Category Archives: New York Times

The NY Times begins its assault on Israel’s Search and Rescue

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It has been several weeks since Boko Haram kidnapped over 200 teenagers from their school. Over these weeks, the New York Times has repeatedly faulted the Nigerian government for not being aggressive enough in finding the girls. But in less than one week since the kidnapping of three Jewish teenagers, the New York Times is already running articles that Israel is too aggressive in trying to bring their boys back home.

NYT on Nigeria:

5/24/14: “That the hopes of many across the globe rests on such a weak reed as the Nigerian military has left diplomats here in something of a quandary about the way forward. The Nigerian armed forces must be helped, they say, but are those forces so enfeebled… the military presence on some of the region’s most dangerous roads is light, with only a handful of checkpoints”

5/27/4: [Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan] “responded to the kidnappings in the same way that he has responded to countless other Boko Haram atrocities (or indeed to the anti-civilian depredations of his own military): minimally, or not at all.”

NYT on Israel:

6/17/14 by Jodi Rudoren, the official NY Times reporter who covers news from a Palestinian perspective: “It was Day 3 of what Palestinians are universally calling a ‘siege’ on Hebron,” Jodi does not discuss the violent history of Hamas nor its past use of kidnapping. She quotes a “father of 10” (is this man with Hamas? A shopkeeper? Does his being a parent of 10 make him more or less reliable?): “’This is like they arrest 800,000 people in the Hebron area – look at the checkpoints.’”

Jodi continued that “many here and elsewhere in the Palestinian territories questioned whether the abductions even happened. Leaders referred to the ‘alleged kidnapping’ in their official statements… [Israel] staged the event…as a pretext to oust Hamas from the West Bank.”  Nice work getting a conspiracy theory into the public.

I wonder if the NY Times will get a reporter to cover the news from Boko Haram’s perspective. Perhaps they should send Jodi.

The New York Times wants the military to defeat terrorists (but not Hamas)

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NYT 6/9/14: “Pakistan’s Latest Crisis” was a call to action for the military to defeat terrorists. What about Israel defeating Hamas? Not so much.

The Pakistan editorial led with a strong statement about the Taliban: “In its increasingly violent effort to destroy the Pakistani state”, the NYT made the Taliban’s ultimate goal clear. It continued with a call for the Pakistani government to wake up: “Will this be the crisis that finally persuades Pakistan’s government and its powerful military to acknowledge the Taliban’s pernicious threat and confront it in a comprehensive way? It should be.” The NYT editorial board clearly spelled out its desire for a military strike to defeat the terrorist entity that attacked civilians in Pakistan.

It is distressing to compare these statements with the 11/20/12 editorial about Gaza firing nearly 1000 rockets into Israel. The NYT did not describe Hamas as a terrorist entity (labeled so by the US, Canada, EU, Japan, Jordan, Egypt and Israel). It did not state that Hamas seeks the destruction of Israel – which it has made clear throughout its charter, and the statements and actions of its leadership for many years. Rather, the NYT stated that Hamas “resorted to violence” in a statement that is either evil or laughable in its ignoring the calls for death and destruction of Jews and the Jewish State.

The Times then went on to blame Israel: “Israel also has a responsibility for the current crisis,” Is the Times suggesting that if all the Jews would just leave the Middle East and dissolve Israel the way Hamas desires, they wouldn’t have to “resort to violence”?

The NYT was loath to suggest that Israel stamp out the terrorist entity bent on its destruction stating: “But military action is no long-term answer.”

