Amid the alarming rise of antisemitic incidents happening at schools across America, liberal mainstream media decided to call the issue #FakeNews, and a fabricated Republican spectacle to make liberals look bad.
That is no exaggeration.
CNN’s coverage started with a headline that Republicans were simply conducting a “‘gotcha’ antisemitism hearing.” The article – not an opinion piece but a news story by Matt Egan (who normally writes about business) – wrote that “It’s no coincidence that the witnesses at Wednesday’s hearing represent school districts in liberal cities. Republicans have sought to score political points by attacking “woke” policies that they say allows for hate speech.”
CNN opinion piece masquerading as news that antisemitism hearings were spectacles fabricated by Republicans
The New York Times wasn’t much better. In articles posted throughout the hearing, the liberal outlet inserted ‘Republican’ everywhere as if the issue of Jews being harassed, intimated and attacked was something that both political parties and every American shouldn’t care about.
Despite what someone might infer from the disgraceful coverage by CNN and The Times, the antisemitism is very real and immediate.
The Brandeis Center and the Anti Defamation League have filed complaints against the Department of Education about the districts brought to the hearing, including the Berkeley Unified School District. The latest letter is dated May 6, 2024 and served as a supplement to the original complaint of February 28, 2024.
In the latest Brandeis letter, numerous examples of antisemitism were listed including: violent antisemitic graffiti such as “Kill Jews”, bullying by peers, celebrating a suspended teacher who had created a hostile environment for Jewish students, vilification of parents who brought civil rights claims, use of anti-Israel propaganda in classrooms, pro-Hamas walkouts and posters, and antisemitic hostility at school board meetings.
The breadth and depth of antisemitism at the school is not in question.
Has belittling Jew hatred become a mainstream media value?
Antisemitism in society is a major and growing problem, as is liberal media’s attempt to whitewash it as a Republican political stunt. Lawsuits and new laws may help fix the former but only boycotting the papers, including withholding and redirecting advertising dollars, can fix the latter.
The New York Times loves to tell stories with pictures and captions alongside its articles. It has a long history of using those visuals to downplay Palestinian Arab terrorism and antisemitism, as well as to magnify Israeli violence.
The paper also does this in its backyard of New York City, where it sanitizes Palestinian supporters’ antisemitism.
Antisemitic attacks, harassment and intimidation have become rampant on college campuses and at Columbia University in NYC, in particular. Last week, the head of the university and board members were summoned to testify before congress to address the scourge that had taken over the campus. In the aftermath of that testimony where Columbia’s leaders readily acknowledged the horrible situation for Jews on campus, things actually got worse.
Chants of “there is only one solution, intifada revolution” were heard throughout the campus and surrounding streets, in calls to terrorize and slaughter Israeli Jews. There were additional calls to “globalize the intifada” to bring the massacres to diaspora Jewry.
Jews were taunted with “Go back to Poland” and “we don’t want Zionists here!” Some Hamas supporters yelled “we’re all Hamas, pig!” at Jews walking by.
The situation was so toxic, that the Orthodox rabbi at Columbia/Barnard told his community that Columbia clearly “cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy,” and as such, recommended that Jewish students go home and not return to campus until matters settled.
President Biden echoed the disgust in his Passover remarks stating “This blatant Antisemitism is reprehensible and dangerous – and it has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country.”
The appalling situation was obvious to anyone who looked at the dynamics. But not for the Times which has an agenda to minimize antisemitism which might cloud the narrative that Palestinians are the only victims in this story.
The headline ran that “some Jewish students feel targeted” with a sub-header that other Jews “rejected that view,” informing viewers in bold that the whole narrative of antisemitism among the pro-Palestinian protestors is highly questionable.
The lead image showed marchers “apparently unaffiliated with Columbia” who “reportedly shouted at Jewish students.” There are dozens of videos showing the harassment, so why add the “reportedly” to make the claim dubious?
