Washington Post publishes puff piece on ‘Palestinian’ jihad terror group

Of course it did. What would have been surprising would have been if the WaPo had published a puff piece about foes of jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women.

“WaPo takes heat for ‘shameful’ puff piece on Palestinian terror group: ‘They can’t help themselves,'” by Yael Halon, Fox News, August 8, 2023:

The Washington Post came under fire Monday for publishing what critics called a fawning puff piece about a Palestinian terror cell in the West Bank. The outlet was accused of “legitimizing” the terrorist group with sympathetic reporting driven by an alleged anti-Israel bias at the paper.

In the story, headlined “‘Tomorrow’s martyrs’: Inside a Palestinian militant cell in the West Bank,” Washington Post reporter Steve Hendrix detailed his experience embedding with the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which has been designated a terrorist group by the United States and Israel. Hendrix, joined by photographer Lorenzo Tugnoli, followed the group’s every move for three days, describing in great detail the meals and daily activities of the militants and their leader “Zoufi.”

The experience, writes Hendrix, “afforded a rare window into the lives and actions of fighters on one side of the worst violence to grip the West Bank in decades.”

“In the daylight hours, the men rested out of the sun and watched TikTok videos, many of them showing the funerals of militants killed in recent Israeli raids,” Hendrix writes. “…Most of the fighters said they are focused on defense, shooting back at Israeli forces that enter the camps. But several said Jewish settlers in the West Bank also are considered fair targets.”

The story, which features photos of Palestinian children at the graves of their “fighter” relatives and heavily armed terrorists, recounts the “grim and growing” death toll of Palestinians at the hands of “Israeli military raids” like the recent Jenin operation, which resulted in the death of one Israeli soldier and 12 Palestinians. The operation targeted “the Hamas terrorist organization responsible for all terror activities emanating from the Gaza Strip,” Israeli leaders said. Jenin has been a hotbed of Palestinian terrorist activity for months, with Iranian-backed militants using it as a base from which to carry out attacks in Israel.

Hendrix said Israel’s raids and ongoing mayhem in the West Bank leaves fighters like Zoufi feeling compelled to take up arms, filling several paragraphs about the terror leader with details of his upbringing and earlier life….

Militants spoke “admiringly of gunmen who ambushed Israeli civilians, including an attack last year outside a Tel Aviv pub that killed three civilian Israelis and a mass shooting at a West Bank gas station that left four Israelis dead in June. They spoke of a secret ‘quick response’ team — ‘Even we don’t know who they are,’… two of whom carried out the gas station shooting,” the WaPo report reads….

“Leftist American newspapers despise Israel so much that they can’t help themselves from giving sympathetic coverage to suicide bombers and terrorists under the guise of ‘showing both sides,'” Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., wrote.