The NY Times uneasily admits that the "West Bank" is Judea - by Elder of Ziyon

No one had ever heard of the "West Bank" before the 1950s, yet that Jordanian name is now considered the most accurate for media like the New York Times while "Judea" is considered a right-wing Israeli term created to supplant it. Articles like this are awkward precisely because they highlight that the land has always been associated with Jews, not "Palestinian" Arabs.

Elder of Ziyon..

09 September '20..

The New York Times has an interesting article about Israelis managing to harvest dates from the famous Judean date palm, planted with seeds that are over 2000 years old: 

The plump, golden-brown dates hanging in a bunch just above the sandy soil were finally ready to pick. 

They had been slowly ripening in the desert heat for months. But the young tree on which they grew had a much more ancient history — sprouting from a 2,000-year-old seed retrieved from an archaeological site in the Judean wilderness. 

“They are beautiful!” exclaimed Dr. Sarah Sallon with the elation of a new mother, as each date, its skin slightly wrinkled, was plucked gently off its stem at a sunbaked kibbutz in southern Israel. 

They were tasty, too, with a fresh flavor that gave no hint of their two-millenium incubation period. The honey-blonde, semi-dry flesh had a fibrous, chewy texture and a subtle sweetness. 

These were the much-extolled but long-lost Judean dates, and the harvest this month was hailed as a modern miracle of science. 

  Where was the seed found again? 

Hannah’s seed, which came from an ancient burial cave in Wadi el-Makkukh near Jericho, now in the West Bank, was carbon dated to between the first and fourth centuries B.C.E., becoming one of the oldest known seeds to have ever been germinated. 

The phrase "now in the West Bank" is awkward - did the cave somehow move from Judea to the "West Bank"? But for the Times to more accurately say "now called the West Bank" would be problematic for a paper that chose to embrace that term only in the 1970s.

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Why does Israel's leader savoring a milestone achievement unhinge the Times? - by Andrea Levin

Notably, no other Middle East leader, however brutal to his own people or menacing to the region, is subjected to this kind of personal assault by the Times.

Andrea Levin..
CAMERA..
21 August '20..

Good news for Israel seems to prompt teeth-gnashing for some at the New York Times. The announced intention of the United Arab Emirates to normalize peaceful relations with the Jewish state was a diplomatic breakthrough cheered far and wide. But it triggered Jerusalem bureau chief David Halbfinger to let loose a fusillade of ad hominem smears of Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu. (August 13, 2020, “Netanyahu Drops Troubled Plan for Economic Gain”)

The reporter’s coverage notes, reasonably enough, the switch in national priorities from extending Israeli sovereignty in areas of the West Bank to, instead, suspending that effort in favor of opening relations with an Arab nation that had been an adversary. But the thrust of the story is not just that Netanyahu made a politically expedient shift or, less cynically, that he seeks a positive outcome for Israel and the region. Halbfinger attacks the leader’s demeanor, conduct and even his alleged inner feelings.

He insists to readers that Netanyahu is focused on himself and his legacy, saying the leader “craved a historic achievement to cap his tenure,” that he “exulted in a potential legacy,” and that he “saw as securing his legacy” the “annexing [of] West Bank territory.”

Undisclosed is how the reporter reads the mind and heart of the leader and distinguishes between exhilaration over this important breakthrough making Israel stronger and safer and the narcissistic, narrow motives Halbfinger discerns.

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Dear NY Times: Israel cannot “annex” its own land. But it can certainly extend sovereignty over it. - by Jerold Auerbach

In its reflexive critique of settlements — and, indeed, Israel — The New York Times has long been, and remains, either oblivious to history or exceedingly uncomfortable with it. By now it should at least know that a country cannot “annex” its own land. But it can extend sovereignty over it, which Israel is prepared to do.

Jerold Auerbach..
Algemeiner..
25 June '20

“Annexation Looms” headlined a mournful New York Times article (June 19) co-authored by Jerusalem Bureau Chief David M. Halbfinger and Adam Rasgon, Palestinian affairs reporter for The Times of Israel. They cited “respected former Israeli military, intelligence and diplomatic officials” who warn that if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has his way annexation would pose “a grave risk to Israel’s security.” And West Bank Palestinians, the Times reporters asserted, would suffer greatly.

