Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah said Monday that she has no regrets about retweeting a post supporting Hamas's October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel and blamed racism for the backlash to her pro-Hamas sympathies.
"I make no apologies for standing on the side of Palestinian liberation, at all," Attiah said after a woman confronted her over the pro-Hamas post at a book signing, according to footage recorded by Algemeiner's Corey Walker.
The post, which Attiah retweeted soon after it was posted on the day of Hamas's massacre, read, "What did y'all think decolonization meant? vibes? papers? essays? losers."
Attiah said at the signing that the confrontation is "actually an example of … how violent it is, the response is, to anyone who speaks about, uh, Israel-Palestine and, frankly, I'd say, particularly if you're black." She did not mention that the woman who confronted her was also black.
The Post columnist has a long history of condemning the Jewish state and its people for defending themselves. One week after the October 7 attack, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Attiah in a column rebuked Israel for fighting back against terrorists. Around the same time, she said she would "never forgive" then-president Joe Biden for supporting Israel.
She has also defended former CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill, who has used the genocidal phrase "From the river to the sea," and the anti-Semitic "Squad," Commentary noted in December 2023.
Attiah was among the loudest critics of Post owner Jeff Bezos's decision to block the editorial board's planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. While several Post employees have quit their jobs in protest, Attiah has yet to resign.
The columnist also faced accusations of racism in 2020 for a since-deleted tweet in which she floated the idea of "revenge" against white women, blaming them for everything from "the 1921 Tulsa Massacre" to the election of President Donald Trump.
"White women are lucky that we are just calling them 'Karen's' [sic]," Attiah wrote. "And not calling for revenge."