“Show me the man,” Stalin’s secret police Lavrentiy Beria allegedly said, “and I’ll show you the crime.” This describes the approach of authoritarians the world over. Unfortunately, it also often describes the Washington Post and NPR’s approach to journalism about Israel. A recent report offers proof.
The Post’s October 30 dispatch, “U.S. report cites glut of allegations in Gaza,” by reporter John Hudson is littered with misleading omissions. The article claims to detail a “classified report by a U.S. government watchdog” which “found that Israeli military units committed ‘many hundreds’ of potential violations of U.S. human rights law in the Gaza Strip.”
But as Brian Cox, a professor at Cornell Law School and frequent commentator on international law, noted, the Post’s report serves as an example of what happens when “uninformed reporters attempt to cover international law in armed conflict.”
Indeed, the “entire premise” of the Post’s article is wrong, as Cox noted on X. Hudson’s report is predicated on the idea that the United States isn’t taking allegations that Israel has committed human rights violations seriously, and this would mean that the Leahy Laws aren’t being properly implemented. The Leahy Laws prohibit the United States from providing security assistance to “units of foreign governments for which there exists credible information indicating [that] gross human rights violations have been committed,” Cox pointed out.
Yet “here’s the problem,” Cox noted, “Most or all of the alleged violations involve laws of armed conflict [LOAC] and not human rights.” And this would preclude the Leahy Laws being enacted. In short: the Post’s story started with a false assumption—one that demonstrates a lack of knowledge of relevant information including international law—and proceeded to a false conclusion.
On X, Cox pointed out that a standard interpretation of the Department of War’s own Law of War manual confirms that “LOAC – and NOT human rights – is the controlling body of law with regard to conduct of armed hostilities, including in Gaza & for those detained in Israel as a result of the armed conflict there.”
Dan Linnaeus, an independent security and policy analyst, also offered criticism of Hudson’s report on X, calling it “stunningly manipulative reporting.” Linnaeus told CAMERA that there other problems with the piece beyond those noted by Cox. “The article misrepresents the classified OIG report by asserting that the U.S. government has already found that Israeli units committed potential violations of human rights law,” Linnaeus said. But “in reality, the classified government’s watchdog internal report concerns a backlog of allegations made by non-USG actors that the State Department has not yet evaluated for credibility, and the OIG’s role is limited to bureaucratic oversight.” That is: what the Post presented as fact were, at best, allegations whose credibility has yet to be determined. And, as Linnaeus noted: “Establishing the credibility of these allegations is precisely what State needs to review. In fact, the Leahy Law cannot be triggered until such credibility is established.”
One could be forgiven for thinking that the Post’s “exclusive” report, which appeared both on the paper’s front page and online, was built on what could charitably be called a misunderstanding. But additional details imply otherwise.
As CAMERA has documented, when it comes to Israel, Hudson has a long history of inflecting his stories with anti-Israel bias. In August 2024, for example, Hudson whitewashed the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which explicitly calls for ending the Jewish state of Israel. Hudson claimed that BDS is merely “a nonviolent activist movement opposed to Israel’s occupation.”
As CAMERA has noted, terrorist organizations like Hamas, whose charter calls for the genocide of Jews and the destruction of Israel, have stated “We salute and support the influential BDS movement.” And according to sworn U.S. congressional testimony, some BDS groups have links to terror groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Hudson’s report omitted this crucial information while uncritically regurgitating quotes from BDS leaders like Omar Barghouti who once said: “We’re not ashamed to have armed resistance in addition to peaceful resistance throughout our existence.”
Hudson showed his willingness to parrot pro-terror propaganda elsewhere. In both the August 2024 report and his more recent dissembling on international law, Hudson relies on casualty figures from “local health authorities.” But those “officials” are, in fact, Hamas. And revealingly—despite extensive open-source evidence highlighting their bias and methodological flaws—Hudson takes their claims at face value. The Post itself has even published missives from CAMERA and others warning that the so-called Gaza Health Ministry is an entity controlled by a U.S.-designated terror group with a documented history of putting out fake figures. Hudson seems to trust them completely—or, more charitably, to be incapable of doing basic due diligence.
Elsewhere, Hudson’s report treats both Josh Paul and the United Nations as trustworthy sources. Yet, as CAMERA noted years ago for Fox News: the UN’s anti-Israel bias is undeniable. UN employees and facilities, by the organization’s own admission, took part in the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack. Huge elements of the UN seem to be focused on how to destroy the Jewish state; they are hardly a good barometer on matters concerning human rights.
As for Josh Paul, who the Post identifies as merely a “former State Department official and critic of U.S. policy in the Middle East,” his own track record of bias is equally clear. Hudson does not disclose that Paul, as noted by NGO Monitor, is a Senior Advisor for DAWN, an NGO that is “devoted to campaigning for sanctions against the IDF.” DAWN Executive Director Sarah Leah Whitson has referred to “Israeli ISIS” and has a long history of antisemitism. As NGO Monitor noted: in March 2020, in response to a cynical tweet that “6 million jewish [sic] Israelis” will now understand life under “occupation” due to virus-related restrictions, Whitson used the classic antisemitic blood libel, lamenting that it was “such a tiny taste. Missing a tablespoon of blood.”
In addition, as CAMERA has previously documented, in an appearance on Joy Reid’s MSNBC program, Paul made demonstrably false claims about Israel and called for IDF soldiers to be put in prison.
In short: these aren’t credible sources. But “credible” isn’t a criterion that Hudson seems to value.
Unfortunately, the Washington Post is far from the only major news outlet depicting the Jewish state as malevolent. An Oct. 30, 2025 National Public Radio (NPR) report, “U.S. doctor reflects on the ‘incredible strength’ of the Palestinian detainees he met,” is similarly malicious.
NPR interviewed Mihir Chaudhary, an “American trauma surgeon” who “recently volunteered at one of Gaza’s last functioning medical facilities, Nasser Hospital.” But instead of providing listeners with an opportunity to hear the truth about events in Gaza, host Leila Fadel gave Chaudhary a platform to broadcast lies.
Chaudhary asserted that there was a “genocide” in Gaza. This is a common enough lie. But then Chaudhary added embellishments of his own, claiming that in Gaza, “Every age – men, women, elderly, children – were being attacked in very grotesque ways.” The doctor added: You know, I saw many, many children who were shot through the head, shot through the abdomen, the chest. It was very clear to me what was being done by the Israeli military in Gaza.”
Not only did NPR fail to push back against this modern-day blood libel, but host Fadel gave the physician a boost. Chaudhary asserted that he had treated Palestinian prisoners who “had fresh wounds that they told me were from gunshots that were done to them by the Israeli guards that were not treated – that were kind of in a state of chronic infection from poor treatment.” Some of these prisoners, he claimed, had their “wrists bound” and had been so abused by torture that they had “rib cages that were chronically deformed from fractures.” The evil Jewish state did all of this, he alleged, presenting no evidence. And—damningly for NPR—Fadel requested none.
This is hardly the first case of health care professionals using their positions to defame Israel with baseless allegations. Former CAMERA Senior Research Analyst Ricki Hollander has documented this trend, including in a recent monograph entitled “The Medicalization of Hamas Disinformation.” But it is a good example as to why NPR had its public funding cut. The network routinely contravenes its own stated standards and ethics. But as the Post’s report shows, they are hardly alone.
The Hippocratic Oath, taken by physicians the world over since antiquity, famously stipulates: “First, do no harm.” At a time of rising antisemitism, our vaunted fourth estate can’t even manage to do that, preferring to throw fuel on the fire while violence against Jews, and the Jewish state, rises.