Jihan Abdalla, senior U.S. correspondent for the Emirati state-owned National News, who has said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes her want to throw up, is the foreign press pool reporter covering the Israeli premier’s meeting at the White House with U.S. President Donald Trump.
“Netanyahu makes me wanna puke,” she wrote in 2011. She has also written that the Israeli prime minister thanked “America for weapons used to kill Palestinians” and that Netanyahu reserves the right to “kill innocents.”
In one of the reports that Abdalla filed on Monday, she states that “pressure has been growing on Israel to end the war, as more than 66,000 Palestinians have been killed and much of Gaza has been reduced to rubble.”
The report doesn’t cite the source of that statistic, the health ministry in Gaza, nor does it note that Hamas controls the source of that statistic.
JNS sought comment from the White House.
The foreign pool report “is inherently unique, in that we have a global perspective, focusing on the words and actions of the foreign dignitary or dignitaries that the U.S. president is interacting with at home or abroad,” according to an entry in a frequently asked questions portion of the website of the White House Correspondents’ Association.
“Comprised of a coterie of select members of foreign media, the foreign pool has linguistic and cultural know-how that can help supplement and broaden the understanding of domestic press,” it adds.
“The White House foreign press pool carries a unique responsibility to provide reliable, fair-minded reporting for U.S. and global audiences,” Jonah Cohen, communications director for CAMERA told JNS.
“Allowing a reporter with a record of inflammatory remarks and uncritical use of propaganda-driven statistics into that role undermines confidence in the pool’s objectivity and credibility,” Cohen said.
