'Extreme Leftist'
Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Nov. 21 WorldNetDaily article by Aaron Klein describes Israeli politican Yossi Beilin as "an extreme leftist lawmaker." Not knowing much about Israel -- our experience is pretty much limited to ConWebWatch's exploration of Klein's whitewashing of Israeli right-wing militants in his WND reporting -- we wondered why Klein would use such a pejorative term to describe Beilin.

Looking in WND's archive, we that that in a May 26 article, Klein described Beilin's political party, Yahad, as "extreme left," and in a July 2004 article, he called Beilin "discredited."

The answer may lie in Klein's accompanying description of Beilin as "an architect of the 1993 Oslo Accords." It's apparently part of the loyalty test WND gives anyone writing about the Middle East that the Oslo accords must be rejected. A July 2001 WND commentary by Joshua Hasten bashed Oslo as the product of a "liberal Jewish think tank" and claimed that those who pushed those accords such as Beilin are "guilty of treason against the Jewish State. ... Israel should hand out jail terms to these individuals just as if they were found guilty of jeopardizing national security through espionage."

Despite Klein's labeling of Beilin and Yahad as "extremist," neither he or any party member have advocated the death of opponents that we could find, let alone performed the act. By contrast, the right-wing Kach-Kahane movement and its successors have been linked to such incidents as the killing of 29 Arabs by Baruch Goldstein in 1994 -- but Klein has never used the word "extreme" to describe them. The closest he comes is in a Aug. 4 article on an incident in which an AWOL Israeli soldier opened fire on a bus, killing four Arabs, in which he described Kahane-Kach as "activist." (This was the incident in which Klein infamously described the soldier as being "murdered" by a mob following the shootings, a description he does apply to the shooter's victims.)