For The New York Times, opposition to Jewish settlements has been an enduring obsession. A decade after the Six-Day War, as handfuls of Israelis returned to restore the ancient Jewish community of Hebron half a century after its destruction in the 1929 murderous Arab riots, a Times editorial warned against the “colonizing” of their Biblical homeland. Thomas Friedman, insisting that settlements were transforming Israel into “an undemocratic apartheid state,” bracketed “crazy” settlers with Palestinian suicide bombers and falsely accused them of assassinating Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. For columnist Roger Cohen, “messianic” settlers were to blame for Palestinian intransigence

But any Palestinian (or Times) fantasy that one day more than 400,000 Israelis now living in Judea and Samaria, the Biblical homeland of the Jewish people, will abandon their communities is inconceivable. Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel has always defined Zionism. The Netanyahu sovereignty plan confirms that historic reality.

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Jerold S. Auerbach is the author of Print to Fit: The New York Times, Zionism and Israel 1896-2016, selected for Mosaic by Ruth Wisse and Martin Kramer as a Best Book for 2019.

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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In a NY Times Op-Ed the Pandemic is a Pretext to Attack Israel and Deny Terrorism - by Gilead Ini

It’s one thing for the author to use the coronavirus in the service of anti-Israel activism. That’s his prerogative — though editors might be expected to balk at such cynical treatment of the crisis. But to inform readers that the curfew was arbitrary, that only Palestinians were under threat, and that normal life continued elsewhere is to show an egregious disregard for the truth.

Gilead Ini..
Camera..
24 March '20..

Is it “normal” for elderly Holocaust survivors to be murdered while celebrating Passover? That’s what today’s Op-Ed in the New York Times appears to suggest.

The piece, by anti-Israel activist Raja Shehadeh, uses the coronavirus scare as a pretext to attack the Jewish state. The hook is that American cities are ordering people to stay at home to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The pitch is that cruel Israelis ordered Palestinians to remain indoors for no reason at all. Shehadeh strains to squeeze anti-Israel talking points into his ostensible lesson about the coronavirus. Or is it the other way around? “Unlike the Israeli guns that posed an equal threat to anyone moving outside of their homes without permission, the virus discriminates by age.” He writes of Israel’s “strangulating roadblocks.”

And for what? Apparently nothing. In what is the piece’s most disingenuous and offensive passage, Shehadeh writes,

In 2002, when my neighbors and I had our movement severely restricted by an Israeli military siege, I tried my best to continue living as normally as I could. It was springtime then, as it is now. I would look out the window and lament my inability to venture out to the lush hills all around covered with wildflowers. But the danger lurking outside my house back then was readily recognizable: armed soldiers enforcing the stay-at-home orders. Only Palestinians were under threat. While we suffered, normal life continued elsewhere, indifferent to what we were enduring.

It is a flagrant distortion of history — a stark example of terrorism denial — to claim that, in 2002, “only Palestinians were under threat” while “normal life” continued in Israel. That year was the single deadliest in history for Israelis in terms of terrorism deaths, as a campaign of Palestinian suicide bombings targeted Jewish civilians. Life was turned upside-down for Israelis, many of whom wouldn’t dare enter a restaurant or city bus. The curfews imposed on parts of the West Bank, which the Op-Ed focuses on, was the direct result of a Palestinian terror campaign, which the Op-Ed dishonesty ignores, and which claimed over 400 Israeli lives that year alone.

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Like to Guess How the NY Times Views Jewish Israelis? by Gilead Ini

It is legitimate for a newspaper to explore political challenges and racism in any particular country. But to select, omit, and frame to push readers to the conclusion that Israelis are particularly racist, while at the same time consistently downplaying or ignoring Palestinian extremism is not objective news reporting, but advocacy. When the same reporter can’t even hear the Israeli leader’s concern for seniors without casting it as a “scolding,” then the problem is all the more apparent.

Gilead Ini..
Camera..
13 March '20..

