The Washington Post has warned about a “rising tide of antisemitism.” But as CAMERA has highlighted, The Post’s coverage of antisemitism has frequently been selective and is often politicized. More recently, the newspaper even ignored a high-profile antisemitic attack.

On the night of Nov. 23, 2018 a Mogadishu-born man named Mohamed Mohamed Abdi used a rented car to try to run over two Jewish men outside of a Los Angeles synagogue. Authorities arrested Abdi who reportedly “made anti-Semitic remarks” at the Jewish men and made several U-turns in his attempts to target them.

Los Angeles Police and the FBI are investigated the incident as a hate crime. Several major U.S. news outlets, including ABC, Fox News, and others reported on the crime. Some, such as The Los Angeles Times, obfuscated on Abdi’s antisemitic motivations.

As the journalist Armin Rosen noted in Tablet Magazine:

“Readers had to hack through this thicket of self-contradiction that begins a Nov. 26 Los Angeles Times report on the incident: ‘Authorities are trying to determine the motivations and background of a 32-year-old Seattle man who allegedly tried to run down two men outside of a synagogue in Hancock Park last week in an attack that police have described as a hate crime.’”

The motivations, however, seem clear enough: Abdi had “yelled several expletives at the victims referencing their Jewish heritage,” according to the LAPD’s deputy chief.

As Rosen pointed out, The Los Angeles Times’s report was “perhaps, an improvement on The New York Times and Washington Post’s coverage of the attack”; both papers failed to provide readers with original reporting on the incident.

The Washington Post, for all of its professed concern about rising antisemitism, merely reprinted an Associated Press brief.

A Nov. 20, 2018 report by a Washington D.C.-based think tank, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) argues that Iran’s illegal nuclear weapons program was “more advanced than Western intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency had thought.” ISIS analyzed documents seized by Israeli intelligence operatives in a daring raid for their study.

That raid, first revealed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an April 30, 2018 speech, resulted in thousands of documents being taken from Tehran’s nuclear archive. The documents were subsequently authenticated by the United States.

As CAMERA noted in a Nov. 8, 2018 Daily Caller Op-Ed, several commentators — many of them supporters of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, popularly known as the “Iran deal” — immediately claimed that Israel’s findings revealed “nothing new.”

For example, a May 3, 2018, CNN report by CNN was headlined “Israel reveals nothing new about Iran’s nuclear program, experts say.” But these “experts” made their claims —which were uncritically parroted by nearly every major Western news outlet — without having viewed any of the thousands of documents.

The Institute’s study, however, proves that they were wrong. In fact: analysts are “still sifting through the archive,” according to David Albright, the organization’s executive director. The archive is more than 10,000 pages long and covers the period from 1999 to 2003.

Iran, the ISIS report said, “made more progress” towards creating nuclear weapons than was “known before the seizure of the archives.”

ISIS noted that the documents show that Iran had planned to manufacture 5 nuclear warheads, to acquire highly enriched uranium (HEU) from abroad, to achieve the ability to carry out underground nuclear tests, and to produce HEU via constructing a “parallel fuel cycle.”

The archive also showed that Iran had created a “Supreme Council for Advanced Technologies” to “oversee these efforts.” The Supreme Council made the decision in late 1999 or early 2000 to create nuclear weapons. Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s current president who is frequently labeled a “moderate” by the media, was serving on that Council at the time in his post as the National Security Council Secretary General.

According to ISIS:

“Mr. Rouhani was a central, on-going figure in the nuclear weapons program in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It is difficult to find evidence that his support for nuclear weapons ever ended. If anything, he seems to offer continuity for finding ways to deflect international pressure while continuing the program, awaiting a day when Iran can decide whether the program should fully re-emerge and build nuclear weapons.”

The Institute pointed out that prior to their analysis of the captured documents, the world—including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a watchdog agency tasked with ensuring compliance—did not know how many nuclear weapons Iran planned to make, or how it was going to do so. But now, “the IAEA has access to much, if not most, of the content of the Iranian archives seized by Israel in Tehran.”

Troublingly, ISIS noted, “there is no visible indication that the IAEA is yet acting on the new information.”

ISIS’s report can be found here.

Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based, Iranian-backed terrorist group is helping Hamas build rocket factories and terror training camps in southern Lebanon, according to a Jerusalem Post report. Hezbollah’s assistance violates several United Nations Security Council Resolutions. But it does not, apparently, merit news coverage.

A June 10, 2018 dispatch by Jerusalem Post military correspondent Anne Ahronheim noted that Israel has called for the U.N. to intervene. Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, said:

“Hamas is strengthening its ties with Hezbollah. With the approval and support of Iran, Hamas is working to establish its capabilities in Lebanese territory as well. The cooperation between Hezbollah and Hamas crosses borders. Israel does not intend to sit idly when facing new and old threats and will do whatever is necessary to protect its citizens.”

Like Hezbollah, Hamas is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. Both groups call for Israel’s destruction and are fiercely antisemitic and anti-American.

Israel noted that Hezbollah’s decision to aid the Gaza Strip-based Hamas violates UNSCR 1701 which, among other things, calls for the “full implementation of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and of resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of 27 July 2006, there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese State.”

That is, Hezbollah’s decision—indeed the existence of Hezbollah itself in Lebanon, where it exerts de facto control of the government—is a violation of the Taif Accords, and other United Nations resolutions.

As CAMERA noted in a March 28, 2018 Washington Examiner Op-Ed entitled “Israel may be facing a five-front war,” Iran and its terror proxies, including Hezbollah and Hamas, may be preparing to attack the Jewish state from several different fronts. Yet, the media has largely ignored this growing security challenge. Many major U.S. news outlets, including The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, Politico, and others, failed to report Israel’s request for U.N. intervention.

Hezbollah has a long history of working with and training Palestinian terrorist groups. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) trained Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as CAMERA documented in a May 16, 2018 Jerusalem Post Op-Ed (“How the PLO Helped Create Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards”). The IRGC itself trained—indeed, largely created—Hezbollah, which later worked with the Guards to train operatives from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and al-Qaeda in Lebanon’s Bekka Valley. As Ronen Bergman recounted in his 2018 book Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations, Hezbollah passed its knowledge of suicide and car bombings—employed in Lebanon in the 1980s—to the other terrorist groups.

The head of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, declared on May 22, 2018 that his group had “excellent” relations with Hezbollah. The press—which at the time was busy omitting Hamas’s role in orchestrating violent demonstrations at the Israel-Gaza border—largely failed to report Sinwar’s comments and also downplayed Iran’s support for the violent “protests” which themselves mimicked a tactic employed by Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border on May 15, 2011 (“The Palestinian ‘Return March:’ A Futile Publicity Stunt,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, March 28, 2018).

Israeli authorities uncovered and thwarted a terrorist cell that planned to murder top governmental officials, including the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat. However, many major U.S. news outlets have ignored the story.

On June 5, 2018, the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency that is akin to the FBI, announced that they had arrested three member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC), in connection with the case. The three men had been indicted two days prior.

Ynet reporter Yoav Zitun noted:

“One of the suspects is Muhammad Jamal Rashdeh, 30, from the Shuafat refugee camp in east Jerusalem, who holds an Israeli identity card and has served time in prison in the past for terrorist activity. The investigation revealed that he had planned the attacks with guidance from terrorist elements abroad, including a terror operative from Syria.”

The terror cell had also “planned terror attacks against buildings belonging to the American Consulate and against a delegation of Canadian representatives staying in Jerusalem in a bid to train the Palestinian Authority forces in the West Bank.” Rashdeh was arrested on April 24, 2018, according to a Times of Israel report (“Shin Bet says it thwarted plot to assassinate prime minister, Jerusalem mayor,” June 5, 2018).

The PFLP-GC is a U.S.-designated terrorist group that is based in Damascus, Syria and receives Iranian support. The group has carried out numerous attacks against Israelis and was active in the Syrian civil war, fighting on behalf of dictator Bashar al-Assad.

A foiled terror plot to murder Israel’s prime minister and other top Israeli officials, as well as Americans and Canadians, is certainly newsworthy. However, as of this writing, many major U.S. news outlets have failed to cover the story. The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, USA Today, The Baltimore Sun, Politico, and others have failed to cover the story. By contrast, The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel, the U.K.-based Express, and The New York Post, provided coverage.

