The New York Times Support for Israel Never Ends

The New York Times’ one-sided support for Israel began with Israeli independence in 1948.  Last week’s front-page piece on Israel and New York mayor Zohran Mamdani indicates it will continue to do so.  The article, titled “Israeli Government Accuses Mamdani of Antisemitism Over Canceled Orders,” hardly belonged on the front page. Israel’s condemnation of Mamdani has been consistent, particularly after he became the favorite in New York City’s mayoral election.  The Times has been unfairly critical of Mamdani from the start, and it is only beginning to acknowledge that he has ideas and plans that would benefit the city.

Giving ammunition to Israel and the Times was Mamdani’s reversal, on his first day in office, of his predecessor’s action to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s definition of antisemitism, which threatened to impinge on Americans’ freedom of speech.  Mamdani made it clear in the campaign that he would move in this direction, which was opposed by the editorial staff of the Times.  Several days after the front-page article, the Times followed up with a long piece that favored Israel and criticized Mamdani once again.

The Times lost all credibility on Israeli-Palestinian issues years ago, but its double standard has worsened during Prime Minister Netanyahu’s genocidal war against the  Palestinians.  Making matters worse is the fact that the Times’ foreign policy views are followed by most of the mainstream media.  The media rely on the Times since few American newspapers have their own foreign bureaus.  The Times’ many Jewish American editorial and oped writers, led by Bret Stephens, a former editor for the Jerusalem Post, have echoed Israeli positions over the years.

When Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Krugman left the Times, he cited the efforts of senior editors to soften his prose regarding Israel, particularly censuring the word “genocide” in describing Israeli actions.  A senior reporter, Chris Hedges, left the Times years ago because of its one-sided coverage in support of Israel.  Indeed, the masthead “All the News that’s Fit to Print” should be edited to read “as well as some news that isn’t.”

In addition to the Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of the Gaza War has demonstrated a consistent bias against Palestinians, shaping American views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and making it extremely difficult to have a genuine debate on key security issues.  Israeli propagandists have been hugely successful in equating virtually any criticism of Israel with antisemitism. I have encountered this problem regularly in my classrooms at Johns Hopkins University.

Emotional language is used in the press regularly when describing the deaths of Israelis, but not with regard to Palestinians.  During the war, Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer, both Jewish, teared up regularly while interviewing Israelis; Palestinians were rarely interviewed, and there was seldom sympathy shown, let alone tears.

Throughout the media, emotional terms were used to describe the killings of Israelis (“slaughter,” “massacre,” and “horrific”) but never to describe Palestinian losses.  This was true even though Palestinian civilian losses were fifty times the losses of Israelis.  The Gaza War became a graveyard for children, but you wouldn’t know that from reading the American press or watching American television.

On January 9, the Times published a five-page article (“Unrelenting Violence in Push by Israel for Control of West Bank) that finally acknowledged the brutal criminal actions of Israeli settlers and the Israeli Defense Forces to drive Palestinians out of their homes and the West Bank itself.  These criminal acts have taken place since the Israelis occupied the West Bank in the Six-Day War six decades ago.  Meanwhile, the Times has not acknowledged the Israeli murder of what the IDF described as “two suspects” who were collecting firewood to heat their tent in Gaza.  The “suspects” were age 10 and age 8!

When I was in Israel in the late 1970s, I had my own experience dealing with Israel’s policy of apartheid against its Palestinian population.  I witnessed a terrible incident of racism at a border point on the West Bank, and reported it to the Israeli government.  Since I was in Israel to take part in an intelligence exchange with Mossad, Israeli officials were extremely upset that a CIA intelligence officer would get involved in a sensitive domestic matter, let only a Jewish American intelligence officer.  The Israelis reported this incident to the CIA, but I suffered no backlash.

In the 1980s, a pro-Israeli student at Johns Hopkins reported my remarks on Israeli-Palestinian issues to the leader of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), a retired general, who informed the commandant of the National War College (Major General Gerald Stadler), where I was also teaching.  In this case, the commandant summoned me to his offices where he lectured me on what could and could not be said on Middle Eastern politics.  Needless to say, he was unsuccessful.

The post The New York Times Support for Israel Never Ends appeared first on CounterPunch.org.