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Washington Post ridicules parents of Israeli hostage online and in print

The Washington Post came under fire on Friday for publishing an insensitive post on X (formerly Twitter) describing Israeli-American hostage Omer Neutra as “missing.”

The message implicitly criticized his parents, Ronen and Orna Neutra, for not discussing the consequences of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza as part of their public campaign for the release of their son and the other Israeli hostages currently held by Palestinian terror groups.

HonestReporting was among the first to sue the Washington Post for recklessly using a grieving family’s quest to save their son as an opportunity to shame them for a perceived political indiscretion. We also condemned the Post for mischaracterizing Omer Neutra’s status as “missing” instead of “abducted.”

Shortly after the outrage over the Washington Post tweet, the station deleted it and replaced it with a message that removed the reference to the situation in Gaza but still incorrectly listed Omer Neutra as “missing.”

Despite this apparent public expression of contrition, however, the Washington Post tweets were based on a profile of Ronen and Orna Neutra’s activities that still casts a shadow of shame on them for not speaking out about the war’s impact on Gaza and still lists Omer Neutra as “missing.”

Halfway through this profile of Omer Neutra’s parents and their campaign to free their son (which includes a speech at the Republican National Convention), correspondent Joanna Slater notes that

When the Neutras speak publicly, they do not mention the brutality of the Israeli counterattack, which, according to Gaza’s health ministry, has killed more than 38,000 Palestinians and wounded nearly 90,000. Large swaths of the territory have been pulverized, and international experts have warned of looming famine.

Not only is this comment inappropriate (as if there were a rule that requires parents of an Israeli hostage to make official comments about the ongoing war in Gaza), but it is also untrue that the Neutras have not made a single comment about the war or publicly expressed sympathy for the people of Gaza.

You don’t really have to look any further than the next paragraph to find the flaw in Slater’s analysis. Orna Neutra is quoted as saying that “what’s happening in Gaza is ‘horrible,'” while her husband is later quoted as saying that Hamas “is not only holding our son hostage, but the people of Gaza as well.”

This is not the first time that the Neutras have publicly expressed their condolences to the people of Gaza.

In April 2024, Ronen Neutra expressed his belief that by laying down its weapons, Hamas would not only free the hostages, “but also their own people,” while in June 2024 he publicly expressed his support for a ceasefire that would benefit both the hostages and the people of Gaza.

By dismissively referring to an Israeli hostage held by Hamas for more than 9 months as “missing” and by posting unnecessary and insensitive observations intended to cast an implicit shadow over the activities of Orna and Ronen Neutra, Joanna Slater and the Washington Post have marred a profile that could otherwise have been illuminating and informative.

This is just the latest example of the anti-Israel bias that has continued to color The Washington Post’s reporting on Israel’s war against Hamas since October 7.

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Photo credits: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images