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.

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.  

New York Times Social Media Post: Israeli Soldier Killed by “Rock” - by Emanuel Miller

One headline, one lead paragraph, one social media post has limited impact, but enough of them in a row begin to form the public understanding of the situation as a whole. In this case the message many readers will receive is that Israel is a violent actor, and when Israeli soldiers die it is because of magical rocks that were thrown by… nobody.

Emanuel Miller..
Honest Reporting..
12 May '20..

Mere days after the New York Times published a piece about life-saving efforts in the fight against COVID-19 by Israeli army experts which opened by saying that “The Israeli Defense Ministry’s research-and-development arm is best known for pioneering cutting-edge ways to kill people and blow things up,” the Times has botched another lead and social media post.

Despite coming under intense scrutiny, the journalist in question, David Halbfinger, described the killing of an Israeli soldier this morning as follows:

“A 21-year-old Israeli soldier was killed early Tuesday when he was struck in the head by a heavy rock as his unit was completing a nighttime arrest mission in a Palestinian village near Jenin, in the northern West Bank, the army said.”

The sentence was copied in full by The Times’ social media staff, who used it as the text to accompany social media posts on Twitter and Facebook, further amplifying the effect.

Pray tell, @NYTimes, how was this soldier "struck in the head by a heavy rock?"

Should readers not be told how it was that the rock was flying through the air? Why the passive voice? pic.twitter.com/JPxiuPUeD9

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 12, 2020

Journalists have a responsibility to accurately, fairly report events. Reporters have a duty to share all the facts. Rocks don’t hit people by themselves, just as car don’t drive into people of their own volition.

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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.  

“Disneyfication”? NY Times’ Jerusalem Cable Car and the Architecture of Bias - by Simon Plosker

Ultimately, this story is typical of the New York Times: what is at its core a scheme to improve access to historical tourism sites in a city with significant transport challenges is instead critiqued not on grounds of architecture, design or effectiveness but on political grounds. The cable car may not be to everyone’s taste and is certainly contentious but the New York Times and Michael Kimmelman have created a framework where Israel’s plans are sinister and malevolent; designed specifically to maintain an “occupation” of its own capital city and to promote the Judaization of Jerusalem.

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
15 September '19..

The New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman accuses Israel of carrying out the “Disneyfication” of Jerusalem in reference to a planned cable car network connecting the Old City. The article, however, is less “Disneyfication” and more politicization on the part of the writer.

The scene is set in the opening paragraph:

The skyline is still dominated by the city’s great Muslim and Christian shrines: the gold, glistening Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where Jesus was said to have been buried.

For it is these sites that Kimmelman evidently sees as the legitimate religious identity of Jerusalem at the expense of its Jewish sites. Kimmelman is clearly an architect rather than an historian for in his second paragraph, he inaccurately describes the Western Wall as “the holiest site in the Jewish world.”

In fact, while the Western Wall is the holiest site that Jews are allowed to pray, the Temple Mount, the site of two ancient Jewish temples is, in fact, Judaism’s holiest site. The New York Times itself has previously corrected this error, prompted by HonestReporting.

Kimmelman is perfectly entitled to critique the Israeli cable car plan on the grounds of architecture and design. Indeed, one of the critics he interviews is Moshe Safdie, the architect responsible for many Israeli building projects including within Jerusalem. But Kimmelman goes further:

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The critics who deny Jerusalem’s past and its future - by Jonathan S. Tobin

A plan for cable cars to take worshippers to the Old City is debatable, but calling it a nefarious Israeli plan to ‘Judaize’ the capital reveals the motivations of some critics.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
13 September '19..

Its critics have accused Israel of a lot of terrible things over the course of its 71 years of existence, but The New York Times has now added one more to the list that will particularly resonate with intellectuals. While Israeli policies in Jerusalem since its reunification in 1967 have often been blasted, a recently approved proposal to deal with the city’s seemingly insoluble traffic problems is being put down as “Disneyfication.”