This is not the first time that the Western media ignored a story about a thwarted Palestinian plot to murder Israeli government officials. As CAMERA noted at the time, U.S. press outlets also ignored a foiled Feb. 2018 plot by Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives to murder Israeli defense minister Avigdor Liberman (“The Media Ignores Foiled Plot to Assassinate Israel’s Defense Minister,” Feb. 20, 2018).

By failing to cover advanced terror plots targeting the country’s leadership, the media effectively minimizes the security challenges facing the Jewish state.

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s support for Hezbollah might be greater than previously thought. Tehran gives the Lebanese-based terrorist group $700 million a year, according to recent remarks by the U.S. Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Sigal Mandelker.

Mandelker’s comments were made on June 5, 2018 at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington D.C.-based think tank. The figure supplied by the treasury official is “three times” what was “previously estimated,” according to a report by The National, a daily newspaper published in the United Arab Emirates (“Iran pays Hezbollah 700 million a year, says U.S. official,” June 5, 2018).

As CAMERA noted in its 2016 backgrounder on the terror group, Hezbollah calls for the destruction of Israel and has carried out attacks against Jewish people throughout the world. The organization exerts de facto control over the Lebanese state and has launched wars against Israel, most recently in 2006. The group is also deeply anti-American; prior to the Sept. 11, 2001 al-Qaeda terrorist attacks, Hezbollah was responsible for murdering more Americans than any other terror group.

Hezbollah engages in illicit activities to raise funds, including narcotics trafficking and smuggling arms, ivory, and diamonds. In a June 2016 speech, Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah stated: “We are open about the fact that Hezbollah’s budget, its income, its expenses, everything it eats and drinks, its weapons and rockets, come from the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Prior to Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian civil war—in which the terror group and Iran fought to keep Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in power—the group was thought to receive $200 million a year from Tehran. However, Mandelker’s comments indicate that Hezbollah is thought to receive at least three times that figure.

Joyce Karam, a reporter for The National, noted that Ms. Mandelker also “accused the Iranian regime of using shell and front companies, and forging documents to conceal its tracks in order to ‘fund terrorists, support weapons of mass destruction proliferation or exploit its own people through corruption and human rights abuses.’”

The U.S. Treasury official also stated that Iran’s Central Bank is guilty of moving funds on behalf of Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force, which is responsible for training terror groups abroad. In previous years, the IRGC Quds Force has trained operatives from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas and al-Qaeda, among other U.S.-designated terrorist organizations.

In a widely underreported move, fourteen members of the United States Congress called upon the U.S. State Department to “immediately suspend all aid payments to the Palestinian Authority.” The PA is dominated by the Fatah movement and rules the West Bank (Judea and Samaria).

The Congressional members sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on April 27, 2018. Highlighting the PA’s policy of paying terrorists and their families for carrying out attacks, the letter requested that the U.S. cease U.S. aid payments to the authority. The representatives noted:

“In March 2018 Congress took a clear and bi-partisan stance on how aid dollars are to be used by the PA by passing the Taylor Force Act. This law prohibits U.S. taxpayer funds from being made available to the PA if they continue their practice of paying terrorists and their families. Yet, despite clear Congressional intent, media reports have stated that the PA’s 2018 budget has codified this practice. The budget sets aside 8% of its total to the so-called ‘martyr’s fund,’ which amounts to over $350 million in U.S. taxpayer funded aid.”

Further, the 14 signatories cited a report by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), a non-profit organization that monitors Arab media in eastern Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. PMW had translated a Jan. 14, 2018 speech by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, in which the Palestinian leader declared:

“There is something that the Americans are telling us to stop – the salaries of the Martyrs and the Martyrs’ families. Of course, we categorically reject this. We will not under any circumstances allow anyone to harm the families of the prisoners, the wounded, and the Martyrs. They are our children and they are our families. They honor us, and we will continue to pay them before the living.”

Citing these “disturbing” comments, the Congressional members wanted to know how many foreign aid dollars went to the PA “that were then used to fund terrorists prior to the passage of the Taylor Force Act,” as well as “what measures are you planning to take to enforce the law and suspend aid to the PA…?”

The PA’s policy of offering financial incentives to commit acts of terror is frequently ignored or obfuscated by major media outlets. For example, prior to the passage of the Taylor Force Act, The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” column minimized and misled about the PA’s “Pay to Slay” program—prompting a rebuttal from CAMERA in the Washington Examiner (“U.S. Media Are Covering Up Palestinians’ Pay to Slay Policy,” March 21, 2018).

A letter from more than a dozen members of Congress to a U.S. Secretary of State calling to cut aid to a nominal ally should be newsworthy. However, many major news outlets, such as The Washington Post, USA Today, The Baltimore Sun, Politico, among others, ignored it. By contrast, The Washington Free Beacon provided a full-length report (“Congress Seeks Showdown on Ending U.S. Aid to Palestinians,” May 1, 2018).

The Islamic Republic of Iran is behind the recent Hamas-orchestrated violent demonstrations—dubbed the “March of Return”—at the Israel-Gaza border, according to Israeli authorities. Yet many major U.S. news outlets have failed to report Tehran’s role.

Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, stated:

““From the information we have, it appears Hamas is encouraging and sending protesters to the border fence in order to carry out violent acts and damage security infrastructure. In addition, it was found that Iran is providing funding to Hamas in order for it to carry out these violent activities along the Gaza Strip’s border fence.”

As CAMERA has detailed (see, for example “Palestinian Nazi Flags and Hamas Talking Points,” JNS, April 26, 2018) Hamas and other U.S.-designated terrorist groups have been organizing the demonstrations, interspersing armed operatives among civilians being used as human shields. Most of those killed in the demonstrations by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been linked to terror organizations.

Hamas is one of many terror groups funded by the Islamic Republic, which the U.S. State Department has listed as the leading state sponsor of terrorism. The group has long supported Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and others participating in the “March of Return.” Like Hamas, Iran’s ruling theocrats have called for Israel’s destruction and genocide of the Jewish people.

Iranian-backed groups have also recently offered 100,00 U.S. dollars to blow up the recently opened U.S. embassy in Jerusalem (“Iranian Group Offer $100,000 Reward for Bombing U.S. Jerusalem Embassy,” Newsweek, May 15, 2018).

Major U.S. news outlets, including The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, USA Today, and others, have ignored the Shin Bet’s statement about Iran’s role in the “march.” By contrast, The Times of Israel and The Jerusalem Post each filed reports detailing the comments by Israeli officials.

The press has largely failed to provide unbiased, balanced and accurate coverage of the Hamas-led demonstrations, which have been ongoing since late March 2018. Many journalists have omitted or minimized Hamas’s role and ignored readily available photographic and video evidence showing armed terrorists attempting to infiltrate and bomb Israel’s sovereign border. Both The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others, have continued to refer to “protesters” killed by the IDF long after Hamas itself has acknowledged that many of them were terrorists.

A state-sponsor of terrorism has been identified as supporting what the media has, in Orwellian fashion, termed “non-violent” and “organic protests.” And the press can’t be troubled to report it.

The foreign minister of the Arab nation of Bahrain, Sheikh Khalid al-Khaalifa declared on May 10, 2018 that Israel has a right to defend itself. The remarks, which came after an Iranian-Israeli confrontation in Syria, mark a sharp break with the past, in which Arab countries condemned the Jewish nation’s use of self-defense. Nonetheless, many major U.S. news outlets did not cover the story.

On Twitter, Al-Khalifa proclaimed:” “As long as Iran has breached the status quo in the region and invaded countries with its forces and missiles, any state in the region, including Israel, is entitled to defend itself by destroying sources of danger.”

Multiple U.S. news organizations failed to note al-Khalifa’s comments, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Baltimore Sun, among others. Several outlets, however, did note the historical significance of the comments, including The Times of Israel (“Bahrain backs Israeli strikes on Iranian targets in Syria”), The Jerusalem Post (“Bahrain and Israel: Quo Vadis?”), the Algemeiner (“Bahrain: Israel is ‘Entitled to Defend Itself’”)—even the Beirut Daily Star.

As CAMERA has detailed (“Where’s the Coverage? Bahrain Foils Terror Plot,” Jan. 11, 2016), Bahrain has frequently found itself attacked and subverted by the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has sought to manipulate the Gulf nation’s sizable Shi’ite Muslim population. Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based, Iranian-backed terror group, has been involved in several plots to overthrow the Bahraini government. Top regime apparatchiks in Tehran routinely assert that Bahrain belongs to Iran, as the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has documented (see, for example “Editor Close to Khamenei Says Bahrain Belongs to Iran,” March 11, 2018).

Bahrain is but one of several Arab nations, including, most notably, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which have lessened their antipathy towards Israel in the face of Iranian imperialism and aggression.

Yet, some pundits and reporters are prone to asserting that Israel is increasingly “isolated” or “losing global influence.” However, recent events—even when underreported—prove otherwise.

Hamas, the U.S.-designated terror group that rules the Gaza Strip, has admitted that they are leading the violent demonstrations that have taken place every Friday at the Israel-Gaza border since late March 2018. Some news outlets, however, have portrayed the demonstrations as an organic and “non-violent protest,” effectively minimizing the involvement of the terror group.

As CAMERA has highlighted, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and other terrorist organizations have interspersed operatives among thousands of Palestinian civilians who have gathered at the border. Some were armed with firearms, explosives, and other weapons and sought, under the cover of human shields, to illegally cross into Israel (“Hamas Uses Human Shields and The Washington Post,” The Daily Caller, April 4, 2018).

The other objective of the so-called “Great Return March” has been to incur civilian casualties, with terrorists using mirrors and burning tires to obscure the vision of Israeli snipers targeting terror leaders in the crowd. Hamas and others have hoped that they can score a propaganda victory against the Jewish state. And the media seems determined to help.

Many major media outlets have ignored the fact that most Palestinians killed in the demonstrations have been linked to terror groups. According to a April 26, 2018 report by the Meir Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, as many as eighty percent of Palestinians killed were associated with terrorist groups—including some who presented themselves as journalists.

The Washington Post has been a particularly prominent offender. Long after it was revealed that many of those slain were terrorists—and long after Hamas acknowledged that it had several operatives killed at the border—The Post has continued to publish reports omitting this crucial information. For example, a May 8, 2018 dispatch claimed “Israeli troops have fatally shot dozens of protesters on the border during a six-week-long ‘March of Return’ against the loss of Palestinian land (“U.S. Embassy Opening in Jerusalem is modest but highly symbolic”).” The paper did not note that most of those “fatally shot” were terrorists. Further, Hamas leaders have repeatedly stated—including during the recent operations at the border—that they consider all of Israel to be “Palestinian land.” Indeed, their charter and insignias say as much.

In fact, terrorist groups have orchestrated the “protests”—many of which have featured Nazi imagery, such as “kite bombs” with swastikas painted on them, and calls for genocide of Jews (“Palestinian Nazi Flags and Hamas Talking Points,” JNS, April 26, 2018). And they’ve been clear about why.

In a May 9, 2018 speech, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar called for the next week of protests to be “decisive” and stated: “We are supporting, even leading, them (“Hamas leader: Next week’s border protests will be ‘decisive,’” The Times of Israel).”

In remarks prior to the launch of the “Great Return March” strategy, Sinwar called for marchers to “eat the livers” of Israelis. This was also ignored by The Post, which, ostrich-like, has continued to file dispatches about “protests” supposedly over “the loss of Palestinian land.”

A Los Angeles Times special correspondent, Nabih Bulos, declared on Twitter on May 7, 2018, that Hezbollah (“Party of God”) shows “more maturity” than Israel. Hezbollah is a Lebanese-based, Iranian-backed, U.S.-designated terrorist group that calls for Israel’s destruction and has murdered hundreds of Americans.

The reporter’s comments were made after the May 7, 2018 elections in Lebanon. Hezbollah has exercised de facto control over the Levantine state. The elections witnessed a strong showing by Hezbollah and its allies in Lebanon. However, as Tony Badran, analyst for the Washington D.C.-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, noted in November 2017: “Hezbollah’s domination of the country is already complete.”

