Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we check back in with some of the most absurd pro-Palestinian voices, refute a Washington Post take on a transgender-identifying sorority member, and cover more media misses.
Pro-Palestinian Advocates Reel It In after Backlash, Consequences
Last week, we rounded up disappointing reactions to the atrocities in Israel. This week, we’ve seen some of the worst offenders walk back their previous comments under public pressure.
At least five of the 34 student groups at Harvard University that signed on to a statement explicitly blaming Israel alone for Hamas’s terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens, the Harvard Crimson reported.
After initially signing on to a statement from the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, groups including Amnesty International at Harvard, Harvard College Act on a Dream, the Harvard Undergraduate Nepali Student Association, the Harvard Islamic Society, and Harvard Undergraduate Ghungroo have withdrawn their signatures.
Meanwhile, Chicago Black Lives Matter apologized for sending out messages “that we aren’t proud of” after the group posted and later deleted a graphic featuring a person paragliding with a Palestinian flag attached to its parachute along with the words “I stand with Palestine.” The graphic was evidently a reference to Hamas terrorists who used parachutes and gliders to enter Israeli communities last weekend during a brutal surprise attack.
“Yesterday we sent out [messages] that we aren’t proud of,” BLM Chicago wrote in a post on X. “We stand with Palestine & the people who will do what they must to live free. Our hearts are with, the grieving mothers, those rescuing babies from rubble, who are in danger of being wiped out completely.”
And several members of the news media faced consequences for their past and current comments on Israel.
After media watchdog HonestReporting brought to light the past postings of Issam Adwan, a reporter for the Associated Press based in Gaza, the outlet said he had been removed from reporting duties as it investigates.
Adwan wrote in a post on X just one year ago that the “Palestinian revolt against the Israeli oppression will be a triumph” and “every colonial system will be overthrown. Meanwhile, you should reflect on what you did to contribute to it.”
In another post he said the Israeli government is a “racist regime that is so similar to the Nazis.”
“To all ignorants playing ‘Hamas/Khamas’ card when we talk about Israeli war crimes/apartheid//ethnic cleansing, Hamas has been established in 1987 while this ongoing genocide happens in 1948. How many massacres and killings Israel did before that? Educate yourselves,” he wrote in 2021.
PhillyVoice fired its new Sixers beat writer after he criticized the team for its post in support of Israel.
“We stand with the people of Israel and join them in mourning the hundreds of innocent lives lost to terrorism at the hands of Hamas #StandWithIsrael,” the Sixers wrote in a post on Sunday.
Jackson Frank responded, “This post sucks! Solidarity with Palestine always.”
The outlet’s CEO, Hal Donnelly, told the New York Post that Frank is “no longer employed by PhillyVoice.com” and added, “We stand with everyone who is absolutely outraged by the senseless attacks in Israel, by the loss of innocent lives and violence against civilians.”
And the University of Pennsylvania changed its tune after former U.S. ambassador Jon Huntsman, a major donor to the university, announced that his family would close their checkbook to the university over its lacking response to antisemitism.
“The University’s silence in the face of reprehensible and historic Hamas evil against the people of Israel (when the only response should be outright condemnation) is a new low,” Huntsman wrote to Magill in a letter obtained by CNN. “Silence is antisemitism, and antisemitism is hate, the very thing higher ed was built to obviate.”
Huntsman’s comments came after UPenn hosted the Palestine Writes Literature Festival last month, which the university has acknowledged featured speakers who had a history of making antisemitic remarks.
On Sunday, UPenn President Liz Magill said in a statement that the university “should have moved faster to share our position strongly and more broadly with the Penn community.”
Forbes shared a headline on X that read, “Hamas Threatens to Execute Israeli Civilian Hostages for Unprompted Attacks on Gaza,” before ultimately deleting it.
Meanwhile, the New York Times seemingly changed its approach after its initial coverage of the war drew criticism from pro-Israel voices. An article titled “Israel Warns of Long War as It Fights Militants” led the Times site on Sunday. Two days later, an article under the headline “Hamas Leaves a Trail of Terror in Israel” was featured prominently on the site.
Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah argued in an essay on Friday that “we cannot stand by and watch Israel commit atrocities.”
She claimed that Palestinians were “rightfully” pointing out “that their own pain and deaths under the actions of the Israeli state have been ignored for years.” In addition, she said, the U.S. “cannot stand by and allow Israel to carry out the collective punishment it has declared it will exact.”