As Israel shut down schools yesterday to slow the spread of the coronavirus, the country’s prime minister reminded the public that the elderly are especially susceptible to the outbreak, which has killed thousands across the world.

Grandparents shouldn’t babysit the children who are home from school, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged. Instead, “the big children will take care of the smaller children.”

In response to this straightforward guidance, the New York Times bureau chief in Jerusalem called Netanyahu a scold. “Israel closes schools and universities,” David Halbfinger, the bureau chief, wrote on Twitter. “But, like a scolding neighbor, Netanyahu warns not to ask older relatives to provide child care so parents can work.”

Israel closes schools and universities. But, like a scolding neighbor, Netanyahu warns not to ask older relatives to provide child care so parents can work: “Don’t use Grandma and Grandpa as babysitters. Big children can look after little children. ‘I am my brother’s keeper.’”

— David Halbfinger (@halbfinger) March 12, 2020

Halbfinger’s reflexively negative reaction to tells you much of what you need to know about the newspaper’s jaundiced view of Israel. For years, the Times has editorialized in news stories to disparage Jewish Israeli politicians as “shrill,” “stubborn,” “cynical,” “strident,” and “abrasive.” Halbfinger’s predecessor in Jerusalem has even insisted that Netanyahu is “best known for, and perhaps best at” speaking out in strident tones.

If that were how the paper handled politicians in general, it would be one thing. But Palestinians are nearly always spared such treatment.

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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 Abandons Any Pretense of Even-handedness in Attack on Jerusalem Housing Plan - by Ira Stoll

The cherry-picked source selection isn’t the only way the Times news article is tilted. Consider the online subheadline: “The announcement by Prime Minister Netanyahu of 6,200 homes in a contested area was seen as an effort to solidify right-wing support.” To Israel’s enemies, every square inch of the country is “contested,” so the word “contested” doesn’t really add much. “Was seen” is classic Times passive voice. “Was seen” by whom? The Times headline doesn’t say, but the fact that it is the headline makes one suspect that it “was seen” that way by Times news editors, in which case, why don’t they just stop hiding behind “was seen” and just come right out and say it? I’m tempted to top this column with, “New York Times headline was seen as latest example of the newspaper’s egregious bias against Israel’s elected prime minister.”

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner..
23 February '20..

The New York Times has abandoned even the pretense of evenhandedness when it comes to its news coverage of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A Times news article about Netanyahu’s announcement of plans for new housing in Jerusalem includes quotes reacting to the news from three sources.

“The veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat condemned the move,” the Times reports, adding a quote from Erekat.

Then, from the Israeli side, the Times included two more reactions.

One, from “Aviv Tatarsky of Ir Amim,” which the Times describes as “a group advocating an equitable arrangement between Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem,” uses the word “destructive.”

A second, from Peace Now, described the building plan as “state suicide.”

To find anyone welcoming or praising Netanyahu’s announcement, you’d have to resort to reading a different newspaper than the New York Times.

The result is to give Times readers a distorted, inaccurate, misleading view of what is happening in Israel. If you read the New York Times, you’d be shocked and surprised that Netanyahu keeps getting reelected, because the Times news articles (and opinion pages, too) are full of people criticizing Netanyahu and talking about how terrible whatever he is doing is. Yet somehow, Netanyahu and his party keep getting lots and lots of votes from people whose voices the Times doesn’t routinely deem worthy of including.

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Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post.

Reviewing *Print to Fit:The New York Times, Zionism and Israel, 1896-2016* - by Ricki Hollander

To be sure, during the New York Times’ long history, there have been accurate and impartial articles about Israel, and even occasional praise in editorial commentary. But the dominant mindset at the newspaper is one of enduring unease with Jewish nationalism and a Jewish state under the guise of espousing progressive and liberal values. It is conveyed through emphasis on the views of Israel’s critics who are presented neutrally and dismissal of the views of its supporters who are presented as partisan and extreme. It is expressed by focusing on Jewish military actions while downplaying Palestinian terrorism and violence, and by treating Palestinians and their leaders as victims alone, without agency and without responsibility for the ongoing conflict.

Ricki Hollander..
CAMERA.org..
10 December '19..