The organization—once described by then-U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage as the “‘A Team’ of terrorists”—is larger and more powerful than the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). After the election, Jonathan Schanzer, a former U.S. Treasury Department terror analyst, noted as much, tweeting: “Hezbollah has an arsenal larger than most armies in the Middle East, it controls chunks of Lebanese territory and key assets, it can launch a war whenever it pleases without Lebanese buy-in, and now has increased control over Lebanese politics.”

Schanzer’s point about Hezbollah domination is correct. Lebanon’s president and commander-in-chief, Michel Aoun said in a Feb. 12, 2016 interview with Egypt’s CBC, that Hezbollah’s “arms are not contrary to the state project; otherwise we could have not tolerated it. It is an essential part of Lebanon’s defense.” Aoun has even described Hezbollah as a “complement” to the LAF. And as CAMERA has highlighted, the country’s armed forces have been caught aiding and working with the terror group.

Bulos, however, took exception to the interpretation that Hezbollah exerts strong control over Lebanon. The reporter, whose work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Al-Jazeera, among elsewhere, even made an astonishing statement about the terror group, tweeting to Schanzer that:

“How about you actually visit Lebanon, talk to Hezbollah, and see what they are firsthand? It’s a powerful armed group, yes, but it also has a strong social and political element that often shows more maturity than many other players in the region, including your allies.”

Bulos did not respond when asked if “your allies” was referring to the principal U.S. ally in the region: Israel. However, it seems to be a fair assumption that this was at least one of the countries that he was referring to.

Of course, many “powerful armed groups” have included “strong social and political elements,” including Nazis, neo-Nazis, the KKK, Hamas, and others. This does not make them “moderate” or “mature.”

For its part, Hezbollah has confirmed that all of its financial support comes from the Islamic Republic of Iran, which the U.S. State Department has listed as the chief state sponsor of terrorism. As CAMERA’s 2016 Backgrounder on the group has detailed, Hezbollah has an international reach, with operatives throughout Latin America, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia.

In the years after its 1982 creation, the group organized terror-training camps in Lebanon’s Bakaa Valley, in which other terrorists, including al-Qaeda members, received tutelage. Hezbollah was an early proponent of suicide bombings, and the group has kidnapped and murdered journalists, and perpetrated numerous terrorist attacks, including plane hijackings and blowing up both an Israeli embassy and a Jewish community center in Argentina, in 1992 and 1994, respectively. As CAMERA has recently noted (“Iran Has Sleeper Cells in the U.S.,” April 20, 2018), the terror group has sleeper cells in the U.S., where it has also sought to perpetrate terrorist attacks.

Since the organization’s beginning, Hezbollah has instituted Islamist rule under many areas directly under its control. In 1987, the CIA reported that the sale or transport of liquor were prohibited in the Bekaa Valley, women were also forbidden from interacting with men in public, civil crimes are punished according to the Koran and Western education and influences are prohibited. In one example of the group’s vehement antisemitism, Hezbollah’s head, Hassan Nasrallah, stated on April 9, 2000 “The Jews invented the legend of the Nazi atrocities.”

It’s hard to see how a journalist can assert that Hezbollah has “more maturity” than a democratic U.S. ally like Israel and still maintain a modicum of credibility when reporting about the Middle East. But perhaps that is not a concern for Bulos, who was one of several American journalists to attend a conference in 2016 that was organized by a society run by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s father-in-law (“Assad Regime’s Grotesque PR Conference in Damascus Uses Western Reporters to Whitewash War Crimes,” Tablet Magazine, Oct. 31, 2016). The purpose of that conference, according to Middle East analyst Lee Smith, was to raise “money for the [Assad] regime and its war effort, in part by relieving sanctions against major regime figures.” Assad has committed a number of war crimes against his own people; murdering thousands of civilians with chemical munitions and barrel bombs. He is also a state sponsor of terrorism.

Several U.S.-sanctioned Assad regime officials participated in the conference alongside Bulos and several other journalists.