The article continued with a picture of “a Jewish graduate student” sitting comfortably on the campus green noting “he doesn’t feel unsafe” as well as another picture of women in kafiyehs with a caption that “many of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Columbia are Jewish.” Clearly the Times wanted viewers to internalize that this protest could not be antisemitic, as Jews participated.
The final picture of the protestors was taken from above at night, with tents huddled together in a peaceful shot of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”
For the casual/Instagram-oriented reader who just scans the headlines, pictures and captions, the story was that Arabs, Jews and others were participating in anti-war peaceful protests on campus, with some people from outside the university perhaps saying something which might be construed as antisemitic. Any actions taken by the school administration against the student demonstrators was therefore unwarranted, and pressured by the too sensitive (and too powerful) Jews.
Just to get YOUR antisemitic attitudes up a few notches.
Even as Jews were targeted for attack and fled from university life, The Times told its readers that “pro-Palestinian demonstrators” are neither pro-Hamas nor antisemitic. It’s an alt-left / jihadi marketing ploy, marketed by the “axis of resistance” of Iran-Russia-China; their proxies of Hizbullah and Hamas in the Middle East; Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Jamaal Bowman in Congress; Students for Justice in Palestine on college campuses; and the alt-left media like The New York Times.
Know that when the alt-left demands that White people give up their privilege, they also demand that Jews give up their victim hood and rights to protection.
Many people and writers for mainstream and social media use terms like “pro-Palestinian” to describe protests like those held at Columbia University.
The New York Times writing about “pro-Palestinian” demonstrations on April 17, 2024 which were actually pro-Hamas and anti-Israel
The New York Times published an article that made it sound like young adults at Columbia University were respectfully and peacefully advocating for Palestinian Arabs. That “many Jewish people” found the protests to be antisemitic would therefore seem strange, as Jews would likely not view pro-Israel protests as being anti-Muslim. Arguably, anyone advocating for a two-state solution to the conflict is both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli. It begs a reader to ponder whether Jews are way too sensitive or the term “pro-Palestinian” is simply incorrect.
What was happening at these “pro-Palestinian protests?”
The chant on Columbia’s main campus of “long live the intifada” is a jihadi genocial chant to kill Jews. It is not “pro-Palestinian” but both anti-Israel and antisemitic.
Covered in a kaffiyeh, it’s surreal to watch an anti-Zionist shout at someone to not “”show your face here again.” But intimidation and illogic are cornerstones of haters hating.
Standing on the street alongside Columbia and shouting at a Jew “keep on moving you Zionist pig” and “we are all Hamas”, swearing allegiance to the antisemitic genocial group that has directly and indirectly caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people is both anti-Israel and antisemitic. It should also be viewed as full-throated support for a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization and a criminal act, especially when yelled at an individual with the intent to intimidate and terrorize.
Violence against someone normally carries a misdemeanor charge of assault or battery. When a group of people surround a single individual and taunt him with “kill yourself” and rip an Israeli flag, the action may be a felony. It certainly is not simply taking part in a “boisterous pro-Palestinian demonstration.”
Calling for a violent jihadi “intifada revolution” on the streets outside and on the main campus of Columbia is both antisemitic, anti-Israel and vocal support for killing Jews and expelling them from their homeland. How is that a form of “pro-Palestinian protest?”
Cheering the Hamas military wing, a designated a terrorist organization by multiple countries, is anti-Israel and pro-terrorism, as is showing off a Hamas flag. It does not mark a pro-Palestinian protest.
Marching outside Columbia’s gates shouting for the destruction of Israel and replacing it with a new country of Palestine, which didn’t even exist in 1948, is anti-Israel.
Yelling at two Jewish students standing outside of Columbia University’s gates that the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust will be “every day for you” is either a wish or threat. Either way, it is profoundly anti-Israel and antisemitic.
Columbia students chant that raping Jewish women, killing Jewish children, shooting elderly Jews, burning Jewish families alive, is moral, legal and appreciated. Civil society knows it to be deeply immoral, anti-Israel and antisemitic. The least one can do is clearly label it.
Demonstrators rally at an “All out for Gaza” protest at Columbia University in New York in November, 2023 (photo: Bryan R. Smith)
If people were engaged in peaceful “pro-Palestinian protests,” 80% of them wouldn’t be hiding behind masks. They know they are part of an antisemitic jihadi cabal that supports destroying the Jewish State, so why is the media soft-selling their antisemitism and genocidal intentions?
Under the banner “Middle East Crisis,” The New York Times has attempted to reframe the current Hamas-Israel war into a crisis in which the Israeli military targets Palestinian Arab civilians.
The headlines refer to Israeli “troop presence” while the accompanying picture has rubble with a caption of “displaced Palestinians in Rafah, Gaza, last week.” One cannot find any mention of the Hamas.
The article continues about the “Israeli military” and its “ground troops” reviewing the reduction in the number “of the soldiers.” It added about the “98th Division” leaving “to recuperate and prepare for future operations in southern Gaza,” an area “where more than a million people have sought refuge.” There was no description of Hamas soldiers.
People should stop wondering why there is amnesia about Hamas’s atrocities and Palestinian support to butcher Jews. It is a narrative of emotions-not-facts that vomit on social media, and alternative facts spread by the anti-Israel mainstream media.
The first Friday or Ramadan came to Jerusalem amidst the 2023-4 Hamas War from Gaza. The jihadi-political party which leads the Palestinian army called upon Palestinians to confront Israel and come to the al Aqsa Mosque by the thousands.
Wafa, the official news agency of the Palestinian Authority took the other side of the jihadi extremist coin, and blamed Israel for blocking Muslims from visiting their holy site:
“Israeli occupation forces barred thousands of Palestinian Muslim worshippers from reaching the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem this morning to perform the first Friday prayer of the holy month of Ramadan.
“Eyewitnesses reported a significant deployment of Israeli troops around the Qalandiya checkpoint to the north of Jerusalem, the Zeitoun checkpoint to its east, and Bethlehem to its south. Thousands of worshippers were turned back and denied access to the city under the pretext of not having the necessary permits.
“The occupation forces also deployed thousands of police officers in the alleys of the Old City of Jerusalem, around the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and at its gates to restrict the entry of worshipers.
“This action follows the installation yesterday of iron barriers at the gates of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, specifically at the gates of King Faisal, Al-Ghawanmeh, and Al-Hadid, in an attempt to exert more control over the entry of worshippers and to restrict access and freedom of worship in the holy site.
“Of note, the occupation authorities have already been imposing strict restrictions on entry of worshipers to the Old City of Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque since the outbreak of the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Palestinian people in early October of last year.
“Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third holiest place of worship for Muslims around the world after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. It has been under Israeli military occupation since 1967.”
This is a miseducation and misdirection of the public in the extreme. It is Jews who suffer from restricted access to their holiest site in Judaism.
In the entirety of 2023, only 50,000 Jews got to visit the Jewish Temple Mount. That compares to over 1 million Muslims who came to the site over the single month of Ramadan.
The United Nations supports this discrimination against Jews at the Temple Mount. Tor Wennesland, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, this week called “for the status quo at the holy sites in Jerusalem to be upheld and respected,” meaning barring Jews from praying at their holiest site.
Jews are being banned from visiting their holiest site per the demands of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority which consider any Jew visiting Judaism’s most sacred location to be a form of “provocation.” More Muslims get to visit the al Aqsa/ Temple Mount Compound on a single day of Ramadan than Jews over an entire year.
Yet the press inverts the story that it is Muslims who are “enduring” restrictions when in fact it is the Jews who face UN-endorsed discrimination.
On Christmas Eve, The New York Times chose to publish an opinion letter by the mayor of Gaza City, Yahya Sarraj. Sarraj was appointed to his role by the ruling authority of Gaza, Hamas.
