NY Times, Corona and the IDF’s ‘Cutting-Edge Ways of Killing People’ - by Pesach Benson

No matter what the New York Times says, Israel has no reason to apologize for developing the technology it needs to defend itself.

Pesach Benson..
Honest Report..
09 May '20..

Even when the Israel rolls up its sleeves to come up with innovative ways to fight the coronavirus pandemic, it can’t get a fair shake from the New York Times.

In a roundup of what the start-up nation’s entrepreneurs and defense industry are doing in areas such as testing, tracking and telemedicine, bureau chief David Halbfinger leads off with this appallingly disparaging sentence:

The Israeli Defense Ministry’s research-and-development arm is best known for pioneering cutting-edge ways to kill people and blow things up, with stealth tanks and sniper drones among its more lethal recent projects.

The NYT describes how one company is making strides in using audio technology and artificial intelligence to analyze breathing patterns that might identify indicators of Covid-19. Another company is developing a system to to let infectious-disease nurses “instantly determine who else needs to be quarantined when a hospital worker tests positive.” Robots are being adapted to allow doctors to monitor and treat patients remotely, without exposing medical staff. Hopefully, these and the other efforts referred to in the story will help beat back the corona crisis.

But the Times trivializes this research and development. Halbfinger and the editors think this is a profile of James Bond’s gadget guy, Q.

Memo to the Times: save the opinionizing for the op-ed pages.

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