The accusation that Jews are trashing the holy city and turning it into a theme park was the focus of a feature published this week by the Times. The cable-car scheme is fair game for criticism from architects and others who worry about the potential aesthetic damage to the ancient capital. But the subtext of the campaign against the initiative goes far deeper than whether or not it will make Jerusalem look like a Swiss ski resort or even Disneyworld. For Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman and many of the Israel-bashers he quotes in his piece, the real story is about how Israel is seeking to emphasize Jerusalem’s Jewish history.

The object of their scorn is a cable car that will start its journey at the First Station cultural complex in western Jerusalem and then travel over the Hinnom Valley to a stop at Mount Zion before landing in the City of David archeological park in eastern Jerusalem. There, visitors and worshippers will be able to tour the historic excavations at the site and walk to the Western Wall via recently excavated underground passageways that were taken by pilgrims on their way to the Second Temple 2,000 years ago. If planners have their way, this line will be the first of many that will crisscross the city in the future, delivering people to destinations that would otherwise require them to navigate jammed streets.

The project is a solution to a problem that is readily apparent to anyone who visits Jerusalem—and other ancient cities, for that matter, that were not built for modern-day concerns.

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Truth be told, who denied the Palestinians an independent state? Not Israel - by Jonathan S. Tobin

Why does “The New York Times” continue to deny historical truth in its latest lament about the plight of the Palestinians?

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
22 April '19..

According to The New York Times, the re-election of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has left Palestinian families seeing “no light at the end of the tunnel.”

A feature published on the front page of Monday’s Times focuses on the despair felt by Palestinian families about the current stalemate in the peace process. They know that the Palestinian Authority that rules over their cities, towns and villages is horribly corrupt and unable to conclude a peace deal with Israel. And they understand that Israelis have no more faith in the prospects of peace than they do.

The piece shows that some Palestinians are rethinking the ideology that has fueled a century-long war on Zionism. But they also don’t mention a basic fact that defines the current situation: The Palestinian leadership has repeatedly rejected compromises that would have given them the statehood they claim to want. It’s interesting that nowhere in the 1,000-word article does the Times take notice of this fact.

This omission speaks volumes not only about the ignorance and obtuse nature of the criticism of Israel that emanates from the paper, but also about the chattering classes and foreign-policy establishment that take their cues about the Middle East from its pages.

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Surprise! NY Times Claims Osama Bin Laden Motivated by ‘News Coverage of Displaced Palestinians’ - by Ira Stoll

...Unless the Times itself has independent confirmation or reason to believe this tale about Bin Laden’s tears for the Palestinians, or is willing to fill Times readers in with more detail about the source, it is strange for the newspaper to shift its narrative so dramatically about the “animating cause” of the group behind the deadly attacks on America in 2001.

Ira Stoll..
Algeminer..
17 February '19..

The New York Times is suddenly and retroactively blaming Israel for motivating the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, without much evidence to support the claim.

A recent Times news article about deadly attacks in Africa by affiliates of the terrorist group Al Qaeda blames them on President Trump’s decision to obey an American law that required him to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

The Times reports, “The attacks came fully seven months after President Trump moved the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the disputed holy city, which Mr. Trump recognized as the country’s capital. Widely seen as inflaming tensions and as a demonstration of the administration’s favoritism toward Israel in its long conflict with the Palestinians, the move drew condemnation at the time from many corners, including Al Qaeda and other extremist militant organizations.”

The Times mentions that the Jerusalem embassy move “drew condemnation … from many corners” but fails to mention that it also drew praise from many corners, including from the elected government of Israel and many American Jews and Christian Zionists.

But that’s just a mild precursor compared to the Times September 11 revisionism, which comes in a paragraph of the article that immediately follows the description of Jerusalem. The Times reports, “The suffering of the Palestinians has long been an animating cause for Al Qaeda, a stand-in for the victimization of Muslims at the hands of Western powers. Biographies of Osama bin Laden say that as an adolescent, he cried watching news coverage of displaced Palestinians who had been forced off their land.”

These are new claims by the Times, which has previously had rejected them.

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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. 

