The New York Times failed in its duty to inform, and to warn, in its coverage of both Nazi antisemitism in the 1930s, and of the genocide of Europe’s Jews, from 1939 on. Its coverage of Israel, especially in the last two decades, also leaves a great deal to be desired. The paper has increasingly been systematically unfair to the Jewish state. It was not always thus. In the first few decades of Israel’s existence, the Times was reasonably fair.
Again, Neil Lewis:
In those early decades, the bulk of the news about and from Israel was distinctly favorable, sometimes even admiring. Israel was depicted as a nation created justifiably as a Jewish state in the aftermath of World War II in which Hitler had almost succeeded in wiping out Europe’s Jews. And many articles celebrated the impressive ways in which the society, a hybrid of European refugees and Jews native to the British mandate territory of Palestine, had created a modern, flourishing state. During this period, several Times executives developed friendly relationships with Israeli leaders.
But, beginning in the late 1960s, the narrative began to change to a second, more equivocal phase. The template of the small nation battling a Goliath no longer fit after Israel prevailed handily in the Six-Day War in 1967. And over time, the situation of the Palestinian refugees began to emerge.
What happened to change the narrative? The Six-Day War happened. Israel had won it, in spectacular fashion. And even though Israel remained under threat – and would always be under threat from Arabs and Muslims who took the Qur’anic commands to wage Jihad to heart, and were determined to wipe out the Jewish state, however long it took — that threat was given less credence by reporters and editors at the Times and elsewhere who were, and still are, ignorant of Islam. It doesn’t take long to read the Qur’an and to grasp the doctrine of Jihad. Yet no one on the Times has apparently thought that task worthwhile. As result, the paper’s readers suffer. Ever since 9/11, how many of these important Qur’anic passages — 2:191-193, 3:100, 3:151, 4:89, 5:51,8:12, 8:60, 9:5, 9:29, 47:4, 98:6 — that help us to understand the Muslim mentality and behavior, have been reprinted by the Times? None. How many of the important Hadith, such as Muhammad’s remarks “War is deceit” and “I have been made victorious through terror,” been quoted in the Times? None.
The narrative also changed when, after 1967, the “Arab refugees” were successfully re-branded as the “Palestinian people.” This had been suggested before the war by KGB advisers to Arafat. The notion was simple: the conflict would no longer be seen as one of many Arab states ganging up against tiny Israel. Now the Jihad could be presented as a case of mighty Israel suppressing the rights of the small “Palestinian people.” The head of the Palestinian terror group As Saiqa, Zuheir Mohsen, famously explained, in an interview he gave to the Dutch newspaper Trouw, that: “Between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese there are no differences. We are all part of one people, the Arab nation […] Just for political reasons we carefully underwrite our Palestinian identity. Because it is of national interest for the Arabs to advocate the existence of Palestinians to balance Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons.” The New York Times has never seen fit to print this truthful, and telling, statement by Zuheir Mohsen. Why?
And the Times has never discussed what features — religion, language, ethnicity, folklore — that distinguish the “Palestinian people” from other Arabs? Why not?
The early leaders of Israel knew many of the Times’ men personally; they saw them when they were in New York. There was the dashing general, Moshe Dayan, and the suave Cambridge-educated diplomat Abba Eban. There was also the straight-talking Jewish grandmother from Central Casting, Golda Meir. These were attractive people. But Menachem Begin was not a crowd pleaser; he was dour, homely, and easy to paint as an unyielding ideologue, though at Camp David he yielded a great deal. President Carter and his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski both disliked Begin; they much preferred Anwar Sadat, who was treated by them, and consequently by much of the American press, including the New York Times, as a large-hearted, even heroic, figure, though it was Begin who was giving up a huge territory – the entire Sinai – and Sadat who graciously deigned to receive it. While Begin’s role as a young man in the Irgun, a Jewish paramilitary group, was held against him, Sadat’s history was whitewashed; nothing was reported about his participation in pro-Nazi activities, for which the British jailed him during the war. And he was lionized as a Prince of Peace, while Begin, who was the one making the territorial sacrifices, was treated most unsympathetically in the American, and world, media.
When the talks between Yasir Arafat and Ehud Barak sponsored by President Clinton took place in 2000, and soon failed, almost everyone in the American media blamed Arafat. One journalist who did not was Deborah Stern of the New York Times. On the one-year anniversary of the talks’ failure, Stern wrote a long piece denying that Arafat had been at fault, explaining that having been involved in war-making for so long, he was not made to negotiate a peace, or – she gave another excuse — because he was fearful that others, more hardline, would use any deal to discredit him. But those were reasons – highly implausible reasons – for why Arafat refused to deal. Stern overlooked the fact that, after all, Ehud Barak had spent his entire life in the Israeli military, but that did not stop him from wanting to negotiate a peace; it was Barak, too, who made an offer that was so absurdly generous that many in Israel were outraged, but he was not worried about being “discredited” by Israeli hardliners in the way that Palestinian “hardliners” — Stern claims – so worried Arafat. Stern was virtually alone, and distinctly unconvincing, in providing excuses for Arafat’s pulling out of the talks. But her bosses at the paper did not seem to mind.
So one-sided did the coverage of Israel by the New York Times appear to be that in 2001 a well-known rabbi, Haskell Lookstein, called for a boycott of the paper. It was not successful; too many Jews, including Lookstein’s own wife, as he bemusedly admitted, could not do without their daily fix of the Times.
One of the many charges made against the Times is that it does not give sufficient attention to the antisemitic and anti-Israel hysteria to be found in the Arab media. Such material can now be found at the website of MEMRI.org. But not everyone is familiar with that indispensable site. And its existence does not excuse the Times for its failure to cover sufficiently, or sometimes to cover at all, this Muslim antisemitism and its Qur’anic roots. The Times has never published what Ahmed al-Tayyeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, or Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Bin Baz, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia until his death in 1999, or the most famous Sunni commentator in the Muslim world, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, have routinely disseminated about Jews. Someone who relied only on the Times would never understand the depth and virulence of Muslim antisemitism.
Nor has the New York Times covered itself in glory in the fleeting coverage it has given to the antisemitic and anti-Infidel passages in Palestinian schoolbooks, or to the bloodcurdling sentiments about “killing the Jews” that Palestinian children sweetly declare on their television programs. Why?
The Times has given more attention to what it sees as Palestinian suffering, compared to that given to Jewish civilians who are deliberately targeted by terrorists and rockets. This often reflects nothing more than the fact that Palestinian casualties outnumber those of the Israelis. What matters is not numbers, but who is being targeted. Hamas and Hezbollah routinely target civilians; Israel tries always to minimize civilian casualties, if at all possible. In the hot wars Israel fought against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, Israeli civilians were deliberately targeted by rockets. Many Israeli houses have bomb shelters attached, and this has saved Israeli lives. Are we to judge Israel to be more at fault if it happens to have prepared its civilians with these shelters, and thus has suffered fewer casualties? Sometimes the coverage of Israel/Palestine seems only to be a matter of numbers; whichever side has the most casualties occupies – as a result of this confused calculus — the moral and political high ground.
Has Israel been wanton in its attacks? Does it deliberately target civilians, or does it try to minimize civilian casualties? Israel knows that its enemies deliberately store their weapons in schools and houses and mosques, and launch rockets from such places. Hamas and Hezbollah hope thereby either to prevent Israel from attacking those sites, in order to avoid the resulting civilian casualties or, in the alternative, they hope that if Israel strikes these “civilian” sites, and cause civilian deaths that can be widely publicized, Israel can be made to look bad. Israel’s answer to this has been to employ its “knock on the roof” technique, dropping non-explosive or low-yield devices on the roofs of targeted civilian homes (and other buildings) in the Palestinian territories, as a prior warning of imminent bombing attacks, to give the inhabitants time to flee. Similarly, during the Gazan Great March of Return, Israel has used tear gas and rubber bullets long before permitting any live fire by its soldiers. When those Palestinians who have been lobbing Molotov cocktails, grenades, incendiary kites, with their aim ever better, at soldiers on the other side of the security fence, or manage to make it right up to Israel’s security fence which they are in the process of breaching, in 99% of the cases, the Israelis direct non-lethal fire at the legs of those they are targeting. The Times’ coverage has never made that clear.
Here are some other examples of carelessness – or bias — in covering Israel. Several years ago, Israel’s Defense Minister, Moshe Ya’alon, was quoted in an Op/ed piece in the Times as saying: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” This “quote” promptly was picked up and repeated around the world by blogs, news broadcasts, and other papers, all of them assuming that the Times must have checked on the authenticity of the quote before publishing it. But the Times had not done so, and the “quote” which turned out to be false, was endlessly repeated to make Israelis appear as callously triumphalist, determined to beat down the defeated and helpless Palestinians.