As a longtime media critic who closely follows the New York Times’ coverage of Israel and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, I read Jerold Auerbach’s latest book, “Print to Fit: The New York Times, Zionism and Israel, 1896-2016,” with great interest. Having spent almost two decades analyzing New York Times’ reporting about the Jewish state, I’m well-acquainted with the newspaper’s anti-Israel bias, which is an entrenched feature of its coverage.

The newspaper’s negative treatment of Jewish causes has a history that has been discussed before: In her 2005 book, Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper, Northeastern University journalism professor Laurel Leff described the Times’ shameful habit of burying news about the Holocaust at the back of the newspaper. Leff suggested that editors deliberately downplayed news about Nazi targeting and genocide of European Jews as part of a conscious effort by publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger to ensure the newspaper would not appear “too Jewish.” Former New York Times Executive Editor Max Frankel similarly lamented “the staggering, staining failure of The New York Times to depict Hitler’s methodical extermination of the Jews of Europe as a horror beyond all other horrors in World War II” as Sulzberger “went to great lengths to avoid having The Times branded a ‘Jewish newspaper.’”

Print to Fit goes back even further, starting decades before the Holocaust. Auerbach’s contribution is to demonstrate through meticulous documentation just how much a part of its DNA is the New York Times’ animus against the Jewish state. The author, a professor emeritus of history at Wellesley College, brings his historian’s eye to dissecting the newspaper’s long course of bias against the Jewish state, tracing it back to the purchase of the newspaper in 1896 by Adolph S. Ochs.

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For the The New York Times There is No Jewish Temple Mount - by FirstOneThrough

The New York Times has no patience to educate its audience about the history of Jews nor the rights of Israelis, as it morphs its newspaper into Al Jazeera’s opinion section describing the Jewish state as illegal invaders of Arab lands.

FirstOneThrough..
13 November '19..

The New York Times has earned and re-earned its anti-Israel bona fides over many years. It seems to want to burnish its anti-Jewish credentials as well.

In a November 11, 2019 article called “Jordan Reclaims Lands in 1994 Accord,” the Times wrote about a parcel of land which Israeli farmers had been working in the Jordan Valley which was recently reclaimed by Jordan. The Times framed the article that the land was legally Jordanian, and that the Jordanians had allowed the Israelis to work there for decades but how now reclaimed it as a matter of course in line with the peace agreement between Israel and Jordan struck in 1994.

The article continued to work a similar pattern, of Israelis living in lands which were rightfully Jordanian:

“Israeli-Jordanian tensions have flared periodically because of disputes with the Israelis over the handling of security at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, a hotly contested holy site over which Jordan has official custodianship.”

The article continued that Jordan had no choice to cancel the Jordan Valley land lease over “Israel’s repeated violations and actions… which were extremely provocative,” including placing metal detectors “at the mosque compound.”

Note that the Times chose to only call the site by the Islamic name, the “Al Aqsa Mosque compound” and not also refer to it by the Jewish name, the “Temple Mount.” It is the holiest site in the world for Jews, and were forbidden to enter when Jordan illegally controlled the site from 1949 to 1967.

When Israel reunited Jerusalem in 1967, it allowed the Jordanian Waqf to have administrative control of the site, while Israel controlled all security matters. The Times neglected to tell readers that part of the equation, opting to make it appear that Jordan has “official custodianship” on all matters.

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Who Would've Thought? A BDS Defeat The NY Times Found Not Fit to Print - by Ira Stoll

...There’s a structural bias to journalism encapsulated in the old newsroom saying, “write about the hotel that’s burning down, not the hotel that didn’t burn down.” So to some degree the decision by Times editors to emphasize the boycott votes that pass rather than the ones that fail may be driven by a general desire to focus on news that does happen rather than news that doesn’t happen. But that’s the most generous possible face to put on what operates functionally as an anti-Israel bias.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner..
23 September '19..

Some of the most telling stories are the ones The New York Times doesn’t print.

In that category falls the recent decision of a section of the American Political Science Association to reject a resolution calling for a boycott of Israel.

