The Washington Post has finally reported on recent reconciliation attempts between the two ruling Palestinian groups, Fatah and Hamas—nearly a month after they first came to public light.

In an Oct. 3, 2017 dispatch, Post reporter Sufian Taha and Jerusalem bureau chief Loveday Morris noted that Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah was visiting Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip as part of a “symbolic step toward ending a decade-long rift” with the U.S.-designated terror group. The PA is dominated by the Fatah movement, which, after losing elections in 2006, fought a brief and bloody war with Hamas in June 2007.

Tensions between the two groups have continued in the years since that conflict. However, as CAMERA has noted, many major news outlets frequently underreport Palestinian politics and rivalries. Some outlets, such as The Washington Post, devote in an inordinate amount of coverage to Israeli politics. (see, for example, “The Washington Post’s Jewish Home Fixation,” The Washington Jewish Week, April 26, 2017).

The Post, for instance, has offered reports on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s dog biting someone, or, under its “World Views” section, a piece on an Israeli restaurant purportedly overcharging Chinese tourists. When Palestinian affairs are covered, it’s often in a manner that infantilizes them; recent Post reports have been on topics such as a Gazan field trip for schoolchildren and Palestinian pigeon ownership; implicitly portraying them as prisoners without independent agency (“For Palestinians, its Lights Out at The Washington Post,” Algemeiner, June 22, 2017).

To its credit, The Post now informs readers that:

“Hamas invited Hamdallah’s unity government…to take control of administering Gaza last month [emphasis added]. Hamas also its own administrative committee and said it was ready to hold elections.”

This has important ramifications—and not only for Palestinian politics. As the U.S., Israel and others list Hamas as a terrorist group, what becomes of the Palestinian Authority and its composition is of extreme importance to both the region and the policies of non-regional actors, like the United States. However, this is the first Post report fully detailing efforts that have been going on since “last month.”

The New York Times, Reuters and other outlets have been covering the reconciliation attempts since the beginning of September 2017. A Sept. 28, 2017 lengthy Post report on Gaza’s water crisis briefly—in five sentences—noted that reconciliation attempts were under way. But, the majority of that dispatch focused on Gaza’s water crisis, while omitting that by devoting reconstruction aid to terror instead of infrastructure, Hamas rulers are principally to blame.

To the detriment of its readers, The Post continues to underreport Palestinian politics.

Note: This post has been updated. Scroll down for information.

If anyone has any doubts that Wikipedia has a problem with the Jewish state, let them take a look at the website’s list of national dances. It’s a pretty straightforward list, except of course when it comes to Israel. The screenshot below shows the problem:

A prominent activist in the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) effort, Yousef Munayyer, used the Oct. 2, 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas to attack Israel. Munayyer is the executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, formerly known as the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a pro-BDS organization.

As CAMERA has pointed out, BDS backers call for the end of the Jewish state of Israel and seek to delegitimize it (“More distortions on Israel, The Hill, May 19, 2015).

After news of the massacre broke, the Embassy of Israel tweeted, “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of the #LasVegasShooting and their families. Love and Solidarity from Israel.”

Munayyer quoted the tweet, and added one of his own: “Also from Israel, assault rifles into the U.S. market.” He provided a link to a February 2017 Daily Beast article, which said that the AK-47 assault rifle might one-day be made in Israel. But as Cornell law professor William Jacobson noted at the Legal Insurrection, a blog that focuses on antisemitism and other issues, AK-47s are currently “manufactured in many places, including the U.S.”

On Twitter, Yair Rosenberg, a journalist with Tablet magazine, elaborated: “American guns are overwhelmingly produced in America, but there is no atrocity that cannot and will not be blamed on the Jews or their state.”

Rosenberg even cited a list of the top “firearms imported into the United States by country of manufacture in 2016.” Israel, with 47,307, ranked fifteen in the amount of total firearms. By contrast, Austria imported 1,322,684 and Turkey imported ten times as many as Israel. But, as Rosenberg noted, Israel was the only Jewish country on the list. It was perhaps for this distinguishing feature that Munayyer chose to use a tragedy for his own political ends.

As CAMERA has detailed, Munayyer has a history of making misleading statements. For example, in a 2014 interview with CNN, Munayyer, refused to answer questions about why Hamas was ordering Gazans to stay inside of homes that Israel was telling them—in advance—would be bombed during the Jewish state’s 2014 war with the terror group. Hamas—a genocidal terrorist group that calls for Israel’s destruction—wanted to increase Palestinian civilian casualties for propaganda purposes. On CNN, Munayyer wanted to push his own propaganda; deflecting the interviewers question and minimizing Hamas’ crimes and objectives.

At a July 25, 2016 event held by the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, U.S. Congressman Hank Johnson compared Jewish settlers to insects; an age-old antisemitic trope (“U.S. Congressman Calls Jewish Settlers ‘Termites’—Media Silent,” July 27, 2016). As CAMERA highlighted, many major media outlets failed to report this event.

Munayyer, however, is a media favorite. His bio on the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights’ website proudly notes: “His writings have appeared in every major metropolitan newspaper in the United States and many others internationally as well as online. He has frequently appeared to comment on national and international media outlets including CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NBC, CBS, Al-Jazeera English, C-Span, and others many others.”