The difference between the Taliban and Hamas is that Hamas is an elected government, having won 58% of the Palestinian vote in 2006. It governs a territory, Gaza, since 2007. But its desire to destroy all of Israel and kill civilians is not an iota less than the Taliban’s goals in Pakistan and the response from the government and military should similarly be supported. The links to the two editorials are below:

 

Pakistan-Taliban editorial:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/10/opinion/pakistans-latest-crisis.html

“given recent events, one has to assume the militants will stop at nothing until the state is utterly destabilized and they have taken control. Pakistani political and military leaders need to be honest about the militant threat that they and their people are facing”

 

Israel-Hamas editorial

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/opinion/hamass-illegitimacy.html?_r=0

“If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had pursued serious negotiations on a two-state solution with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinians could have hope in a different future”

The NY Times outdoes itself Swapping News and Editorials

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The New York Times has established a reputation for infusing its news stories with the editors’ biases.  However, it outdid itself when it posted an editorial about Obama’s drone strikes one day, and subsequently posted the virtually identical article as a news story on the following day.  Both had the same misstatements which: ignored the studies pointing to Obama’s killing of civilians with drones; blamed Bush for the program; and defended Obama.

The editorial:

The “news story” the next day:

 

NY Times skewed view on Pope prayer invitation and MidEast Peace

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NYT May 27, 2014 “For Middle East, Region of Religious Conflict, Pope Suggests a Respite in Prayer”

 

Jodi Rudoren penned a piece in a “Memo from Jerusalem”, freeing her from the invisible constraints of reporting news “truthfully”, and shared her personal observations about the pope and the Middle East conflict. Her bias towards the Palestinian narrative remains clear.

 

  1. Her opening sentence states that Pope Francis came back from the “Holy Land with the typical bag of ceremonial gifts, including, from the children of Bethlehem’s refugee camps, a mock-up of an identification card in the name of Jesus that lists family members as Mohandas K. Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Yasir Arafat and Martin Luther King Jr.” Wow.
    1. I’ve been to Israel 30+ times. I’ve been to Jerusalem, Jericho and Bethlehem. I never once came back with a propaganda ID card. Does she really think that it’s “typical”?
    2. Jodi has often written about the Vatican and the UN now referring to the “State of Palestine”. You cannot have a refugee camp of Palestinians in a “State of Palestine”. You cannot claim to have a state and be a refugee of that state while living in such state.
  2. It is quite impressive to list a terrorist like Yasir Arafat with Gandhi and MLK. I would have hoped Jodi would have continued to detail the outrageousness of the comparison, but alas, I believe she thinks it fine to equate a civil rights leader with the man who brought the world airplane hijackings. Here are two quotes: one from Arafat and one from Gandhi. See if you can guess who said which:
    i.      “I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.”
    ii.      “We will not bend or fail until the blood of every last Jew from the youngest child to the oldest elder is spilled to redeem our land!”
  3. The article compliments the pope navigating his trip “without seeming to offend” any of the parties.  A strange comment considering over the prior three days Jodi pointed out the anger of the Palestinians for the pope’s laying a wreath at Herzl’s grave and of the Israelis anger for the pope stopping at the security barrier near a sign that labeled it an “Apartheid Wall”.
  4. Jodi goes on to compare the pope’s stopping at the security barrier, with a wall commemorating Israeli victims of terror. In a “normal” world, these two visits would be THE SAME prayer to stop violence, as the security barrier was built during the Second Intifada specifically to stop terrorism. However, Jodi’s remarks make clear that the stop at the barrier was not just the pope connecting with Palestinians and Israelis, but was meant to “shame” the Israelis. How can a parallel be drawn between a security mechanism and a memorial to innocent victims?
  5. She dismissed the prospects of the “peace prayer” at the Vatican “particularly” because Israeli President Peres role is “ceremonial” and he is set to leave the post in July.
    1. NYT again blames Israel for any path forward.
    2. Ignores the fact that Palestinian President Abbas’s term in office expired in 2009 – over four years ago.
  6. Jodi chose to liken the parties stating that “extremists on both sides have exploited religion to block resolution”. That statement is not an over-simplification, it is dishonest:
    1. Hamas won the last elections the Palestinians held, winning 58% of the vote back in 2006. Kahane’s party has been banned in Israel for decades.
    2. Hamas controls Gaza and 1.7 million people. Jewish “extremists” are individuals who do not control land or a population.
    3. The “right-wing” (NYT terminology) Likud and The Jewish Home parties have no disparaging comments about Christians or Muslims. However, the Hamas governing charter is a rant of anti-Semitism. A few quotes here:
      i.      Article 20: [the Jews are] “a vicious, Nazi-like enemy, who does not differentiate between man and woman, elder and young…The Nazism of the Jews does not skip women and children, it scares everyone.”
      ii.      Article 22: “[Jews] have been scheming for a long time,… they took over control of the world media such as news agencies, the press, publication houses, broadcasting and the like. … They stood behind the French and the Communist Revolutions and behind most of the revolutions”
      iii.      Article 7: “The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!”
  7. Notable for its absence over a week of reporting on the pope visiting the Holy Land, and again in this article dedicated to religion and prayer, was the current status of Christianity in the region.
    1. Israel has freedom of religion for all; all churches are open and people are free to pray in the manner of their choosing. That is not true in most of the Middle East
    2. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the Christian population is growing
    3. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the number of Christian tourists surpasses any other religion, including Jews.
    4. Israel is the only country in the region which is the target of BDS by some Christian groups
  8. Also absent from the articles was Abbas’s comment to the pope that “Israel is systematically acting to change [Jerusalem’s] identity and character, and strangling the Palestinians, both Christians and Muslims, with the aim of pushing them out”. No comment from the NYT about the religiously charged lie:
    1. The Christian population in Jerusalem has increased since Israel re-unified the city in 1967. The only time that the Christian population declined over the past 100 years was during Jordanian rule 1949-67
    2. The Muslim population in Jerusalem never increased more over the past 150 years than it has under Israeli rule
    3. From 1967-2011, Muslim population in Jerusalem increased 4.4x, compared to 2.5x for Jews
    4. Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority since 1870. How has the “identity and character” changed in Abbas’s mind? Oh, Jews are once again living in the Old City, now that the 1949 Jordanian expulsion of the Jews and 19-year ban is over.

