As College Students Are Arrested with Weapons, The Washington Posts Offers Extremists a Helping Hand

There’s a growing problem with violent extremism in the United States. American college campuses have been proven to be an incubator. But mainstream media outlets have also played an essential role, often whitewashing extremism that they find ideologically acceptable. The Washington Post is foremost among them.

Taylor Lorenz, who gained Internet fame for being a social media “reporter,” recently sympathized with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was gunned down on a New York street on December 4, 2024. Lorenz, formerly of both The New York Times and Washington Post, said that Thompson’s murder brought her “joy” and took to social media platforms to cheer the murder of the married father of two. The news medium Vox parted ways with Lorenz after her comments.

Some pundits are shocked that Lorenz would join the left-leaning extremists who refused to condemn the murder. But they shouldn’t be. When she was an employee for the Washington Post, Lorenz took the side of Hamas in its war against the Jewish State, falsely accusing Israel of committing a “genocide.”

Lorenz even called President Joe Biden a “war criminal” over his administration giving aid to an American ally while it was at war.

It is deeply troubling that well-known reporters would offer apologetics for political violence, the very definition of terrorism. But this too is unsurprising, as a recent Washington Post headline reveals.

Police recently visited the home of two leaders of a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at George Mason University, Jena and Noor Chanaa, who allegedly led a group of vandals that caused thousands of dollars in damage to campus property during pro-Hamas rallies. As the Washington Free Beacon noted:

When officers entered the Chanaa family home, they found firearms—modern weapons, not antiques—as well as scores of ammunition and foreign passports, all of which sat in plain view, according to court documents obtained by the Free Beacon and sources familiar with the investigation.

They also found pro-terror materials, including Hamas and Hezbollah flags and signs that read “death to America” and “death to Jews,” according to court documents and sources familiar.

Police seized the weapons under Virginia’s red flag law, arguing that Mohammad Chanaa, the students’ brother and a George Mason alumnus, was “linked to destruction of property in connection with a large group of people with like-minded rhetoric” and posed a danger to others given his possession of “terroristic” materials.

It should be national news that students at an American university seemingly possessed weapons and pro-terrorist propaganda. Yet, The Washington Post’s headline portrayed these miscreants with sympathy: “Campus ban for two pro-Palestinian activists sparks outcry at George Mason.”

The subhead added: “Two student activists with ties to GMU protesters were given four-year trespass notices for alleged vandalism.”

According to the Post, the real story isn’t that, at a time of rising antisemitism and violent attacks on Jews, two college students were found with weapons and materials celebrating US-designated terrorist groups. Rather, the “real story” is that some were upset that the two SJP leaders received trespass notices.

Indeed, at nearly every turn Post reporter — Dan Rosenweig-Ziff — cast the two in a sympathetic light. This is evident from the opening paragraph: “A coalition of organizations, representing faculty, staff, students and other advocacy groups at George Mason University and beyond is alleging that university police acted inappropriately in banning two pro-Palestinian students from campus and searching their family’s home for reasons authorities have yet to describe publicly,” the Post writes.

Tellingly, the newspaper provides readers with no details about Students for Justice in Palestine.

As CAMERA has noted, SJP is effectively a campus hate group. Numerous SJP members have made statements calling for Israel’s destruction and the genocide of its citizens. And numerous SJP members have threatened pro-Israel students. Canary Mission, among others, has documented some of these examples in a public database that effectively holds a mirror to the face of SJP. These examples are in the public domain and easy to find. But the Post didn’t deign to list them. Indeed, the newspaper compounded the error by treating the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a credible source.

Like SJP, CAIR has a dubious history. CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2009 Holy Land retrial, the largest terrorism financing case in history. No fewer than five former lay leaders or staffers associated with CAIR have been arrested, indicted or deported for terrorism-related charges. CAIR has also trafficked in hate, with its leaders making a litany of  horrific comments. CAIR’s founder and executive director, Nihad Awad, even celebrated the October 7 Hamas-led massacre, saying it made him “happy.” Awad’s comments earned a White House rebuke, with the Biden administration saying: “We condemn these shocking, antisemitic statements in the strongest term.” Notably, this didn’t stop the Post — which has a long history of regurgitating statements from the group — from both treating CAIR uncritically, and failing to disclose the group’s problematic history.

Unsurprisingly, CAIR sought to frame the issue of the SJP arrests as one of free speech. This is disingenuous. And at a time of exploding antisemitism, with Jewish students being forced to literally hide on campuses, it is unacceptable.

Notably, the Post has opposed efforts to combat antisemitism in higher education. On Dec. 11, 2019, then-President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order to protect Americans from antisemitic discrimination on college campuses. The order itself was based off of the bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Act and was praised from a broad array of groups on both sides of the aisle. Yet, in both an editorial and several published op-eds, the Post opposed the executive order, falsely claiming that it sought to redefine Judaism and “deals with campus incidents too broadly by threatening to suppress speech.”

As CAMERA noted at the time, the executive order did no such thing. And the sharp increase in antisemitism — including attacks on Jews around the world — keenly illustrates how necessary such efforts are.

But five years later, after the largest massacre of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust, the Washington Post still doesn’t get it. The newspaper continues to give extremists undue credibility, whether it’s employing them, quoting them, or omitting facts and context about their actions and history. Extremism is thriving in America, and the Post continues to play a role in its ascent.

The writer is a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.

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