OPINION:
The New York Times in a straight news piece from a correspondent in Jerusalem reported that Israelis are “deeply divided” about the various failures, both real and perceived, that led to the horrific Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023. The journalist, Isabel Kershner, then wrote: “But Israelis still largely view themselves as the victims of Oct. 7.”
Umm. That’s ‘cause they were. Did The Times not get that memo?
If the point of the report was to look at the military and intelligence and political factors that fed into that fateful day, and give a modern-day look at how the Jewish people now view the actions of their government and leaders — well, job not well done. Now all anyone can see is antisemitism.
And for The Times, this is an especially bad look. The paper’s got a long and troubling history of tilting toward the antisemitic.
In 2019, it was a cartoon on the editorial pages of a blind President Trump following the leashed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had the face of a dog — oh, and on the collar dangled a blue Star of David.
After the 2023 terror attacks, it was the paper’s coverage of the counter-attack Israel launched against Hamas in Gaza — ongoing coverage that progressively moved into pro-Palestinian, sympathy-for-the-Palestinian-people, territory, until it almost struck and anti-Jewish, anti-Israel tone.
As JNS.org wrote in May: “Dr. Shiloh Lieberman, a dentist, traveled six hours from Schenectady, in upstate New York, to attend a rally outside the Times Square headquarters of the New York Times. … He was one of about 300 people who came at rush hour … to protest a May 11 Nicholas Kristof column accusing Israel of sexually abusing Palestinian inmates, including training dogs to rape them. Dog experts have said such a thing is impossible. … The Times published the article by its longtime columnist on the eve of an extensive report, published by an Israeli civil commission, documenting Hamas’s rape of Israelis during the Oct. 7 attacks.”
Shame, for shame.
Trying to draw moral equivalencies between Hamas terrorists and the IDF and Israeli people is an outrage in itself. Hamas — and the Palestinians in Gaza who voted for Hamas and both pre- and post-Oct. 7, stood by and even cheered Hamas — is the aggressor. The Israeli people are the victims.
But then trying to depict the IDF as savagely brutal and disgusting as the Hamas terrorists — who raped, bludgeoned, cut off body parts, tortured, abducted and worse to men, women, children and babies — well, that’s an outright fabrication. And coming as it did at the time of a report showing the savagery of Hamas, it’s an outright fabrication that’s also politically charged and strategically dispatched. It was aimed at soothing fiery feelings against Hamas and their supporters and simultaneously setting in doubt global sympathies for the Jewish people.
‘Lest we forget, though: World War II. The Holocaust. And the whitewashing of Nazis’ atrocities against the Jewish people.
“Although the Times published nearly 1200 stories on the Holocaust during WWII, only 26 of 24,000 front page stories dealt with the Holocaust, and many of those failed to report the targeting of Jews by the Nazi regime,” TeachingAmericanHistory.org wrote.
The failure of The Times to properly point out the evils of the Nazis against Jews rose to such a level that books have since been written about the bias — books with titles such as “Buried By The Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper,” written by Laurel Leff.
Then-Times CEO Arthur Sulzberger, himself a Jew, no doubt impacted the news coverage by insisting that Judaism is a religion, not a race, and certainly not bound into a nation. But that’s no excuse for this: “How the NYT Missed the Story of the Holocaust While It Was Happening,” a headline from History News Network on the paper’s abject failures. Or this: “Why didn’t ‘The New York Times’ report on the Holocaust?” — a headline from The Jerusalem Post. Or this, from The Times of Israel, another headline: “The New York Times Downplayed The Holocaust.”
The Times in 2001 published an article called “150th Anniversary: 1851-2001; Turning Away From the Holocaust,” that read, in part: “And then there was failure: none greater than the staggering, staining failure of The New York Times to depict Hitler’s methodical extermination of the Jews of Europe as a horror beyond all other horror in World War II — a Nazi war within the war crying out for illumination.”
But that’s not an apology.
That’s nowhere near a mea culpa.
Fast-forward to today’s news. Fast-forward to this week’s New York Times report on how “Israelis still largely view themselves as victims of Oct. 7.”
Don’t expect an apology for that tragic tip of antisemitism, either.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.
Follow the author
Please read our comment policy before commenting.