Hamas was launched in 1987 as the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its 1988 charter is the most antisemitic foundational charter ever written, calling for the killing of Jews as a religious obligation by the world’s Muslims. Palestinians elected Hamas to 58% of the parliament in 2006 with this genocidal charter. On October 2023, it made good on its promise to Palestinians with the invasion and brutal slaughter of 1,200 people in Israel.
The Times figured that it would give its Sunday platform to a member of this U.S.-designated terrorist organization, as a form of support that people assume only comes from TikTok. Sarraj got to plead his case that Israel is attacking a peace-loving enclave. The dozens of squares, schools, buildings and tournaments named after terrorists in and around Gaza City were not listed. The polls which show that the vast majority of Gazans have consistently embraced killing Jewish civilians inside of Israel since 2000, was also omitted.
Leaders of the Taliban, al Qaeda and ISIS were not given a prominent platform at The New York Times. But they hadn’t just killed over a thousand Jews.
ACTION ITEM
Write to letters@nytimes.com “Giving a platform to a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization is unlawful and immoral. You have put the lives of millions of Jews in danger by airing Hamas propaganda.”
Palestinians conducted a poll about reactions to Gaza’s October 7 massacre that killed 1,200 people in Israel, injured thousands and took 240 hostages. The results showed West Bank Arabs (83.1%) much more in favor of the butchering of Jews than Gazans (63.6%). The popularity of Hamas was much higher in the West Bank (87.7%) than in Gaza (59.6%).
It also showed that West Bank Arabs being more committed to destroying Israel and retaking all of “historical Palestine.”
This poll was conducted specifically about the massacre, and before a single Arab prisoner had been released from Israeli jails.
The New York Times decided to sanitize the Palestinian Arabs’ celebration of the raping of women and deliberate mutilation and killing of children and the elderly. It ran a headline that West Bank Arabs prefer Hamas over Fatah which runs the Palestinian Authority because the political-terrorist groups was able to free prisoners. #AlternativeFacts with a sick #AlternativeNarrative.
New York Times article with headline that lies about motivation of West Bank Arabs joy about the murder of Jews (November 29, 2023)
Since late 2021, several new West Bank terrorist groups emerged which have killed dozens in Israel and Area C of the West Bank, the Lions’ Den and Jenin Brigades being the two most popular. Many have members affiliated with Hamas who may have been planning a similar October 7 attack in the densely populated areas in Israel which could have killed 10,000 people. Israel’s raids to capture and kill these cells over the past 18 months likely averted an even worse massacre.
Over the past two years, West Bank Arab attacks have been more numerous and more lethal than attacks from Jews, even according to United Nations reports. In the recent reporting period before October 7, West Bank Arabs killed five times as many Jews (10) than West Bank Arabs killed by Jews (2).
But that narrative of fact was dead-and-buried in the Times. In their article whitewashing Arab violence in the West Bank, it wrote about two young Arabs who threw stones at Israeli soldiers who were freed from prison.
The New York Times is trying to paint West Bank Arabs as peaceful people “resisting” the Israeli army, “resorting” to violent groups like Hamas because they successfully free Arabs unjustly incarcerated. It is the language of socialists and anti-colonialists, meant to inflame hatred for the Jewish State as a falsely-labeled “European colonial state,” as preached in universities. It is a script and rallying cry of the alt-left, which wants to “normalize and globalize Hamas” to “globalize the intifada” in order to destroy other countries like the United States and Australia.
Over the past two years, West Bank Arabs launched several new terrorist groups, attacked and murdered Jews at a pace which dwarves attacks by Israeli “settlers”, and just now celebrated the heinous slaughter of civilians in Israel on October 7. The West Bankers have come to have “a greater confidence in the efficacy of armed struggle,” as described in a December 2022 poll, and believe that Israel will soon cease to exist.
