Robert Besser is a news editor who has worked in television and newspapers in the United States, Asia and the Middle East.
We’re living through a spiritual plague. Barbarism is in the ascendant, and its super-spreader is The New York Times.----Melanie Phillips
When the non-Jewish Arthur Krock, the New York Times Washington Bureau chief, refused to hire Jewish reporters, staff member Felix Belair questioned Krock. “There are some people here," said Belair, “who think you’re anti-Semitic." “Well," said Krock, “maybe I am." ---David Halberstam
Just because Israel is a democracy that believes in free speech does not mean that we Jews must commit suicide on the altar of the free press.
Rather, let Israel take actions to protect ourselves from the Jew-hating New York Times, including:
1) Stop New York Times reporters from working in Israel because the Times does not report truthfully about Israel.
2) Israel must not allow New York Times reporters to work in Israel because they apply a double standard in criticizing Israel that they do not apply to other countries.
3) Israel must bar the New York Times from working within Israel because they have an anti-Israel political agenda and do not provide their readers with unbiased or truthful reporting.
Of note, this issue goes far, far beyond Nicholas Kristof at the New York Times, who wrote unbelievably on May 11 that the Jews of Israel use dogs to rape Arabs.
Kristof’s column was labeled the “most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel," by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In writing such age-old antisemetic libels, Kristof was doing was what he is paid to do by the New York Times as one of their hired guns. As proof of this, senior editors allowed his May 11 blood libel against the Jews to be published. They did not fact check or question Kristof’s absurd obscenities…..because at the New York Times everyone is paid to believe such lies.
Can we imagine the New York Times hurling similar charges against their pet blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals or Moslems?
How should Israel respond to the never ending Jew-hatred of the New York Times?
First, we must acknowledge that the New York Times are Jew-haters. And, above all, understand that they want to destroy Israel.
How many lunatic antisemites might now become incited to violence and strike out at innocent Jews because of Kristof’s blood libel?
How many Jews were similarly endangered when Times columnist Tom Friedman wrote in 2011 that American Jews purchase members of Congress? Of particular disgust is that Friedman used his being a Jew to give legitimacy to such antisemitism.
And catastrophically, how many died when the New York Times refused to publish stories about Jews being the target for extermination during the Holocaust? As Laurel Leff documented, only six times was the word “Jew" used in any New York Times front page story about the ongoing shoah from 1939 to 1945.
During those years in America, it was the New York Times that could have assumed the largest role and had the most impact in urging the US government to save Europe’s Jews. Instead they did nothing.
At the very minimum, the New York Times might have pressured the US government to issue the 300,000 visas, already approved but unused, to fleeing Jews.
Again, at the minimum the New York Times might have convinced the US government to try and save the 437,000 Hungarian Jews who died in Auschwitz between May and July 1944.
And why did the New York Times not act?
Because of the obscene cowardice of its owners, the very German Jewish Ochs-Sulzberger families, not surprisingly leaders of American Reform Judaism, who were afraid that America would see their family as Jews and the New York Times as a Jewish newspaper.
Think about it. At the exact moment that Jews were being exterminated in Europe, and even as other Jews in ghettos and forests were armed and fighting the German savages, all the Ochs-Sulzberger family could think about was not being identified as Jews so they could protect their memberships in their country clubs and their social positions in American Protestant society.
And because the Ochs-Sulzberger family was so afraid for only themselves……they stood aside and remained silent as six million Jews died.
Tragically, Adolph Hitler could not have had a more helpful partner than the New York Times.
Not surprisingly, it was this family that created the anti-Jewish culture in the Times newsroom, which remains dominant to this day.
Listen to an earlier New York Times publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who said, “....In all the years I’ve been here we have never put a Jew in the showcase." Sulzberger meant that he would hire no Jews as executives, no Jews as top editors, no Jews in high profile jobs in Washington DC.
The antisemetic game the New York Times has successfully played for 100 years is to camouflage their Jew-hatred amidst their comprehensive news coverage of the world.
Such Jew-haters are exactly the type of journalists we should not allow into Israel.
By banning the New York Times from reporting from within Israel we will also deprive the New York Times Syndication Sales Corp. from reselling their news about Israel to client-news organizations throughout the world.
Simply put, let’s ban their reporters and prevent the New York Times from making money off of their hatred of Israel.
In recent years Israel has denied entry to members of the US Congress, European Parliament, NGOs and others because they would use their visits to further harm Israel and the Jews.
Commenting on Israel’s refusal to issue entry visas, Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli warned, “If you come to Israel with the intent of inciting violence and hatred against Jewish people, you will not be allowed entry into our country."
Well, who has incited more hatred towards Israel and the Jews than the New York Times?
When the Times published a 2024 story entitled, “Who Are the Biggest Donors to Trump and Harris?" they listed a group of contributors, including mostly non-Jewish donors.
But the picture that illustrated the story was a photograph of President Trump, philanthropist Miriam Adelson and an unidentified bearded man wearing a kippa, while this group stood in front of six Israeli flags.
The New York Times message, of course, was that evil Jews control American politics.
Again, the New York Times published a cartoon in 2019 showing Benjamin Netanyahu as a guide dog wearing a Jewish star while leading a blind, kippah-wearing Donald Trump. Without the kippah, it is a political cartoon. Including the kippah is sheer antisemitism.
And so is this:
If Israel bans the New York Times from reporting in Israel, the newspaper will reflexively scream that Israel is undemocratic. And in their true antisemetic way, they will make this charge even though they never once complained about being censored or expelled from Arab countries.
Next, the New York Times will want to show Israel who is boss by insisting that their many Israel-hating allies in the US State Department and Congress demand Israel allow the New York Times to return to Jerusalem.
Well, when that day arrives let’s simply post online the long, long list of past New York Times antisemetic articles for the world to see.
When weighing whether to ban the New York Times from reporting from Israel, Israel’s leaders will say that actions must not be taken until decisions have been well thought out. And they will correctly say that Israel is not a super power and must always move cautiously.
While I do not have the experience of these Israeli leaders, my perspective comes from my street in Chicago. At the end of the block was a house belonging to a man who hated Jews. If a Jew with a kippah walked past his house when he was outside, this man would shoot a cold, hateful glare at the Jew.
And of course, no Jews living on that street would invite this antisemite into their homes.
Well, the New York Times is that antisemite, always with the hateful glare. Haven’t we let this obsessively anti-Israel newspaper beat us up long enough? Do we have to invite the antisemitic New York Times into our Israeli home?
Let us at last ban their reporters and stop the New York Times from working in Israel and profiting from it.
Let us at last ban the New York Times because of their 100 years of publishing half-truths, lies and antisemetic news stories about Jews and Israel.
Finally, let us at last ban the New York Times because we are free Jews who have paid for Israel with our blood.
And just as we are not defenseless against the Moslem world, the deceitful Europeans and racist western universities, so Israel must defend itself by banning the reporters of the Jew-hating New York Times.