Media top headlines May 12
White House reporters allowing the Biden administration to edit their quotes and more round out today's top media headlines
MSNBC contributor David Frum and other liberal figures strangely used the violence erupting between the Palestinians and Israel this week to criticize Jared Kushner's brokering of normalization deals between Israel and other Middle East countries.
Hamas, the terrorist organization in control of the Gaza Strip, has rained down rockets this week on Israeli civilians, leading to Israeli retaliatory strikes against the radical militant group. It's the most serious bloodshed in the longstanding conflict since 2014.
Frum, a writer at The Atlantic and former George W. Bush speechwriter, suggested the violence was somehow the fault of the Trump administration, or should have at least been prevented by its Middle East work.
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"Remember all the Trump-Kushner self-congratulation about their Middle East successes?" Frum asked.
However, the Abraham Accords brokered by Kushner in 2020 were separate from the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian issue, a departure from decades of conventional Washington foreign policy wisdom that prioritized the intractable conflict. Israel forged normalization agreements with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates that cut out the Palestinian issue, an enormous step between the world's only Jewish state and two Arab nations, and leading to discussions of likely further breakthroughs. In January, Sudan also signed a normalization pact with Israel.
"The Abraham Accords were significant SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE they were severed from the Palestinian issue and showed that the Palestinian conflict didn't need to serve as a wedge between Israel and other Arab nations," Tablet's Noam Blum wrote.
Frum was pilloried for the take, in part because the Biden administration has held power for nearly four months.
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That didn't stop media and liberal figures like the Washington Post's Robert Klemko from offering similar takes to Frum.
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The administration has come under fire from both sides of the aisle for the violence in the region, although for different reasons depending on the critic. Republicans are calling on him to stand more strongly with Israel and condemn Hamas' indiscriminate attacks on civilians, while some far-left Democrats like Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., argue the U.S. has enabled the violence by arming and supporting Israel.