Israel, Censorship and The Huffington Post: Moral Cowardice in the So-Called 'Liberal Media'

Illustration from Infinite Race.

"So in effect HP refused to publish a piece that was ‘ deemed to be ‘inflammatory’ – because it criticized the Israeli government, while allowing a leading Zionist to publish a piece attacking Palestinians as a culture that it presumably did not consider to be ‘inflammatory.’ And all the time maintaining the fiction of impartiality."—Matt Carr

By Matt Carr
July 05, 2014 "ICH" - Since 2011 I have posted 66 of my blog posts on the UK Huffington Post website. It has been for me, an odd and often disconcerting experience, to find myself on the same website as Alistair Campbell, Cherie Blair, or the dreadful hatemonger/bigot Katie Hopkins, who HP has assidiously promoted, for reasons known only to itself.

For a supposedly liberal outlet, HP has a startling number of readers who sound like they have just staggered out of a UKIP piss-up – something that becomes immediately obvious if you post anything to do with immigration. HP also devotes an alarming amount of space to Daily Mail-style celebrity trivia and sleaze stories.

Nevertheless, HP has broken some important stories, and it also publishes a lot of writing that I have admired. In the three years that I have written for it I have never had a piece refused on political grounds. Yesterday that changed, and I’m going to explain why. This isn’t because it matters at all in the great scheme of things whether I publish pieces on Huff Post or not. But the episode is so horribly symptomatic of a certain kind of moral cowardice in the so-called liberal media, particularly with regard to Israel-Palestine, that it deserves a little exposure. . .

So bear with me, if you will. The mini-saga began two days ago, when I submitted a post about the Israeli teenager murders called Netanyahu’s Blood Feud, which you can find here. . . [W]hen my Netanyahu piece didn’t appear. . . I was told by the HP blogs editor that ‘we’re passing on publishing it on this occasion.’ Smelling a rat, I wrote back and asked why they had passed.

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