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Who Would've Thought? New Times Columnist Cheers for Boycotting Israel - by Ira Stoll

...Maybe — hopefully — one of The New York Times‘ Zionist voices such as Bret Stephens, Bari Weiss or Matti Friedman will rise to the occasion with a powerful rebuttal of Alexander, the way Stephens did recently when another Times op-ed columnist, Michelle Goldberg, defended anti-Zionism. But there’s something vile about the notion that something as blatantly bigoted as a boycott of Jewish banks — by a Christian church, no less! — is something to be politely debated, with voices on each side, on the Times op-ed page, as if it were immigration policy or the optimal marginal tax rate. That advocacy for such a boycott is inside the bounds of acceptable discourse is precisely Alexander’s point, and one the Times implicitly endorses with its decision to publish her column.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner..
20 January '19..

“Time to break the silence on Palestine,” is the headline over New York Times opinion columnist Michelle Alexander’s article, and a pretty good indication of where it’s going, because there’s no “silence” to break on the issue, and because “Palestine” isn’t a country and never has been.

Alexander uses the approaching Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday to accuse Israel of having “adopted some practices reminiscent of apartheid in South Africa and Jim Crow segregation in the United States.”

Alexander’s analysis is so far off the deep end that it almost doesn’t merit a response.

She refers to “[o]ur elected representatives, who operate in a political environment where Israel’s political lobby holds well-documented power,” hyperlinking to The Washington Post home page rather than to any actual documentation of such power. Is her innuendo that Israel controls The Washington Post? Never mind that the lobby isn’t “Israel’s” but America’s, consisting of American Jews and Christians who support Israel for many excellent reasons.

Alexander trades in double negatives: “This is not to say that anti-Semitism is not real.” She can’t quite bring herself to say that antisemitism is real.

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NY Times Retreats From Gaza Medic War Crime Investigation - by Ira Stoll

...Publishing one front-page news article pushing the “far stronger party” story line and then a weeks-later corrective op-ed acknowledging “that’s not the way Israelis see it” and that in fact was a “misunderstanding” and an “illusion” may be a smart short-term business strategy for the Times. It gets the Israel-haters to click on the story accusing “far stronger” Israel of “possibly a war crime,” and it gets the Israel-lovers to click on the story about how the first story was wrong. From a longer-term perspective, though, this approach has its risks.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner..
18 January '19..

Two and a half weeks after a front-page Sunday investigative project in which ten New York Times journalists accused Israel of “possibly a war crime,” the Times is backing away from it by endorsing the Algemeiner’s criticism of the article.

The Times investigative project jumped to three full inside broadsheet pages of the December 30, 2018 New York Times.

One of my many criticisms of the piece for the Algemeiner was this: “The Times, for example, describes Israel as ‘the far stronger party’ relative to the Palestinians. But there are somewhere between 1.5 billion and 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, and around 14 million Jews. There are about 50 Muslim-majority countries, and one small Jewish state. The Muslims also have a lot of the oil. It may be convenient for the Times to stir sympathy for the Palestinians by depicting them as the underdogs, but it’s not as clear-cut a factual matter as the Times describes it.”

I wrote that for the Algemeiner on December 30, the same day the Times article appeared.

Now, on January 17, the Times has waddled in, belatedly, with its own story acknowledging precisely this point. Times “contributing opinion writer” Matti Friedman writes for the Times op-ed page:

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From the 'newspaper' that incessantly blames Israel for the crime of responding to Palestinian attacks - by Jerold Auerbach

...If that accident of fate was a “war crime,” what language aptly describes the Times evasion of the intentional murder of six million Jews because it did not want to be seen as a “Jewish” newspaper?

Jerold Auerbach..
Algemeiner..
31 December '18..

Imagine appropriate news coverage of the horrific Nazi slaughter of six million Jews. Then imagine coverage, by the same newspaper, of the accidental killing — six months earlier — of a 20-year-old Gaza nurse by a ricocheting bullet fired by an Israeli soldier. The Holocaust story, in the memorable title of Laurel Leff’s scathing book, was “Buried by the Times.”

