizarro world of the Washington Post's ombudsman.

Well, maybe. But what worries me about this is that the Post ombudsman admitted that he caved in to an orchestrated letter writing campaign by Leftist extremists Max Blumenthal and J Street - and he identified this as an orchestrated letter writing campaign. It's not a big step from publicly condemning Rubin to firing her, leaving the largest circulation newspaper in America's capital without a conservative voice.

Labels: Bad Rachel, Gilad Shalit, Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:30 PM