 

NYTimes shows its preference in “dueling narratives” in the Middle East

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New York Times May 26, 2014: “Pope Lays Wreath at Tomb of Zionism’s Founder”

The NYT headline would lead a reader to believe that the article is about Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism. Guess again.

1.      The article is not about Herzl at all- he is mentioned in passing in the seventh paragraph.

2.      The article is about dueling narratives of Israelis and Palestinians. It is clear which one the NY Times favors, as the day beforehand it posted a huge front page photograph of the Pope at the security barrier, compared to this article on page A10 which includes three photographs of the pope at religious sites for Jews, Muslims and Christians.

3.      The article does not point to the NYT posting the photograph on its front page, but says that the picture simply “rocketed around the Internet”, making the paper seem uninvolved in its promotion.

4.      The author writes of the “graffiti-scarred concrete barrier separating Bethlehem from Jerusalem”. There is no mention that Israel handed control of Bethlehem to Palestinians and that Israel controls Jerusalem, so a checkpoint is appropriate.

5.      The fact that the fence was built specifically due to Arabs from the West Bank murdering Israelis is stated only as a quote from Netanyahu, making the statement appear biased rather than factual.

6.      The choice of words “the pope acceded to Israel’s request that he add to his packed Monday morning another unscheduled stop” makes Israel appear demanding and unreasonable in bullying the pope.

7.      The NY Times decided that a stamp of the pope pressing his head against a security barrier next to a sign that says “Apartheid Wall” is somehow analogous to Israel making a stamp of the pope placing a note in the Western Wall. One is a wall constructed to prevent terror, but has a sign blaming the victim, while the other wall is a religious place of prayer. The Palestinian stamp is a propaganda tool which wipes its crimes clean, while the Israelis post a stamp of hope. (There are four paragraphs in the article to stress this point).

8.      The NYT mentions that Peres post of President of Israel is ceremonial and that he leaves his post soon, but does not continue that Abbas’s term of President of the Palestinian Authority ended in 2009.

9.      The NYT, as always, included language that make the Israelis appear angry: “incensed some Israelis” and “some Israeli griping”. This language is not used for Palestinians.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/world/middleeast/pope-francis-jerusalem.html

Frightening New York Times 4/27/14 article on “Mahmoud Abbas Shifts on Holocaust”

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  1. Abbas new statement that the Holocaust was bad does nothing to negate his various prior comments, phd paper and published book that claim: 1) that 6 million Jews were not murdered in the Holocaust; and 2) that Zionists conspired with Nazis so that more Jews would move to Palestine (so Zionists are at least partially to blame for the Holocaust).
  2. (By way of comparison, If Abbas would have reversed his prior statements and negated his research, that would have been a “shift”.  OR, if Abbas would have come out and said that the Palestinian Arabs of 1936-46 who fought successfully against the Zionists and British who then limited Jewish immigration to Palestine before and during WWII were responsible for 100,000+ Jews dying in the Holocaust, that would have been a shift).
  3. NYT claims that Abbas’s latest comment “goes further” in back-tracking from his Holocaust denial and attacks on Zionism because he claims that Palestinians understand suffering from Israeli “ethnic discrimination and racism”. Not only does the Abbas comment not negate his offensive comments, but it further insults Jews and Israelis by calling them racists, and suggests that the Holocaust is similar to the situation of stateless Arabs.
  4. Hamas is called a “militant Islamist faction” and not a terrorist organization
  5. No NYT mention of the fact that the Hamas Charter calls for the death of Jews
  6. No NYT mention that Hamas refuses to allow Holocaust education in the schools of Gaza against the wishes of the United Nations
  7. Thank you New York Times, for posting an article on Holocaust Remembrance Day about Abbas, the Holocaust denier, and his latest anti-Israel comments, and for phrasing the headline and article to try to make him look like a progressive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/world/middleeast/palestinian-leader-shifts-on-holocaust.html?_r=0

Biased New York Times report on recent Gaza blockade boat

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NYT April 30, 2014 on explosion that sank potential blockade-busting boat from Gaza:
1. No mention that the Israeli blockade of Gaza has been deemed legal by international law

2. The boat is called “small” in keeping with the David v. Goliath imagery the NYT likes to impart in the conflict

3. No mention that the terrorist group Hamas runs Gaza. Instead we see terms of “Palestinian activists”, “Palestinian fishing boats” and “Palestinian goods” to make this terrorist haven sound like Bermuda

4. The “clashes that broke out” were not passive, they were Turks trying to kill soldiers who reacted in self-defense.

New York Times coverage of Anti-Semitism Report

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NYT May 13, 2014: “26 Percent of World’s Adults Are Anti-Semitic, Survey Finds”

1. The NYT quotes the results of the poll on global anti-Semitism that the largest percentage of anti-Semites comes from the West Bank and Gaza; Iraq; Yemen; Algeria; Libya and Tunisia. It then says that “the Middle East results were not particularly surprising, the Anti-Defamation League said that the overall result — more than one in four adults are anti-Semitic — was a major finding.” – implying that the ADL did not find Middle East anti-Semitism to be surprising. In fact, what the ADL did state was “It is very evident that the Middle East conflict matters with regard to anti-Semitism. It just is not clear whether the Middle East conflict is the cause of or the excuse for anti-Semitism” – a very different statement then the ambiguous NYT posting. The NYT could lead a reader to believe that the cause-and-effect is Arabs hate Jews because of Israel, rather than because Arabs hate Jews, they hate Israel, which may be the underlying cause according to Foxman.

2. The NYT article does not mention the Hamas Charter, which is the most anti-Semitic document of a ruling party in the world today, complete with conspiracy theories and calls to kill Jews, which would clearly call out the cause-and-effect.

