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Jennifer Rubin Stands By Her Faulty Reporting

The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin has been working hard to keep alive her allegations that the White House is pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Bejamin Netanyahu to negotiate with Hamas and adopt 1967 borders with swaps as the basis for peace talks. But new reports from the call by the Jewish Telegraph Agency’s Ron Kampeas casts even more doubt over the veracity of Rubin’s claims.

Kampeas, who listened to the call, dismantled Rubin’s version of the phone conference.

Rubin wrote:

What happened to the statements in President Obama’s speech to AIPAC that Israel could not be expected to sit down with those who want to destroy it? After all Hamas has not yet agreed to the Quartet principles (recognize Israel, renounce terrorism and abide by past agreements), nor has [Palestinian Authority President] Mahmoud Abbas separated himself from the unity government.

But Kampeas reports, word for word, what Steve Simon, the White House National Security Council senior director for the Middle East and North Africa, told the conference call of Jewish leaders and it simply doesn’t match up with Rubin’s reporting. Simon said:

We don’t expect Israel to negotiate with a Hamas government. If they [the Palestinian Authority] go to a power sharing arrangement where Hamas’ position has not shifted, then we’re obligated to cut off our support.

Rubin claimed that the White House is pressuring Israel “to give up prior understandings that the Western Wall and the Jerusalem suburbs, for example, would never be part of a Palestinian state.”

But on May 19th, Obama said:

These principles provide a foundation for negotiations. Palestinians should know the territorial outlines of their state; Israelis should know that their basic security concerns will be met. I’m aware that these steps alone will not resolve the conflict, because two wrenching and emotional issues will remain: the future of Jerusalem, and the fate of Palestinian refugees. But moving forward now on the basis of territory and security provides a foundation to resolve those two issues in a way that is just and fair, and that respects the rights and aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians.

Rubin, predictably, has continued to stand by her original allegations — she’s even attacked her Washington Post colleague Greg Sargent’s reporting as “spinning” for the White House — even when the evidence has now thoroughly discredited her.

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Rubin has at least four times endorsed Rachel Abrams’s words that Jewish Americans have a “sick addiction” to the Democratic Party, so it should come as no surprise that the Post’s “Right Turn” blogger has made it her mission to defend Benjamin Netanyahu and try — unsuccessfully — to split Jewish Democrats away from the White House. Whether she, or the Washington Post, will issue a correction remains to be seen.