The Gaza story, accompanied by two photos, appeared on the Times front page (December 30). It covered more than half the page. Credit was given to five reporters, with authorship by New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief David Halbfinger. But that was only the beginning. Coverage spread across three full inside pages, half of them devoted to the Times‘ reconstruction of the death of Rouzan al-Najjar. To show how she was killed, the Times proudly claimed to have analyzed “over 1,000 photos and videos,” while capturing “the fatal moment in a 3-D model” and interviewing “more than 30 witnesses and commanders.”

What actually happened? According to the Times account, which there is no reason to doubt given the range and depth of its research, Ms. Najjar became “fearless and outspoken” and determined to become a nurse after witnessing the death of her pregnant aunt, intentionally pushed down the stairs of their Gaza home by her grandmother.

Ms. Najjar “saw her role as part of the Palestinian struggle … never refusing an interview request” to plead her righteous case, as she explained back in May when the Times first noted her admirable ambition. She proudly proclaimed: “I’m an army to myself, and the sword to my army,” writing on Facebook that “her bloodstained uniform carried the ‘sweetest perfume.’” The Times recounts how “young men and their parents paraded through the Najjars’ home seeking betrothal to the now famous Rouzan.” But she rejected their entreaties because “she had her own goals in mind.”

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Ten NYT Journalists, Thousands of Words to Accuse Israel of ‘Possibly a War Crime’, a Demonstration of the Times at Its Worst - by Ira Stoll

...If one were to take a Timesian approach, one would write it with a question headline: “Times Pays More Attention To a Palestinian Death Than to an Israeli American One. Was It an Accident?” And then one would weasel around the issue: “the Times journalism appears to have been careless at best, and possibly a blood libel.” But I’ll reject that approach and be more direct and forthright. The New York Times “investigation,” for all its dignified trappings, is just the same old Israel-bashing you can get for free on any extreme right or extreme left Internet site or social media feed. Save yourself the time and the money and the heartburn and skip it.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner..
30 December '18..

The New York Times devoted a lot of resources to its investigative project about the death of a 20-year-old Gaza medic named Rouzan al-Najjar. The article runs at the top of the front page of the Sunday newspaper and then consumes an additional three full broadsheet pages inside. It carries the front-page bylines of five Times reporters (at least one a veteran of Al Jazeera) and also credits inside an additional five named Times journalists and a photographer.

Alas, however, rather than being a Times tour de force, a display of the newspaper at its best, the article ends up as a flop, a demonstration of the Times at its worst. The Times may use thousands of words, millions of dollars worth of highly paid journalists, and elaborate computer graphics to convey its message. But strip away the attempt at a dignified presentation, and the message is effectively the same as a sign scrawled by some ignorant far-left or far-right Israel-hater at some extremist Christmas-season rally — Jews, this libel goes, are guilty, blood-drenched killers.

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NY Times obscures another story about Gaza violence

...Specia’s preface, “Here are some key things to know about the conflict” might more aptly be rephrased, “Here are the points the New York Times wants to emphasize regarding the conflict.”

CAMERA..
14 November '18..

Just a day after a New York Times report obscured key details about Hamas rocket attacks — that they are fired by a terror organization, intentionally target civilian centers, and amount to war crimes — the newspaper published another piece that concealed Hamas responsibility, this time for the situation in the Gaza Strip which it rules.

In today’s story, reporter Megan Specia purports to educate readers on “what to know about Gaza’s latest flare-up” (“Gaza’s Latest Flare-Up: The Implications and the Prospects for Peace,” p. A8, Nov. 14, 2018; Online: “What to Know About Gaza’s Latest Flare-Up,” Nov. 13, 2018).

Specia’s preface, “Here are some key things to know about the conflict” might more aptly be rephrased, “Here are the points the New York Times wants to emphasize regarding the conflict.”

The first question asked is “why did tensions rise?”

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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. 

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Anyone surprised that NY Times creates a false equivalence between Hamas and Israeli rockets?

Why does the New York Times pretend Israeli civilians are "caught up in the fighting" between Hamas and Israel instead of acknowledging that Hamas targets Israeli civilians? Perhaps because that gets in the way of the newspaper's preferred "both sides" narrative.

CAMERA..
13 November '18..

