Not Babylon Bee: Jerusalem Post Agonizes Over the ‘Climate Crisis’ of Israel’s War Against Hamas

January 23rd, 2024 12:01 PM

The Jerusalem Post decided it was a good idea to twist the Israel-Hamas war into a whining session about how the Jewish state’s military offensive was contributing to the so-called “climate crisis.” Talk about straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.

“Climate crisis on Gaza battlefield: CO2 emissions surge from Israel-Hamas war,” read The Post’s ludicrous Jan. 14 headline. It didn’t take long for the outlet to then wokescold Israel’s retaliatory strikes against Hamas following the terror group’s Oct. 7th genocide against the Jewish people as somehow exacerbating climate change. “Some 99% of these emissions were attributed to Israel’s aerial and ground operations against Hamas in Gaza,” cried The Post. First, who with a functioning prefrontal cortex would expect war to be environmentally friendly? Secondly, how dare Israel wage a war after Hamas raped, pillaged, kidnapped and murdered hundreds of its citizens because of the supposed climate impact, right Jerusalem Post?

The newspaper couldn’t stop itself from trying to guilt Israel over the alleged climate footprint of its military operations. It based its entire premise on an admittedly non-peer-reviewed study co-authored by Climate and Community Project (CCP) Research Director Patrick Bigger, who lambasted Israel: “‘There is very clearly an emissions asymmetry here, in the same way, that there are a lot of asymmetries in this conflict.’” What's worse is that the anti-Israel story was written by The Post's Deputy CEO Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman.

What The Post failed to disclose, however, was that Bigger’s group is admittedly anti-Israel. “Ceasefire now, ceasefire forever: No climate justice without Palestinian freedom and self-determination,” read the headline of a Dec. 13 anti-Israel CCP report co-authored by Bigger himself. The Post bypassed another piece of context: The CCP group is fiscally sponsored by the leftist philanthropic behemoth Tides Center, which was heavily funded by leftist billionaire and Hamas-sympathizer George Soros to the tune of at least $14,235,421 between 2016-2022 alone. Capital Research Center’s Influence Watch noted that Tides Center has a sordid record of “incubat[ing] numerous left-wing organizations since its inception.” 

In essence, whatever objectivity the so-called climate “study” was attempting to project is effectively obliterated by CCP’s involvement. “Israel’s day-to-day actions for decades, now reaching a crescendo of extreme, illegal escalation of violence since Hamas’ October 7th atrocities, are a continuation of the Nakba, or ‘catastrophe,’ that began in 1948 with Israel’s dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians,” read CCP’s Dec. 13 screed on its website. Bigger is depicted as the lead author of that piece. “Israel’s ongoing land confiscation and denial of use to Palestinians causes direct environmental devastation and injustice.”

But Jaffe-Hoffman, doing a bit of public relations for the CCP, parroted Bigger and a co-author’s pseudo assurance that “they were pushing for a ceasefire due to the loss of human lives on both sides and not because of the war’s environmental impact.” Yeah, right. The first of three "Key takeaways" from CCP's anti-Israel report co-authored by Bigger read as follows: "An immediate, permanent ceasefire and end to all occupation and apartheid is the only viable path forward for lasting peace, security, and survival of people and ecosystems through the climate crisis." Jaffe-Hoffman appeared to just haphazardly take Bigger at his word. [Emphasis added.]

But that’s not all. Jaffe-Hoffman also regurgitated one of the co-authors’ assertions that “the [Israel-Hamas war] emissions appear high but are comparable to those in other wars the team or their colleagues have studied, such as the Iraq war.” However, Jaffe-Hoffman didn’t bother mentioning anything about the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, the climate impact of which has also been vastly repudiated by leftists.

The irony is that The Jerusalem Post ran an op-ed just days after its climate repudiation of Israel headlined: “Why I haven't written environmental news since Hamas's massacre.” The author, WION Middle East correspondent Jodie Cohen, conceded: “Who would care about carbon-reducing innovations or water-saving techniques when 3,000 Hamas terrorists had infiltrated Israel, shattering people’s feelings of safety and security?” Maybe The Post’s leadership should take a few notes from Cohen’s op-ed about editorial restraint going forward.

Conservatives are under attack. Contact The Jerusalem Post and demand it stop peddling climate propaganda from leftist organizations to repudiate Israel.