A Jewish former employee of the New York Times strongly criticized his former paper for its "heartless" burying of an image published by the Hamas terrorist organization showing an Israeli hostage being starved and forced to dig his own grave.
Yaakov Ort, who is the former Managing Director of Creative Services at The New York Times and worked at the paper for 35 years, took issue with the Times' decision to focus its coverage on a relatively small protest in Tel Aviv on Saturday rather than the video the Hamas terrorist organization published of Evyatan David.
"What we are seeing today is not just bad journalism. It is an appalling twisting of the facts and a mindful, heartless concealment of the truth," Ort wrote in a post to his Facebook account. "Last Saturday, rather than running a photo of hostage Evyatan David being forced to dig his own grave by Hamas terrorists and writing about the actual reaction of millions of Israelis who had seen it, the video desk and foreign desk ran an article leading with a photo of a relative handful of protestors in Tel Aviv, with the following headline and subhead 'Hundreds Protest in Tel Aviv After Hostage Videos Surface From Gaza: The circulation of videos created by Hamas showing Israeli hostages living in dire conditions incited families to protest in Tel Aviv on Saturday to demand a cease-fire and the return of their loved ones.'"
"If The Times still had a Jerusalem bureau that reported the thoughts, communications, and actions of the vast majority of Israelis—as it once did—it would have told readers that the reaction of millions to this and other photos and videos of the physical and psychological torture of our children is neither fear nor protest. It is horror, rage, and resolve," he added.
"The symbolism of the photo is so apt, since this is exactly what most current Times news, editorial, and op-ed page writers and editors—and those justifiably fearful of the Islamic street in the West—are arguing daily that the people of Israel should do: Dig our own graves. Guess what? We won't," Ort's post concluded.
The New York Times has come under fire recently for its decision to have a photograph of an emaciated child in Gaza dominate its front page, with a caption that the child was born healthy, when the child in fact suffers from other conditions that are the cause of his emaciated appearance. The paper published a retraction on the smaller of its X accounts, but the misleading photograph has been widely used to claim that Israel is causing mass starvation in Gaza.
A propaganda video was recently released by Hamas, showing 24-year-old hostage Evyatar David in an emaciated and frail state. A film of hostage Rom Braslavki, so weak he is barely able to talk, was released as well. These videos and the images they contain of the hostages enduring starvation have been largely ignored in the mainstream media in comparison to the widespread coverage the claims of starvation in Gaza have received.