Michael Berenhaus

Michael Berenhaus

Berenhaus, an American Zionist and a veteran pro-Israel lobbyist, is the founder of Eye On The Post, an organization that purportedly monitors the Washington Post for its "anti-Israel bias". [1] Before setting up this organization he had also organized a campaign to boycott the newspaper through the BoycottThePost.org website. The acts of perceived bias include the Washington Post's reference to the West Bank and Gaza as "occupied territories" [2] -- the designation given to the territories by the UN and even recognized by Ariel Sharon, Israel's current right-wing Prime Minister. [3]

Berenhaus's Islamophobia is on full display in a December 29, 2003 Letter to the Editor of The Seattle Times where he blames the decline in the number of Arab Christians in Bethlehem not on the depredations of the occupation, but on Palestinian "Muslim violence and intimidation". He also reproduces the old Zionist canard, now effectively refuted by Israel's own New Historians, and places the blame for the massive ethnic cleansing of the native population in 1948 on the "Palestinian Arabs" and the "neighboring Arab states".

In another Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post on February 18, 2005 Berenhaus takes strong exceptoin to the paper's use of the word "occupier" while referring to Israel's control of the West Bank and Gaza.

Eye on the Post's "strategic alliances" include the neo-McCarthyite CAMERA and Honest Reporting.