She also reposted a controversial post on X that asked, “What did y’all think decolonization meant? vibes? Papers? Essays? Losers.”
On Saturday, she posted on X, “It should not be controversial to assert that Palestinian lives matter just as much as Israeli lives. Or that Black lives matter just as much as white lives. These are matters of fact. The equality and value of human lives should never be up for debate.”
One BBC journalist, Noah Abrahams, said he will no longer work with the BBC after the network decided not to use the worst “terrorists” in its coverage of Hamas. Abrahams criticized the BBC for using “freedom fights” and “gunmen” instead of “terrorists” to describe Hamas militants. However, the BBC told Fox News that Abrahams was a freelancer who didn’t have any future work planned with the network anyway.
The CBC in Canada offered similar guidance regarding the use of the word “terrorists,” telling its reporters: “Do not refer to militants, soldiers, or anyone else as ‘terrorists,’” a leaked memo from the outlet read.
Mohammad Kabiya, an Arab reservist with the Israel Defense Forces, criticized an Arabic BBC anchor for defending Hamas.
“Firstly I would like to respond to those who spoke to you before. Hamas, what has done contradicts all humanitarian standards and Islamic law. They did not fight the IDF, they killed defenseless, innocent people in their homes. They killed children and women and kidnapped them to Gaza,” Kabiya said.
After Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) warned against misinformation related to the Hamas terrorist attacks last week, her fellow squad member Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) falsely claimed that a photo of children killed in a 2013 Syrian chemical weapons attack was a photo of the “child genocide in Palestine.”
Omar ultimately deleted the post but not before it was fact-checked by community notes.
“This photo is NOT from Gaza/Palestine,” the fact check noted. “It’s from the sarin attack launched by Assad’s forces against E. Ghouta, Syria in August 2013.”
Headline Fail of the Week
The Washington Post offered its own take on a story National Review has followed closely for months: “Trans woman joined a sorority. Then her new sisters turned on her.”
The article describes Artemis Langford, a male member of Kappa Kappa Gamma, as a victim of bullying from the other members of the sorority who felt uncomfortable and threatened by Langford, who is 6′ 2″ tall and weighs 260 pounds and “identifies” as a woman.
“It wasn’t what she imagined last year when she joined Kappa Kappa Gamma at the University of Wyoming, becoming the first transgender woman in the state to be inducted into a sorority. She thought she had finally found sisterhood and a place to belong after years of shame and loneliness. Instead, she became a target,” the article said.
“Right-wing pundits portrayed her on national television as a predator — as a perverted man who faked his way into a sorority to leer at women. Death threats followed. Strangers began stalking her. Police assigned extra patrols to the sorority house,” it adds.
As NR’s Caroline Downey previously reported:
“In the fall of 2022, sorority members were pressured into approving Langford’s initiation, National Review previously reported and the original complaint from March noted. At a meeting to discuss Langford’s candidacy, chapter leaders quashed concerns and encouraged dissenting members to quit the chapter. An online vote was then conducted, asking members to identify themselves with their emails in violation of the sorority’s secret-ballot procedures.”
In August, a court rejected a lawsuit brought by six female members of the sorority. The female members accused the sorority of violating its corporate charter and imperiling the safety and historic gender exclusivity of the sisterhood by allowing Langford’s membership.
Media Misses
— U.K.-based Attitude magazine and Virgin Atlantic named transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, a biological man, their 2024 “Woman of the Year.”
— CBS Mornings host Gayle King said “It’s so sad to me now that the word ‘wokeism’ has now almost become weaponized. It’s really missing the point about what’s being taught here. You know, I don’t look at it as ‘wokeism’ so much as ‘truthism.’” Her comments came during a report about Florida banning AP African American history course earlier this year. “I think if people would take the time to really see what is happening in these classes and what’s being taught. Nowhere are we trying to say — anybody is trying to say, ‘hate White people, ignore’ — it drives me crazy when I hear that,” she added.
— During a recent press briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre made no attempts at hiding her bias toward certain journalists after New York Post reporter Steven Nelson noted he had not been called on to ask a question in roughly “two seasons.”
“And I’m not calling on you today,” Jean-Pierre replied before calling on another reporter.
Nelson continued saying, “You should be ashamed of that. That shows disrespect to a free and independent media, to blacklist one of our country’s largest and most widely read newspapers, Karine. That shows contempt for a free and independent press.”
“I’m calling on somebody who I haven’t called on for a long time as well. Go ahead,” Jean-Pierre added.