In 2014, Margaret Sullivan, then the Times’ “public editor” (a kind of ombudsman who monitors her own paper), called on Times reporters to remember that the Palestinians “are more than just victims.” That gentle reproof was welcome, though it seems not to have been followed very closely in the five years since. The Palestinians are too often still presented as victims, while the Israelis must be the aggressors. If a few Israelis are killed, while 170 Palestinians die as a result of the Great March of Return, then some naturally conclude that Israel must be in the wrong. The Times has not made clear what the Great March is all about – the destruction of Israel and not merely the ending of a “blockade” of Gaza (a “blockade” that allows in food and medicine and only keeps out dual-use materials that can be used in a war effort, such as concrete to build bunkers) as the Times seems so often to think. Hamas has made no secret of its intentions. And the Times also appears to think the Great March of Return is about ending the “occupation.” It can’t be the “occupation” of Gaza; Israel withdrew completely in 2005. It can’t be the “occupation” of the West Bank; Israel has a legal claim to that territory, which was assigned to be part of the Jewish National Home, based on the provisions of the Mandate for Palestine. When Hamas talks about ending the “occupation,” it means ending the state of Israel, all of which is located, according to Hamas, on “stolen Palestinian land.”
The Great March was started by, and continues only because of, the terrorist group Hamas; its immediate goal is to breach the security fence, in order to have Palestinians, guided by Hamas fighters, invade Israel in order to kill as many Israeli soldiers and civilians as they can. Israel’s only aim is to stop the marchers from achieving that goal. Israel did not start, nor does Israel want to continue, this confrontation at the security fence. Israel is only defending itself. How else should it proceed? What would another country, another army, do in its place, if facing the same violent challenge to its existence? Israel should not be demonized because it turns out to be very effective at that task of self-defense. The minute Hamas stops trying to have its violent rioters (not “peaceful protesters”) breach that security fence, Israel will gladly stop its efforts to protect that fence.
Another example of misreporting by a Times journalist comes from Nellie Bowles, who (according to a report from CAMERA) described the Palestinian Authority’s payments to the families of killed or imprisoned terrorists – the infamous Pay-For-Slay program – “as a figment of right-wing imagination. Facebook, she lamented, has been ‘flooded with far-right conspiracy programming like “Palestinians Pay $400 million Pensions for Terrorist Families.”‘” There has been nothing secret about the “Pay-For-Slay” program; Mahmoud Abbas proudly proclaims that nothing will make him stop it. Nellie Bowles must be one of very few who think it a “figment of right-wing imagination.” CAMERA did in this case contact the Times editors. They issued a correction: “That is not a conspiracy theory.” But how did such an absurd claim by Bowles make it past the layers of editors who are supposed to read every story before it is published?
Then there is the curiously kid-glove treatment of Mahmoud Abbas. CAMERA reminds us that when on March 20, 2019, Abbas called David Friedman, the American ambassador to Israel, the “son of a dog,” the New York Times made no mention of this, the cause of a diplomatic dust-up. However, when the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had a few years earlier described a statement by Dan Shapiro, the American ambassador to Israel, as “unacceptable and incorrect,” his remark appeared both in a news story and in an editorial, where the Times thundered that Netanyahu had been “unusually personal and unfair.”
Another example from CAMERA of the Times’ coverage of Mahmoud Abbas:
This protective censorship of Abbas’s words is part of a pattern. After the Palestinian leader delivered an inflammatory address to the PLO Central Council in which he slandered his Jewish neighbors, recited conspiracy theories, and rewrote history, the American Jewish community was united in outrage. Adding his voice to the condemnation from the left and the right, Aaron David Miller, a longtime U.S. peace negotiator, called the performance an “unhinged speech” that “veered into rank anti-Semitism.” Shapiro, the former ambassador, dubbed elements of the lecture “outrageous,” “bizarre,” and “shameful,” and concluded that Abbas was “out of the peace talks game.”
And the Times? A story on the speech by Jerusalem bureau chief David Halbfinger ignored nearly all of Abbas’s incendiary claims—that Israel traffics in drugs to debilitate Palestinian children, that European persecution of Jews wasn’t religious discrimination but instead a product of the Jews’ “social function,” and that Israel was the secret hand behind the expulsion of Jews from the Arab world, to name but a few examples.
The paper’s omissions were dramatic, but not surprising. Just a month earlier, Abbas had delivered another speech citing specifically anti-Jewish passages from the Koran while telling his audience that “no one is better at falsifying history or religion” than those people. Again, the New York Times reported on the lecture. And again, its article, by Istanbul bureau chief Carlotta Gall, ignored Abbas’s casual anti-Semitism.
This same newspaper thought it was newsworthy, in 2018, that the Israeli prime minister’s wife had lost her temper nearly a decade earlier. Why doesn’t it feel the same about destructive hate speech, today, by the actual Palestinian leader?
Mahmoud Abbas need not worry about revelations in the Times concerning his theft of hundreds of millions of dollars — possibly as much as $1.3 billion — in aid meant for the “Palestinian people” he claims to lead. Nor has the Times ever mentioned the $300 million business empire of his two sons, which they owe entirely to their doting father and his connections. One columnist – Roger Cohen, no friend of Israel – has in the past suggested Abbas should go, but the paper’s reporters appear dead set on protecting Abbas’ image. The Times under-reports his tantrums, his hysteria; they fail to convey the vicious antisemitism he so often displays. The New York Times has failed to give adequate attention to Abbas’ doctoral dissertation, a Holocaust-denying horror that deserves the world’s attention; the Times alludes, in a general way, to Abbas’ corruption, but fails to mention the staggering sums involved. Some day, another Laurel Leff will take apart how the Times covered the “Palestinians” and their Jihad against Israel; part of that dismaying story will be its failure to have properly reported on the deplorable Mahmoud Abbas.
Meanwhile, it seems Israel’s ability to defend itself will continue to be held against it. Bob Dylan wrote about this phenomenon when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to scatter the PLO to the winds, and found itself condemned on all sides. He called his song “Neighborhood Bully.” It does not date:
Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man
His enemies say he’s on their land
They got him outnumbered about a million to one
He got no place to escape to, no place to run
He’s the neighborhood bully.
The neighborhood bully he just lives to survive
He’s criticized and condemned for being alive
He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin
He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in
He’s the neighborhood bully.
The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land
He’s wandered the earth an exiled man
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn
He’s always on trial for just being born
He’s the neighborhood bully.
Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad
The bombs were meant for him. He was supposed to feel bad
He’s the neighborhood bully.
Well, the chances are against it, and the odds are slim
That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him
‘Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac
He’s the neighborhood bully.
Well, he got no allies to really speak of
What he gets he must pay for, he don’t get it out of love
He buys obsolete weapons and he won’t be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side
He’s the neighborhood bully.
Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease
Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep
He’s the neighborhood bully.
Every empire that’s enslaved him is gone
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon
He’s made a garden of paradise in the desert sand
In bed with nobody, under no one’s command
He’s the neighborhood bully.
Now his holiest books have been trampled upon
No contract that he signed was worth that what it was written on
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health
He’s the neighborhood bully.
What’s anybody indebted to him for?
Nothing, they say. He just likes to cause war
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed
They wait for this bully like a dog waits for feed
He’s the neighborhood bully.
What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers? Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill
Running out the clock, time standing still
Neighborhood bully.
mortimer says
Prominent Manhattan Rabbi Haskel Lookstein has asked Jews and critics of anti-Semitism to shun and boycott the New York Times.
Quote: “It is a small action, but if it is taken by many individuals, it will deliver a strong message. If we believe that anti-Semitism is on the rise, and that it presents a danger to the Jewish people and to the America that we love, we have to do more than worry about it.”
“We have one major recourse by which we can let our revulsion be known: We can refuse to let The New York Times enter our homes.”
“Take action now. It is time to dump the Times!”
mortimer says
Thanks to Hugh Fitzgerald for his excellent summary: “The New York Times failed in its duty to inform, and to warn, in its coverage of both Nazi antisemitism in the 1930s, and of the genocide of Europe’s Jews, from 1939 on. Its coverage of Israel, especially in the last two decades, also leaves a great deal to be desired. The paper has increasingly been systematically unfair to the Jewish state.”
The NYT did NOT do its duty. They have let the people down with endless, slanderous political propaganda.
It is not a ‘NEWS’ paper anymore, but a PROPAGANDA ORGAN of globalist Leftism.
Globalist Leftism is a new form of fascism in which global money giants gain a monopoly on information, manipulate the people and impoverish them while claiming the Globalists know what is in the best interest of the little people and while throwing crumbs of socialism at them in order to distract them.
carpediadem says
If it were only the NYT it would barely register, even though it is a powerful paper.
The real tragic filth of it is that MOST newspapers, websites, groups and proPali groups, AND politicians, schools, textbooks and universities publicise, reprint and repeat these lies over and over again without pause and only intensify them all the time while marketing them ceaselessly and this is done worldwide.
It happens constantly in Australia too, virulent Jewhatred deliberately cultivated, repeating all the lies above and constantly vilifying Israel.
Angemon says
Meanwhile, in 2019:
https://www.cjr.org/special_report/why-the-left-cant-stand-the-new-york-times.php
Even their intend audience is starting to get fed up…
CRUSADER says
Let’s just refuse “ The Times “ as a sign of the times.
CRUSADER says
Patrick Little touring around USA saying awful things about Jews…
such as Holocaust never happened, and Jews killed 30 million people….
Apparently he hails from South San Fransicko.
https://antisemitism.org.il/en/130596/
gravenimage says
Just so you know, Patrick Little is considered a vicious loon here in California, There are *very* few Neo-Nazis in the Bay Area. He ran against Dianne Feinstein for the Senate and went down in flames–he got a little over 1% of the vote statewide.
He has said that Jews should be “raised as livestock”.
Mr. Cohen says
Mr. John Rossomando said:
“[IUMS Trustee Sheikh Hassan Ould] Aldo
and the [Muslim] Brotherhood use language
similar to what Hamas used in its original charter,
which rejected any peaceful coexistence.
To them, Palestine is part of a waqf, a holy
Islamic trust, that no person can negotiate away.”
SOURCE: Muslim Brotherhood,
Hamas: No Peace as Long as Israel Exists
by Mr. John Rossomando, 2019 July 1
http://www.algemeiner.com/2019/07/01/muslim-brotherhood-hamas-no-peace-as-long-as-israel-exists/
Mr. Cohen says
Mr. Stephen M. Flatow [an attorney in New Jersey
and father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an
Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995] said:
“…Israel ended its rule over 98 percent [98%]
of the Palestinian Arabs back in [year] 1995.
It is the Palestinian Authority that rules them.
The gang [of Far-Leftists and Progressives]
knows that Israel does not rule the area.
……………………………..
So why do the Progressive Networkers persist
in promoting the fantasy that Israel rules over the Arabs?
Because demonizing Israel as the occupier galvanizes their followers.
It gives them something to be upset about…”
SOURCE: Ten Jewish groups unite
against Israeli democracy by Stephen M. Flatow
http://www.jns.org/opinion/ten-jewish-groups-unite-against-israeli-democracy/
Mr. Cohen says
Lord Ian Livingston of England said:
“Whilst the Israeli Defense Forces are not
perfect, the obsession of focusing on them
despite being the most moral and professional
army in the Middle East is very strange.”
SOURCE: Ten Baroness Tonge
Pilloried at House of Lords Session She Initiated
on Israel’s Treatment of Palestinian Children
by Benjamin Kerstein, 2019 July 8, The Algemeiner
http://www.algemeiner.com/2019/07/08/itiated-on-israels-treatment-of-palestinian-children/
Mr. Cohen says
Saudi journalist Fahad al-Shammari
declared [in a television interview] that:
“the Palestinians are beggars,” and “have no honor”.
SOURCE: PA and Jordanian
incitement against Saudi Arabia
by Yoni Ben Menachem of JCPA, 2019/7/28
http://www.jns.org/opinion/pa-and-jordanian-incitement-against-saudi-arabia/
Mr. Cohen says
Mr. Patrick Condell described the Palestinians as:
“the World’s most tiresome cry-babies with a bogus
cause and a plight that is entirely self-inflicted”.
SOURCE: The Great Palestinian Lie
a YouTube video by Mr. Patrick Condell, 2011 October 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1N1zhUm84w
Mr. Cohen says
Miss Ayaan Hirsi Ali [a Somalian-born ex-Muslim] said:
[In many Muslim countries], corrupt rulers
play an intricate game to stay in power.
Their signature move is the promise to “free”
the Holy Land — that is, to eliminate the Jewish state.
SOURCE: Anti-Semitism Is Hard to
Unlearn but it’s Possible — Even for Ilhan Omar
https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/politics-current-affairs/2019/07/anti-semitism-is-hard-to-unlearn-but-its-possible-even-for-ilhan-omar/
Mr. Cohen says
Miss Ayaan Hirsi Ali [a Somalian-born ex-Muslim] said:
There is very little freedom of expression in Muslim-majority
countries, and state-owned media churn out anti-Semitic
and anti-Israel propaganda daily — as do even media groups
that style themselves as critical of Muslim autocracies,
such as Al Jazeera and Al-Manar.
SOURCE: Anti-Semitism Is Hard to
Unlearn but it’s Possible — Even for Ilhan Omar
https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/politics-current-affairs/2019/07/anti-semitism-is-hard-to-unlearn-but-its-possible-even-for-ilhan-omar/
Mr. Cohen says
from the Jewish Virtual Library:
“Leading up to Israel’s independence in [year] 1948,
it was common for the international press to label Jews,
not Arabs, living in the [British] mandate as Palestinians.
It was not until years after Israeli independence
that the Arabs living in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip were called Palestinians.”
SOURCE: Origin of “Palestine”
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/origin-of-quot-palestine-quot/
Mr. Cohen says
from JNS dot org:
“Under the Trump administration, the United States
argued that UNRWA [United Nations Relief and
Works Agency for Palestine Refugees] has perpetuated,
rather than helped end, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
by extending refugee status to: the children, grandchildren
and great-grandchildren of those who fled Israel
during the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.”
SOURCE: UNRWA Leaders Accused
of Sexual Misconduct, Ethics Violations
http://www.jns.org/unrwa-leaders-accused-of-sexual-misconduct-ethics-violations/
gravenimage says
The New York Times Has a Jewish Problem (Part 3)
………………
Yes–what happened in 1967? Israel was “too” successful in her survival–she went from being portrayed generally as the underdog she is–a small ethnic state surrounded by hordes of hostile Muslim barbarians–to a “white” oppressor state occupying the territory of a little brown people, the suddenly appearing “Palestinians”.
Never mind that the “Palestinian people” was a construct of the KGB–most have swallowed this new narrative hook, line, and sinker, and propagated it. This is certainly true of the New York Times.
commonsense says
The New York Times has, I believe, the dubious distinction of being the first mainstream newspaper to carry anti-Israel columns, beginning, as I recollect, in the early 1980s. The first of the anti-Israel columnists was Anthony Lewis, whose virulent writings shocked me to the core at the time – I couldn’t believe what I was reading. After a few such columns by Lewis, which appeared in the Sunday edition, I resolved never to buy the Times again. While I held to my convictions, I did on occasion read the paper when it was purchased by others who lent their copies to me. These opportunites to examine Its content – not limited to its increasingly hostile and disgusting bias against Israel – validated my decision to shun the Times. Thomas Friedman, alluded to and justly castigated some years ago by Hugh for the former’s cluelessness about the existence (let alone the centrality!) of the jihad imperative in Islam – the basis for the implacable hatred and irredentism of Israel’s Arab/Muslim neighbors – was another NYT columnist whose stance toward Israel – originally sympathetic and supportive – changed over the years, becoming essentially condemnatory by 2005 or so. Perhaps even more appalling (to me, at least) was the Times’s transparent effort to go out of its way to portray Muslims as victims after 9-11. Day after day, for months, there were stories featured on the paper’s front page, replete with photos, bemoaning how Muslims, both in America and elsewhere in the world, were suffering, either as victims of wars, of natural disasters, or from fear from anticipated backlash as a result of terrorist attacks by other Muslims. As a corollary and as a subtext, the Times made it its business to depict Muslims as striving hard to assimilate and show that they, too, are as American as apple pie and Sunday dinners. This, in the aftermath of three thousand innocent Americans dead (with thousands more to die later from exposure to poisons and carcinogens produced by the destruction of the Trade Center), murdered by nineteen slaves of Allah.
Mr. Cohen says
The New York Times’ war against Israel
and the Jews who support it
by Caroline Glick, 01/13/2019
http://carolineglick.com/the-new-york-times-war-against-israel-and-the-jews-who-support-it/
gravenimage says
Yes–a good piece from Caroline Glick.
Rotem says
I don’t read the NY Times for the same reason I don’t drink any water out of the toilet!