One of the questions I am asked most often at my lectures in America is “From which American media outlet should I get my news about Israel?”
My answer has always been “None of them.” Since the advent of the Internet, no one in America needs to get news about Israel from the local paper anymore.
That’s where people should get their sports news and maybe their weather reports. But when it comes to Israel, it’s just as easy to click jpost.1eye.us as the website of any American media outlet.
In the past, the follow-up question had sometimes been “Not even The Wall Street Journal?” They asked that because the editorial line of the Journal is solidly pro-Israel, and its opinion pages are a breath of fresh air compared to other papers.
But that question has not been asked lately, as the Journal’s news coverage of Israel and its current war has become increasingly problematic. This is especially disappointing considering its positive reputation and its status as America’s top circulation newspaper, with more than three million digital subscribers and 649,000 print subscriptions.
Why did The Wall Street Journal change its coverage of Israel?
Already on Oct. 7, The Wall Street Journal joined other top media outlets with false moral equivalence between the Hamas invaders who murdered 1,200 people that day and the Israelis defending themselves, whom the paper accused of escalating the hostility.
In the background piece, “What is Hamas and why did it attack Israel?” the Journal falsely claimed that Hamas has “indicated it is willing to accept a two-state solution based on borders that existed before 1967.” In fact, Hamas’s charter and its actions clearly indicate an unabated obsession with wiping Israel off the map.
Already then, the Journal’s news coverage echoed Hamas’s talking points, focusing on the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, including visits of Jews there during Sukkot and crackdowns on Palestinian violence at the site, appearing to justify the invasion.
Insiders at the Journal revealed to me that staffers who wanted to refer to Hamas as a terrorist organization were overruled, as the newspaper followed other media outlets calling it a “militant group” and Hezbollah a “militia.”
THE JOURNAL’S less sympathetic coverage of Israel has coincided with the arrival of a team of new editors led by Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker, who arrived from The Sunday Times in what staffers called their “British invasion.”
The National Review reported that when Tucker fired dozens of workers, she “cut jobs from the team responsible for editing sensitive stories and weeding out any hints of bias.” One of the issues the new bosses decided to highlight, according to the report, was “Gaza.”
Sources at the Journal told me that its reporters covering Israel are being pressured to write more “takes,” referring to analyses that are really opinion pieces published as news with click-bait headlines. One writer was even prevented from writing a nonpolitical piece about Judaism because of his pro-Israel posts after Oct. 7.
An exception to the trend was an exclusive story in January that revealed that at least 12 employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) had connections to Hamas’s invasion of Israel, at least six UNRWA workers invaded Israel, and 10% of UNRWA’s Gaza staff have ties to Islamist militant groups.
Headlines in the Journal have joined those by media outlets around the world reporting Hamas’s false claims that Israel bombed the Al-Ahli Hospital “killing more than 500,” falsely blaming Israel for the closing of the Rafah crossing, and calling assassinated Hamas head Ismail Haniyeh a “ceasefire advocate.”
BUT THE low point for the Journal’s Israel coverage came two weeks ago when the pro-Israel media watchdog HonestReporting exclusively reported how their Gazan reporter Abeer Ayyoub used her X (formerly Twitter) account to spread terrorist propaganda and fake news.
On Oct. 7, Ayyoub replied to X owner Elon Musk’s solidarity post with Israel, in which he expressed hope for peace, by telling him to “Eat s***.”
That same day, she posted a violent propaganda video, produced by Hamas’s armed wing, showing terrorists lynching and executing Israeli soldiers near the Gaza border.
The faces of the terrorists in the video were blurred to protect them, unlike those of the Israeli soldiers. She wrote a caption that excitedly declared “More Israeli soldiers being captured by Hamas.”
Around midday that day, she shared an incorrect post claiming that IDF Gaza division commander Nimrod Aloni had been kidnapped. When it was proven false, she did not remove her post.
About two hours later, Ayyoub mockingly taunted the IDF: “I have not seen a single soldier defending himself. Why? I thought you said it’s the strongest army in the world.”
She labeled as “fake news” the description of Hamas as sworn to Israel’s destruction and the establishment of an Islamic state.
When Gazan journalist Jehad al-Saftawi courageously wrote in Time magazine in February about Hamas building an unwanted tunnel under his family home, Ayyoub joined disgraced former New York Times staffer Hosam Salem in inciting violence against him.
Top media outlets, including The New York Times and CNN, immediately fired, suspended, or reassigned journalists whose antisemitism and terror ties were revealed by HonestReporting – 12 instances in two years – including Ayyoub’s friend Salem, who was fired for praising a murder spree at a Jerusalem synagogue.
But Ayyoub has faced no consequences from the Journal, whose chief news editor Elena Cherney has not responded to repeated requests for comment from multiple media outlets.
Hundreds of people have joined an email and social media campaign calling on Cherney to stop assigning Ayyoub stories about Israel and Gaza.
The result? Ayyoub had another byline last Friday under the shamefully misleading and biased headline “Two million Gazans are now confined to 15 square miles.”
It's been just over a week since we exposed @WSJ journalist Abeer Ayyoub for pushing terrorist propaganda & fake news.https://t.co/V0RjIHxTR7Yet, not only has the Wall St. Journal taken no action but Ayyoub's byline continues to appear.Has the WSJ no shame? pic.twitter.com/c71JmRY3VI
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 25, 2024
In the article, the word “invaded” is reserved for Israel to Gaza and not the other way around. She reports that Hamas denies that its military commander Mohammed Deif was killed by Israel. Really? So where did he go?
Where has Ayyoub stopped writing? Only on her X account, which now says “Only approved followers can see @AbeerAyyoub’s posts.”
If this is the caliber of Israel reporting you want, by all means continue to get your news from The Wall Street Journal.
But if you want the truth, you are better off clicking elsewhere. ■
The writer is the executive director and executive editor of the pro-Israel media watchdog HonestReporting. He served as chief political correspondent and analyst of The Jerusalem Post for 24 years.