Is the New York Times the Anti-Israel newspaper? Is it guilty of false reporting against the state of Israel over a long period of time and giving aid and comfort to nations and groups that use terrorism as a matter of national policy? The simple answer to this question is a resounding “yes”!
These days it has joined those who blame Israel for all the woes of the Middle East and the world. It justifies this by quoting Arab sources over Israeli ones and speaking of cycles of violence---both the Israelis and their Arab enemies are held equally responsible for the violence and terror that stalks the region.
Those who commit murder and mayhem in the name of their ‘legitimate grievances’ are treated in the same way as their victims. Terrorists are called militants, even when they murder families in their beds, as they recently did to the Fogels---a story the Times somehow failed to cover.
The random bombing of civilians, a war crime by any standard has not been condemned by the Times even though this random bombing of civilians during World War II by Nazi Germany was properly labeled a war crime. Apparently, when the victims are Israelis such actions are no longer considered a crime in the eyes of the Times. The Times is forever trying to justify these terrorist attacks because of the “occupation”.
They never tell readers that these ‘disputed’ territories came under Israel sovereignty when surrounding Arab states attacked Israel, as they did in three more times during the intervening sixty three year period since the state of Israel was created. Nor does the Times give any blame to the breakdown in peace negotiations on the Palestinians, who have consistently refused to recognize the state of Israel or sit down with Prime Minister Netanyahu.
The Times couches its bias against the Jewish state as an attack on the policies of the Israeli government. But it does not show any bias to the many dictatorships that have attacked the Jewish state time and time again. When you attack Jews disproportionately and constantly while giving other countries a free pass, then you’re talking anti-Semitism, as Martin Luther king said many years ago.
Time and again reports from Arab sources are thought to be more reliable that those of the Israeli government even though such sources are often biased. In Jordan, in Egypt and throughout Araby virulent Anti-Semitic literature is sold openly, but the Times prefers to turn a blind eye to these abhorrent practices and seldom, if ever mentions them. (The Protocols of Zion, a notorious Anti-Semitic forgery written by the Tsarist secret police more than a century ago is widely distributed and believed in much of the Islamic World.)
Anti-Israel attitudes have often blended into Anti-Semitism in the New York Times. In the Arab countries, no lie is too great when it comes to characterizing the state of Israel, or Jews in general. The cowardly terrorist attack on New York was blamed on the Jews in much of the Islamic World, but the Times mentioned this briefly without editorial comment.
The Syrian dictator Assad accused the Jews of killing Christ when he visited the Pope recently. Again the Times barely reported this meeting but managed to give it some prominence briefly. The Arab press openly reported that the Jews kill Christians and Islamic children today in order to perform satanic rituals and again the Times chose to ignore these blatant manifestations of Anti-Semitism.
The truth about Islam’s attitudes is seldom reported in the Times. Human rights violations are constantly ignored while the state of Israel is constantly singled out for ‘human rights abuses’. More than a third of all Arab dominated UN resolutions condemn Israel while ignoring genocidal attacks in Africa and lack of freedom or democracy in any of the Arab nations.
The negative bias of the Times against Israel while excusing the behavior of other nations in the Middle East is, as Daniel Jonah Goldhagen has pointed out, a virulent form of Anti-Semitism.
Recently, the Times gave front page coverage to the Goldstone Report that claimed Israel had deliberately targeted civilians during her incursion into the Gaza Strip. But when Goldstone wrote an Op Ed piece in the Washington Post in which he said the accusations were based on Palestinian informers and were probably not true, the Times relegated its coverage to its back pages.
How has the Times responded to these charges of bias and bigotry? Officially they have denied them and asked Jewish anti-Zionists to write articles for them. And they have deemphasized some of their coverage of the Middle East. But the continued ‘bad-mouthing’ of our Israeli ally while they igrnore the provocations and virulent anti-Semitism of her enemies speaks for itself.
All this forces us to ask---Who owns AP and Reuters? Who owns these media outlets that routinely spew these distortions and falsehoods? And who owns the Times?