Those plain truths are at odds with the socialist Times which prefers to paint West Bank Arabs as a small biblical David to Israel’s Goliath, scrapping by throwing stones at soldiers, rather than reveal the sickening bloodlust.
On June 27, 2023, months before the October 7 massacre, James Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute spoke to the United Nations Security Council and said “that a recent poll shows a majority of Palestinians rejecting moderate leadership, despairing of peaceful change and now favoring armed struggle. That tragic deformity in Palestinian political culture is the result of the continued brutality of the occupation.” That sentiment came from a staunchly pro-Palestinian pollster BEFORE October 7 to the jaundiced United Nations, where rarely a criticism of Palestinians can be heard.
There is a deep “tragic deformity” in Palestinian society that celebrates the mutilation and slaughter of Jews, and a vile deformity in socialist media which sanitizes Palestinian Arabs’ violence to prop them as ready for a state. It may be a symptom of a post-factual world which prefers narratives about underdogs or simply outright antisemitism. Perhaps both.
Either way, it is definitely coming for the Jewish State and diaspora Jews.
The New York Times has a long disgraceful history minimizing antisemitism both during Arab-Israeli wars and in every day life. It similarly highlights Islamophobia, even though Muslims in America suffer a fraction of Jewish hate crimes.
The paper’s jaundiced coverage is continuing during the 2023 Gaza War.
In two separate incidents, a Muslim boy and an elderly Jewish man were killed in the United States. The Times reporting on the tragedies were polar opposites.
For the killing of the Muslim boy, the Times referred to it as an active event with “fatally stabbed…attack” while the Jewish man passively “died.” One situation was clearly out-of-the-blue killing a child, while the 69-year old Jew was cast as partially to blame in an “altercation at dueling protests.”
In describing the attack on a Muslim, the Times called it an “Anti-Muslim Attack” and “a hate crime,” but no such language was used for the murdered Jew.
The uncle of the Muslim boy is featured face-on and his name was used. For the Jew, the picture was of just the backs of several people. His name and age went unmentioned.
The effort to minimize antisemitism is not accidental, as the paper actively tries to tell its declining readership that anti-Zionism and antisemitism have nothing to do with each other, and antisemitism is not really that big a problem.
Take a look at past NY Times coverage to appreciate this deformity.
Hamas, the U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, is seemingly getting some media support from The New York Times.
Just two weeks after the brutal slaughter of 1,400 people in Israel in an unprovoked attack, The Times is softening language around the evil group.
Despite raping women and dragging them by the hair through the streets, cutting the throats of children, shooting old people at bus stops, burning families alive, and kidnapping over 200 people in one of the largest hostage seizures ever, the paper decided to not call the group “terrorists” or even “militants.”
Cover of New York Times on Saturday October 21, 2023
In two articles on the cover page of the paper, the paper referred to “Hamas, the Palestinian group that controls Gaza” and “Hamas, the group that controls the territory.”
It’s as though the Times thinks Hamas is a co-op board.
In 2014, after the terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped 200 Nigerian girls, the Times was apoplectic. It wrote that Boko Haram was a “ruthless Islamist group” which committed a “horrifying abduction.” And the group didn’t even beheaded anyone.
Israel is still trying to identify the victims of Hamas’s atrocities, with people so dismembered and incinerated beyond identification, that two weeks on, the number of dead and missing is unknown. But the media has moved on to their victims of preference.
As Israel pursues maximum justice for the savagery of Hamas, New York’s liberal paper is distancing the terrorist group from its evil roots and actions. It’s a form of antisemitism in which justice for Jewish victims is being reframed as an unprovoked attack on 2 million helpless and innocent residents of Gaza.
The New York Times publishes a large “Opinion” section each Sunday which typically features a dozen opinions which tilt to its far-left readership. On occasion, it publishes center and right perspectives to provide readers a wider view of a situation.