3. Also notable for its absence was the finding that 70% of anti-Semitic people never even met a Jew, and that Muslims are the most anti-Semitic religious group, with 49% with anti-Semitic views – points covered in other periodicals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/14/world/26-percent-of-worlds-adults-are-anti-semitic-survey-finds.html?_r=0

Kerry’s “Apartheid” comment and coverage by the New York Times

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NYT April 28, 2014 Said that Kerry took step to apologize for saying Israel could become apartheid state:
1. NYT article starts that Kerry made “an unusual statement Monday evening expressing his support for Israel“. Hey NYT idiots- he often praises Israel. why do you lead with something that makes it sound completely opposite of his feelings and the position of the United States? Oh- because the NYT has those feelings.
2. NYT language of “politically charged phrase he used in a private appearance” makes it sound like Republicans were blowing something out of proportion for a private aside. Did the NYT use similar language that the NBA blew LA Clippers’ Don Sterling’s private comment out of proportion? No- the Times used dozens of quotes from around the league to show that the language was offensive to all

3. The article continues that “Republicans” were critical of the apartheid reference, reiterating the claim that this is totally political. Why not mention Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer who called Kerry’s comment “nonsensical and ridiculous” and Democrat Senator Mark Begich “I am disappointed with Secretary Kerry’s reported remarks”

4. Language that “Mr. Kerry has repeatedly warned that Israel” makes it sound that the apartheid comment is not news, and that Israel just continues to ignore Kerry and reality

5. The phrase “Israel did not negotiate an agreement” makes it sound like it is all up to Israel and the blame only rests with them as opposed to the fact that the PA partner didn’t take any steps towards compromise and doesn’t even have an elected leader
6. Hamas is referred to as a “Islamic militant group” and not a terrorist organization (considered by the US, EU and other countries)
7. J Street is referred to as a “pro peace Jewish organization” and not a left-wing group (a phrase which the NYT only reserves for “right-wing” groups). They are quoted as a defender of Kerry to make it sound that Jews in favor of peace also are not in favor of calling out Kerry over his apartheid remark
8. In using quotes to show ‘balance’, the NYT did not use quotes from around the country to show disgust with the Kerry remark (other than from Republicans above), but instead only used analyst quotes stating the comment was “unproductive” and “ill timed, ill advised and unwise“- again, leaving the reader to take away that the apartheid comment was appropriate and just being used for political fodder.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/29/world/middleeast/kerry-apologizes-for-remark-that-israel-risks-apartheid.html

Strange difference of opinion on Boko Haram and Hamas in New York Times

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What do Boko Haram and Hamas have in common? Not the concern of the New York Times.

Compare the NYT editorials of May 6, 2014 on Boko Haram, and of December 28, 2009 on Hamas:
1. Boko Haram is described as a “ruthless Islamist group“, while Hamas is described as “militant Palestinian group“- not ruthless; not driven by religious zeal

2. NYT describes the “horrifying abduction” of Nigerian girls; it simply states that Hamas is responsible for the “barrage of rocket attacks into Israeli territory” without any negative imagery

3. NYT is disgusted by Nigeria’s “shockingly slow and inept” response to Boko Haram, but NYT says “we fear that Israel’s response“- blaming the victim

4. NYT claims that Boko Haram’s goal “is to destabilize and ultimately overthrow the government.” (which BH does not claim even though the NYT assumes so). Meanwhile, Hamas clearly and publicly declares that its goal is the destruction of lsrael, but NYT fails to mention it

5. NYT correctly describes the violent history of BH with “It is not the first time Boko Haram has attacked“, but fails to mention the history of attacks by Hamas against Israel.

6. NYT wants Nigeria to “contain a virulent insurgency” but prefers to blame BOTH Israel and Hamas for Israel’s situation, ignoring that the terrorist group actively and constantly calls for the complete destruction of the country

Sources: