How One Sentence From a NY Times Letter About Birthright Israel Packs In Three Inaccuracies - by Ira Stoll

A Times defender might take the position that it is Asaf, rather than the Times itself, that is to blame for the inaccuracy. But surely the Times has at least some responsibility for the letters it chooses to publish. It receives many more letters than it prints, and it easily could have chosen not to publish this particular letter, or at least to edit it so that it is accurate. If the Times isn’t going to police the letters column at all, there’ll be no end to people sneaking false claims into the newspaper by that method — as seems to have happened here.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner..
18 June '19..

A front-page New York Times article earlier this month about Birthright Israel problematically echoed the “Zionism is racism” myth. Now the Times has compounded the error by publishing a letter to the editor that includes a false claim about the program.

The Times-published letter to the editor claims, inaccurately, “Birthright is funded mainly by Donald Trump’s biggest donor, Sheldon Adelson.”

Leave it to The New York Times to manage the extraordinary feat of packing three inaccuracies into a single 11-word sentence, but there it is.

First, the reference to “Sheldon Adelson” omits Dr. Miriam Adelson, Sheldon’s spouse and his partner in philanthropy. Ignoring a woman is often correctly defined as sexism. When The Algemeiner reported last year that Sheldon and Miriam Adelson had announced a $70 million gift to Birthright in honor of Israel’s 70th birthday, bringing their total contributions to Birthright to $410 million, we correctly identified both of them as the donors.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.