As reports of antisemitic attacks rise throughout the West, Jewish life in the East flourishes at an unprecedented pace with an increasing number of Jews visiting and moving to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. As a Bahraini Jew, it is particularly upsetting to see the alarming reports of attacks against Jews in the United States. We don’t have an issue with that here.

The phrase “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” probably was not coined by Mark Twain, as is often claimed, but the Washington Post can claim this update on it: Today, there are four kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, statistics, and opinion polling. Just as polling can be corrupted by, for example, the wording of questions, journalism can be corrupted by “scientific polling,” particularly when it substantiates a publication’s anti-Israel bias. Two such cases appeared in the pages and website of the paper that warns on its front page, “Democracy Dies in the Dark.” Shine the light on these two egregious stories:

The public controversy about the non-binding Working Definition of Antisemitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) is puzzling. Policy makers in different countries have identified antisemitism as a problem and want to monitor and combat it. In order to do so they need a hands-on definition of antisemitism that helps, among others, police officers to decide if a certain incident should be classified as antisemitic or not. They have then developed a definition together with major groups representing Jewish communities. Many governments and organizations, including the United Nations, have since expressed support for this definition as guidance to monitor and combat antisemitism. The European Commission has just published a handbook how that can be used. So why is there now some opposition to this definition?

Published back in April, the most recent special issue of Israel Studies hit a nerve so raw that it is still reverberating in the pages of online journals and newspapers. As co-editors of this publication, who conceived of the project “Word Crimes: Reclaiming the Language of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” came up with the admittedly “stark and provocative” title, and solicited the contributing essays – we are flattered by the attention but dismayed by how many readers continue to prefer uncivil denunciations of the volume’s editors and contributors over rigorous analysis and engaging with the substance of the essays themselves.