Question. Will The New York Times Apply New Op-ed Standards to Israel? - by Mitchell Bard

I wonder if the Times’ newfound interest in standards and facts will apply to future submissions related to Jews and Israel?

Mitchell Bard..
Algemeiner..
17 June '20..

An internal revolt at The New York Times over the publication of an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK) calling for unleashing the US military on the American people to quell unrest led to the resignation of editor James Bennet. After initially defending the op-ed, the paper disowned it, criticizing the “incendiary” headline, and saying the article “did not meet our standards,” while promising to improve their review of such pieces.

Many of us have long wondered what, if any, standards the op-ed page applies, given the Times’ willingness to publish pieces on Israel by murderers, serial liars, and antisemites, which clearly were not fact-checked; yet none of them prompted the resignation of the page’s editor. Here are just a few examples:

Where were the fact checkers when Yasser Arafat offered “The Palestinian Vision of Peace” in 2002, in which the instigator of the Second Intifada said he condemned terror attacks on Israeli civilians, and that the terrorists didn’t represent the Palestinian people? Did they remember that in 1996, long after signing the Oslo Accords, Arafat called for a jihad against Israel (reported by the Times). Just two years after rejecting a Palestinian state in 97% of the West Bank and all of Gaza, he contradicted President Clinton by claiming, “Palestinians are ready to end the conflict.”

In 2006, Ahmed Yousef of Hamas merited space (“Pause for Peace”) to explain the desire for a truce (“hudna”) with Israel. He said the concept “obliges the parties to use the period to seek a permanent, nonviolent resolution to their differences.” But the ceasefire was designed to give the terrorists a respite from Israeli operations to rebuild their strength in order to implement the Hamas charter’s objective of engaging in a jihad to destroy Israel. Rather than identify him as a member of a terrorist organization, or even of Hamas, Yousef was described as “a senior adviser to the Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniya.”

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Mitchell Bard is a foreign policy analyst and authority on US-Israel relations.

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