The New York Times often downplays Palestinian extremism or violence if the emphasis can’t be placed on Israel, Israeli counterattacks, or Israeli blame for ongoing violence. A case in point is the attention given to the escalating violence from the Gaza Strip.

From start to finish, today’s Times article about fighting between Hamas and Israel downplays the extent of Hamas violence while suggesting Israel is responsible for the group’s rocket attacks. Meanwhile, Israeli retaliatory strikes on Hamas targets are portrayed as being no different than the Hamas’s indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians — largely because the article fails to mention even once that Hamas is a terror group, that it is sworn to Israel’s destruction, or that the rockets it fires are indiscriminately lobbed toward Israeli civilians in their towns and cities in violation of international law.

The piece’s opening paragraphs set the tone, with the reporter suggesting Israeli responsibility by insinuating Israel’s prime minister is failing to prevent pointless shooting:

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NY Times Travel Section Writes Jerusalem Out of Israel - by Ira Stoll

For a newspaper that has a whole marketing campaign about how “the truth can’t be glossed over,” “the truth has no agenda,” “the truth pulls no punches,” and “the truth requires taking a stand,” trying to pretend that Jerusalem isn’t the capital of Israel is an odd exercise in spineless self-deception.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner..
13 November '18..

Sunday’s New York Times travel section features an article suggesting “Five Places To Go In Jerusalem.” But readers curious about which country Jerusalem is in get no help from the Times: the article, strangely, doesn’t mention the word “Israel.”

Refusing to acknowledge the reality that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel is a departure from the way the Times treats other countries. The same Times Sunday travel section, for example, also includes an article about Oslo. A Times headline refers to it as “the Norwegian capital,” and the article describes it as “this compact Norwegian city. … Norway’s forward-thinking capital.” Earlier pieces in the Times‘ “Five Places To Go” series included articles about cities that the Times identified as “Düsseldorf, Germany,” and “San José, Costa Rica.”

If you are tempted to give the Times a pass on this on the basis that Jerusalem is so well known as Israel’s capital that it goes without saying, think again.

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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. 

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NY Times Straddles Question of Hamas Control of Gaza ‘Protests’ - by Ira Stoll

...I’ve had my complaints with Kershner in the past, and I still wish she’d call Hamas a terrorist group rather than “militant.” But in this case, she deserves credit for plainly saying what readers of the Times op-ed might otherwise not know, which is that the protests are a Hamas production.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner..
14 October '18..

Differences between left-of-center news coverage in the Wall Street Journal and that newspaper’s more conservative opinion page used to generate jokes about “two newspapers for the price of one.”

Now the New York Times seems as if it’s trying to copycat the Journal’s approach with its own straddle, at least when it comes to the crucial question of whether Hamas, the terrorist group that controls Gaza, is behind the protests there.

Recent New York Times news coverage of the Gaza violence highlights the Hamas role. But an op-ed the newspaper published had minimized it.

A news article by Isabel Kershner in Saturday’s Times reported

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NY Times Now Finds Ari Fuld’s Death Not Fit for Website Either - by Ira Stoll

...It’s not too late for the Times to publish a follow-up article of its own — ideally, one that might remain in the historical record permanently rather than being erased automatically after a couple of weeks. Fuld will be remembered regardless of what the Times does. But what the Times does will be remembered too.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner.
03 October '18..

Not only did The New York Times find the murder of Ari Fuld, an Israeli-American who was fatally stabbed last month by a Palestinian Arab, not fit to print, but now the newspaper has taken the additional step of purging from its online archives the wire service accounts of his death.

In an article for The Algemeiner last month, I wrote that a search for “Ari Fuld” on the Times website turned up “a wire-service report by Reuters and another by the Associated Press. But there’s no staff-written report by the Times. The wire service reports did not make it into Monday or Tuesday’s print version.”

Now even those two wire-service reports have been erased from the Times website. Clicking on the links that once brought them up now generates the message, “Page No Longer Available. This news-agency article is no longer available on nytimes.com.”

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NY Times Goes Full-Fledged Frothing Freakout Frenzy Mode Over Israel’s ‘Incendiary’ Nation-State Law - by Ira Stoll

...The Times online can’t be bothered to include a hyperlink to the actual text of the Nation-State law, or even a sidebar with the brief full text of it, perhaps because if it did readers who think independently might be able to read it for themselves and conclude it is basically a statement of the obvious, not worth getting worked up about.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner.com..
22 July '18..

Of the many virtues of the Israeli parliament passing a law declaring Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, not least is the entertainment value of observing the New York Times in what I call full-fledged frothing freakout frenzy mode.

Actually, the front-page, above-the-fold, two-bylines plus a photograph treatment that the Times gave the story has not only entertainment value, but educational value. It’s an opportunity to observe the Times putting all of its worst biased techniques on display to attack Israel. Among those techniques:

1. Adjectives and adverbs. The law’s passage itself is described by the Times as “incendiary,” as if it is the equivalent of the arson kites Hamas is sending over the Gaza border fence. A clause in a draft version in the law is described by the Times not merely as “divisive” but as “highly divisive.” The Times instinct for the superlative is almost Trump-like; the law’s passage is said by the Times to demonstrate “the ascendancy of ultranationalists in Israel’s government.” What is the difference between an “ultranationalist” and a mere nationalist, the Times doesn’t explain.

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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. 

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Surprise? NY Times Chief Dance Critic Joins BDS Protesters Denouncing Israeli Performers - by Ira Stoll

... it’s emblematic of how the Times likes its Jews. Nostalgia-drenched representatives of now-vanished worlds are acceptable in retrospect — or at least preferable, from the Times point of view, to living, breathing, dancing modern Israelis.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner..
12 July '18..

Sometimes the clearest examples of the anti-Israel tilt of The New York Times comes not in the news columns but in the arts section.

The latest example is a review by the chief Times dance critic, Alastair Macaulay, of a performance in New York. The review begins:

Human rights protesters were demonstrating outside the Joyce Theater on Tuesday night. The company appearing was from Israel — Batsheva’s junior troupe, the Young Ensemble. The topics of protest were Israel’s repression of the Palestinian people and Batsheva’s role, as an Israeli cultural ambassador, as a front for that repression.

The Times somehow accepts the idea that these were “human rights protesters” rather than “anti-Israel protesters.” It takes at face value the claim that “[t]he topics of protest were Israel’s repression of the Palestinian people and Batsheva’s role, as an Israeli cultural ambassador, as a front for that repression,” rather than attributing the claims to the protesters.

An alternative approach might have been something more like, “The protesters claimed to be protesting what they said was Israel’s repression of the Palestinian people, but Israel’s defenders say the protesters actually oppose Israel’s mere existence, and are protesting the dancers simply because many of the dancers were born in Israel.” The Times doesn’t report how many protesters there were — which it usually does in these situations (The Jerusalem Post numbered them at 50). And it doesn’t explain why the protest deserved mention in the first paragraph of the review rather than being ignored or tucked away at the end.

A letter from the protest organizers suggests indeed that it is Israel’s very existence and founding that is their core grievance:

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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. 

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Fiction vs. Reality: The true story behind the Jahalin Bedouin in Khan al Ahmar - by Naomi Kahn

The community’s traditional culture and clan-based lifestyle will be fully protected and insulated from outside influences in a location only four miles away that provides electricity, running water, a government-built and many other basic modern “conveniences” that the Jahalin have never had—conveniences the Palestinian Authority has never made any attempt to provide.

Naomi Kahn..
JNS.org..
05 July '18..

David Halbfinger’s recent article, “As Israel Pushes to Build, Bedouin Homes and School Face Demolition” (The New York Times, June 24, 2018, co-authored by Rami Nazzal) begins with a statement that sets the tone for what is to follow: “The herders are being herded.”

The implication, of course, is that Israel is treating the innocent, unfortunate Jahalin Bedouin of Khan al Ahmar like animals, but the facts of the case indicate precisely the opposite: I’m sure there are many hard-working, tax-paying citizens of Israel (and other countries all over the world) who would love to be “herded” into an all-expenses-paid, fully developed plot of land and paid tens of thousands of dollars by the state to move in. In fact, several years ago, another branch of the Jahalin clan agreed to precisely this treatment and voluntarily relocated; the families that remained in Khan al Ahmar agreed to move as well, but were bullied or patronized by their “representatives” into retracting their consent and have been dragged through Israel’s courts ever since.

The history of the illegal outpost at Khan al Ahmar includes some very interesting facts that Mr. Halbfinger neglected to mention: The Jahalin Bedouin are an offshoot of a larger tribe based in southern Israel, in the Arad region. After a blood feud broke out within the tribe, some of the families were forced out and migrated north through the Judean desert, arriving and settling in their present location after the 1973 Yom Kippur War (see aerial photographs of the area here). From day one, they knew that this would not be a permanent solution for their needs. The highway and growing communities around them were already facts of life; the Jahalin knew they would have to relocate.

Despite the claims that Mr. Halbfinger makes in his article, some 80 percent of the residents of Khan al Ahmar are employed in Ma’ale Adumim, Kfar Adumim and other Israeli communities in the area—and have been for many years. Shepherding is a hobby for most, a means of supplementing income and maintaining their connection to Bedouin folklore. The Bedouin of Khan al Ahmar, like Bedouin tribes throughout the Middle East, abandoned their nomadic existence generations ago; the structures (as opposed to tents) at Khan al Ahmar are a very good indication of this trend.

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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. 

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The soccer players are probably safer in Israel. Not that the Times mentions any of that context. - by Ira Stoll

The Times goes on, and quotes people going on, about the potential “security issues,” and “fear” by the Argentine soccer players that “their lives were at risk.” It doesn’t remark on the irony of Argentinians feeling at risk in Israel.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner.com..
08 June '18..

Here’s a case of flawed reporting on the Israeli-Arab conflict from, of all cases, the sports section of the New York Times.

“Argentina-Israel Soccer Game Canceled Over Playing In Jerusalem,” is the headline over the dispatch from Buenos Aires by Daniel Politi.

It reports, in part, “President Trump this spring moved the United States Embassy there from Tel Aviv and recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, angering Palestinians who hope to see the eastern part of the city become the capital of a future Palestinian state.”

My print edition of the Times illustrated the article with a Getty Images photograph of a sign in Hebron. The sign included a picture of the star Argentine soccer player Lionel Messi with the words, “Warning. You are about to enter an occupied land! Stand up for human rights! Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine.”

The sign in the photo doesn’t say “eastern Jerusalem.” It just says “Jerusalem,” suggesting that to the degree Palestinians are indeed “angry” about this, it isn’t merely because of their own hopes for the eastern part of the city, but because they want to deny Israel sovereignty over any of the city.

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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. 

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Anyone Surprised? NY Times Greets Israel’s 70th With Piece Claiming 1948 Was ‘Catastrophe’ - by Ira Stoll

...anyone waiting for the Times to correct or even to independently evaluate and assess the inaccurate claim about 1948 and Haifa will have a long wait ahead. If there is a “catastrophe” here, it has to do with the damage done to whatever remains of the Times‘ reputation for accuracy.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner.com..
18 April '18..

The New York Times is marking Israel’s 70th birthday with an op-ed piece describing the Jewish state’s creation as a “catastrophe.”

The article also offers a historically false account of events in Haifa in 1948.

The Times article, by Ayman Odeh, who leads the vestiges of Israel’s Communist Party, begins:

HAIFA, Israel — Seventy years ago, the world changed around my family. The establishment of the state of Israel represented self-determination for Jews, but a catastrophe — “nakba” in Arabic — for Palestinians. In the area around the Mediterranean city of Haifa, where my family has lived for six generations, only 2,000 Palestinians of a population of 70,000 remained. My grandparents, A’bdel-Hai and A’dla, were among them. Their neighbors were expelled and dispossessed, and never allowed to return.

Luckily, the case of Haifa just so happens to have been the topic of extensive research by the eminent historian Efraim Karsh, who published his findings in 2000 in an authoritative and meticulously documented article in Commentary headlined, “Were The Palestinians Expelled?”

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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. 

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