In the aftermath of the worst atrocities committed against Jews since the Holocaust, the Times opted to serve up exclusively left-wing opinions which essentially offered that Palestinians really aren’t at fault for the October 7 atrocities, and even if they were somewhat to blame for the massacre, you cannot take it out on them.
The New York Times opinion section on October 15, 2023
Using Peter Beinart, an anti-Zionist as the main feature on the cover to discuss “How did we get here and how do we get out of here?” was setting the stage for a pile of bile. Another contributor listed on top of the front page was “Nicholas Kristof on how bombing civilians promotes extremism” was certainly going to be a blame-the-victim spectacle.
All this, while Israelis were still trying to identify the dead who were burned to death and hacked to pieces.
There were seven articles in all. All gave the same message of “why can’t we all just get along?” and blamed religious radicals in Israel and Palestinian territories for all the death and hatred. But especially the Israelis. As the stronger party, calling them out serves the progressive idols.
These are opinion pages, so people can repeat each other in their echo chamber to make them feel as if their opinions have miraculously transformed into facts all they want.
Alas, it is not so.
As a stark example, take one paragraph from Kristoff’s piece “What Does Destroying Gaza Solve?” He decided to veer from enlightened-snobbery opinion to give statistics from a Palestinian poll. He lied outright when he wrote:
“Gazans voted in Hamas in 2006 but have a mixed view of it, with 70 percent saying in a July poll that they would like Hamas to hand over administration of the territory to the much more moderate Palestinian Authority. Some 62 percent of people in Gaza said this summer they wanted to continue the ceasefire with Israel.”
Sounds like Gazans have moderated, right? It’s a total fabrication.
79% of Gazans are in favor of forming new “armed groups such as the ‘Lions’ Den’ and the ‘Jenin Battalion,’ which do not take orders from the PA and are not part of the PA security services”
55% of Gazans believe that they will “recover Palestine”, meaning take over all of Israel
78% of Hamas-supporters believe Israel won’t exist in 25 years
If presidential elections were held today, Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh would win with 65% of the vote in Gaza
“Level of satisfaction with the performance of president Abbas stands at 17% and dissatisfaction at 80%…. Moreover, a vast majority of 80% of the public wants president Abbas to resign while only 16% want him to remain in office.”
“31% say Hamas is most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people while 21% think Fatah under president Abbas is the most deserving”
“63% say the PA is a burden on the Palestinian people”
“Only 28% support the two-state solution”
“53% support a return to an armed intifada”
“52% believe that armed action is the best way to end occupation”
Does that sound like a region that wants to hand administration over to the Palestinian Authority or supports a ceasefire? That has moved away from armed conflict and wants to pursue coexistence with Israel?
Even an opinion piece needs fact-checking when completely false data is presented to bolster the opinion, and the Times is either incompetent or complicit in lying about Gazans actual evil intentions.
The Beinart piece was a work of inversion of cause-and-effect. He blamed the frustration of Gazans being under blockade for causing their violence, rather than Gazans feeling that all of Israel is rightfully theirs and want to kick out the “colonial invader” Jews.
The blockade of Gaza started in 2007 when Hamas killed members of Fatah and seized the area. The formation of Hamas, with its antisemitic genocidal charter was written in 1988, roughly twenty years earlier. There’s a clear cause-and-effect and getting the sweet cover picture promotion by the Times doesn’t change facts.
To answer the question posed on the cover “how do we get out of here?” requires being honest about the situation to produce possible solutions. The New York Times believes that openly lying to its readership about a peaceful Gazan population under the domination of a handful of radical Islamists will produce a solution. It will not. The media lies will only produce more anger against Israel, especially as civilians in Gaza die in Israel’s attempt to save hostages, bring the Hamas perpetrators to justice, and end the threat posed from Gazan terrorist enclave.
ACTION ITEM
Write to The New York Times letters@nytimes.com: “The Kristof statistics about Gazans favoring the Palestinian Authority and a ceasefire are complete lies as shown in the June PCPSR poll.”
First One Through 