Miriam Elman, a political scientist on leave from Syracuse University who is the executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, which opposes boycotts of Israel, wrote a Facebook post reporting, “The proponents of a discriminatory anti-Israel academic boycott resolution (and its accompanying obnoxious FAQ) experienced a colossal defeat.”

She wrote, “This spectacular fail needs to be advertised WIDELY, as we all know that BDS zealots will either try to bury it or spin this as some kind of remarkable victory”

“Bury it” was precisely the approach The New York Times took to the news.

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Surprise! New York Times Stumbles on BDS Antisemitism

The New York Times finally acknowledges that BDS opposes Israel's existence, but seems to ask: Is that so bad?

CAMERA.org..
30 July '19..

The New York Times has long history of whitewashing the extremism of the BDS movement.

BDS stands for “boycotts, divestment, and sanctions,” and the BDS campaign seeks to leverage those tools to eliminate Israel and replace it with an Arab-majority state.

Although BDS leaders openly admit they seek to disenfranchise Jews by eliminating the country’s Jewish majority — BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti has admitted his goal is “a unitary state where, by definition, Jews will be a minority” — the Times has consistently downplayed the movement’s goals by reporting, for example, that BDS merely “seeks to pressure Israel into ending the occupation of the West Bank,” or that the its activists are simply “critical of Israel’s policies toward the West Bank.”

Language of this type had prompted Tablet’s Yair Rosenberg to charge the paper with having “dramatically misrepresented [BDS’s] stated aims and implicit goals, whitewashing the movement’s radicalism.”

Another Whitewash?

Days after the U.S. House of Representatives delivered an overwhelming, bipartisan rebuke to BDS with a 398-17 vote explicitly opposing “the Global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement,” the New York Times jumped in with a piece titled “Is B.D.S. Anti-Semitic? A Closer Look at the Boycott Israel Campaign.”

The piece purports to provide “answers to some of the most difficult questions” about BDS. And this time, the paper did manage to acknowledge that the campaign opposes the existence of the Jewish state, an improvement over earlier coverage that falsely cast the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement as merely anti-occupation. In that respect, at least, it is a needed improvement. Still, the article relies on distortions and omissions to make BDS extremism more palatable to readers.

Throughout the piece, reporters David Halbfinger, Michael Wines, and Steven Erlanger put their fingers on the scales in support of BDS, including by:

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New York Times Asks Israel: 'Have You Stopped Beating Your Wife?' - by Gilead Ini

In the New York Times’s framing, no answer to the question about Israel’s human rights record exculpates the Jewish state. No means no — Israel doesn’t meet international standards, and candidates are willing to say so. But yes also means no. Israel is guilty, but cowardly Democrats are simply “unwilling” to criticize the country. 


Gilead Ini..
CAMERA..
19 June '19..

“Have you stopped beating your wife?”

It’s the classic example used to illustrate how a loaded question can be an insidious rhetorical technique. Baked into this particular loaded question is the assumption that the one being queried had previously been guilty of domestic abuse. The New York Times offers its own version of a loaded question in a set of interviews with Democratic presidential candidates that the paper published and publicized today.

We tracked down the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates and asked them the same set of 18 questions.

21 of them sat down with us on camera and gave us their thoughts on topics ranging from the political to the personal.https://t.co/IkNeyd8IpO

— NYT Graphics (@nytgraphics) June 19, 2019

On its own, the newspaper’s prompt about Israel doesn’t explicitly assume guilt. Candidates were asked, “Do you think Israel meets international standards of human rights?” Yes, it is curious that Israel is the one foreign country whose policies were deemed worthy of scrutiny in the 18 questions posed by the New York Times. The moral records of Afghanistan, the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance funding; China, America’s largest trading partner; and Mexico, the country’s southern neighbor were unquestioned. There was nothing about Egypt, whose former president just died in a courtroom while on trial; Saudi Arabia, the top purchaser of U.S. arms; Turkey, our putative NATO ally; or the Palestinians. Only Israel.

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Gilead Ini is a Senior Research Analyst at CAMERA. His commentary has appeared in numerous publications, including the Jerusalem Post, Christian Science Monitor, Columbia Journalism Review and National Review, and has been featured on national and international radio programs. He has lectured widely on media coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict.