I’ve been writing about antisemitism/anti-Zionism/Jew-hatred for a long time—and thus, I’ve also been documenting how The New York Times, my once (and sometimes still) beloved hometown newspaper, massively, insanely, obsessively, and dangerously distorts the news about Israel and the Jews.
Given their record about how they buried the Holocaust, I should no longer be surprised or shocked when I come across yet another grossly misleading headline, pull quote, article series, and photos. And yet, I still am, each and every time. But encountering this also makes me nauseous, frustrated, heartbroken, frightened.
This level and quantity of propaganda will—it already has—led to educated, American Jews’ decision to distance themselves both from Israel and from visibly religious Jews. How else will they be able to keep up, get ahead, remain safe?
But now, let us praise the Lord! Although The New York Times did cover Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s blocking of Representative Rashida Tlaib’s plan to host an “event at the Capitol commemorating the displacement of Arab “Palestinians” when the state of Israel was created,” it did not hold forth on the subject as it has done in the past.
Arab “Palestinians” have celebrated their "tremendous loss" and their even more canny self-sabotage by memorializing that loss, thereby empowering themselves to present themselves as the world’s most sacred victims; they don “Jewface,” condemn the Israeli government as “Nazis,” and claim that their non-acceptance of the UN 1948 Partition Plan (which Israel did accept) and subsequent attack of 5 Arab armies on Israel leading to an Arab military defeat 75 years ago is equivalent to a Holocaust-era “genocide.” To do so they have abandoned all reason. The fact that the Arab population in Jerusalem, Haifa, Gaza, and the disputed territories in the 'West Ban'k have only increased exponentially does not deter such propaganda, nor does it have the Western media questioning such a blatant, even laughable lie.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was purposely created to fund the permanent existence of Arab “Palestinians” in “refugee camps.” This UN institution is heavily supported by the EU and by other Arab governments who have refused to allow Arab refugees to work or become citizens anywhere else in the Middle East.
However, once again, the NYT has failed to surprise me. Today, they’ve published an article titled “Cease-Fire but No Resolution of the Conflict Between Gaza and Israel.” Such a title suggests that both sides have chosen this conflict as opposed to stating that “Palestinian fighters” have chosen to celebrate Israel’s Independence Day by lobbing 800 rockets and missiles into the Jewish homeland. This title does not suggest that Israel responded both in self-defense and in order to get the barrage to stop.
The article is comprised of 23 paragraphs and two photographs, one of the destruction in Gaza caused by the “Israeli military” and the second of Arab “Palestinians” celebrating the cease-fire. Only in the 20th paragraph do we read that Arab “Palestinian” anger is caused by Israel’s “wider economic restrictions on Gaza, its two tier legal system in the West Bank—and for the extremist Palestinians who control Gaza, Israel’s very existence in the first place.”
Aha! Gaza is controlled, not by Israel (who evacuated it long ago) and not even by Egypt—but by “extremist Palestinians” who “oppose Israel’s very existence.”
I cannot find any words here about Israel’s long-time desire for peace; willingness to give up a great deal of land for peace; or Israel’s best, precision efforts to target Islamist terrorist leaders as opposed to civilian human shields. Photos of Israeli children and women rushing to bomb shelters or safe rooms as Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad launch rockets, mortars, fire-kites into southern Israel are rarely published. Long, thoughtful, and sympathetic articles about the trauma of Israelis living under such conditions are as rare. Rarest of all: Drawing the necessary and obvious conclusions about what it means that Israel withdrew, pulled out, left, evacuated Gaza.
Wouldn’t this same horror happen if Israel gives up more land in Judea and Samaria?
On May 11th, the hardcopy version of the NYT had an even more incendiary title: “Cease Fire Talks Stall as Israel Assassinates 2 More Militants.” Interestingly, oddly, the online title was changed to “Israel and Gaza Trade Fire Amid Cease-Fire Talk.” All I can say, is that the title should have reflected Isabel Kershner’s fourth paragraph which reads:
“The cross-border exchanges started out less intense than on Wednesday, when Islamic Jihad fired more than 500 rockets and mortar shells towards Israel…”
I, and a handful of other cognitive warriors have been correcting such coverage for the last quarter-century. It has barely made a difference. If anything, the Gray Lady’s coverage has gotten even more skewed, more blatant, more committed to the narrative of viewing Israeli self-defense as the most heinous aggression and Arab “Palestinian” aggression as merely pitiful forms of self-defense.
Israel’s major crime is that of being able to defend itself. The immediate world (the media, the EU, the UN, with some exceptions, the Arab and Muslim world), seem to want Israel’s neck on the chopping block. That will never happen again.
Prof. Phyllis Chesler is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and the author of 20 books, including “Women and Madness” (1972), “With Child: A Diary of Motherhood, (1979) and” “The New Anti-Semitism” (2003, 2014). She conducted and published four studies about honor killing. Her latest books are “An American Bride in Kabul, which won a National Jewish Book Award and is now in Arabic;“A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killing,” “A Politically Incorrect Feminist.” She is a founding member of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME).