A Palestinian man walks near Israeli military vehicles, during an Israeli raid in Jenin, in the West Bank, August 31, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad

The Irish Times has published some breathtakingly poor journalism over the years. It once described Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as evidence of a national “thirst for war,” defended Hezbollah as a “defensive” force in Lebanon, and, in one memorable dispatch, its Middle East correspondent appeared impressed by the idea of the Iranian regime launching a hypersonic missile at Tel Aviv.

Yet even by those standards, the paper’s latest international story marks a new low.

Authored by that same Middle East correspondent — Michael Jansen — the piece is headlined: “Israeli army intensifies attack on Jenin refugee camp in northern West Bank.”

Unsurprisingly, the body of the article is every bit as misleading as its title suggests.

Even beyond the headline that claims Israel is attacking a refugee camp rather than the terrorists inside, this @IrishTimes story is a case study in bias.

Let’s take a closer look. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/0oLU9ngjka

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) April 1, 2025

The opening paragraphs read more like a dramatic screenplay than a news report.

According to Jansen, the Israeli military is not conducting counterterror operations targeting Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other armed groups embedded in Jenin. Instead, she frames the operation as an unprovoked, almost vindictive, disruption of a sacred holiday:

The Israeli army on Monday intensified its 70-day assault on Jenin city and the adjacent Palestinian refugee camp … Despite the Muslim feast of Eid al-Fitr, Israel troop reinforcements and armoured vehicles stormed the city … and ransacked dwellings. In the Jenin refugee camp, Israeli forces demolished homes and ravaged infrastructure.

Conspicuously absent is any acknowledgment that these raids are targeting entrenched terrorist networks that operate from within densely populated civilian areas — a grim reality that imposes both legal and moral obligations on Israel to act.

The irony, of course, is glaring. Jansen bemoans the desecration of Eid, yet omits any mention of Palestinian terror attacks deliberately timed to coincide with Jewish holidays — including Hamas’ October 7 massacre on Simchat Torah.

She also neglects the rocket attacks launched during Ramadan in 2021 by the very same groups Israel is now confronting. Evidently, Jansen is more concerned about the sanctity of Islamic holidays than Hamas is.

Later in the piece, Jansen refers to Jenin as the center of “resistance,” quite literally borrowing Hamas’ terminology without the slightest nod to Israel’s far more accurate descriptor: a hub of terrorism.

Jenin has long served as a launchpad for deadly attacks and is home to some of the West Bank’s most unrepentant perpetrators of violence.

The article then ends with a bizarre cinematic endorsement — of a film that has done more than almost any other to spread one of the most persistent and damaging blood libels in recent memory:

That assault inspired the film Jenin, Jenin, which contributed to the camp’s reputation and made it an anti-occupation beacon.

In fact, Jenin, Jenin is a widely discredited propaganda film that peddles the thoroughly debunked lie that Israeli forces committed a massacre in 2002 — a fabrication repeatedly disproven by international investigations but still parroted by anti-Israel activists and antisemites alike.

The Irish Times is no longer just editorializing against Israel. It is now platforming and promoting blood libels in its international news section. Just when you thought it couldn’t sink any lower.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.