Why Is Anyone Still Reading the Blatantly Biased New York Times?
On September 15th, the NYT suggested that the Israeli who was murdered by rock-throwing Palestinians had died of a “self-inflicted accident” after the attackers had merely “pelted the road” (rather than his car). The National Review provided a detailed critique of this farcical “reporting.”
Unbelievably, Diaa Hadid, a NYT “journalist” responsible for reporting on Israel, used to work for an anti-Israel hate group, so it’s no surprise that she authored an article suggesting that Palestinian attackers pelted a road with stones on which an Israeli’s self-inflicted car accident caused him to die.
On September 29, Hadid used an anonymous European advocate of Palestinian rights as a witness to contradict Israeli army claims that a Palestinian woman shot at an IDF checkpoint was armed with a knife, but then omitted confirmatory reports from another witness mentioned in the article, a Palestinian named Fawaz Abu Aisheh, who said the woman had dropped her knife after being shot (even though Amnesty International mentioned Aisheh’s corroborating testimony about the knife).
On September 30, the NYT struck again with false historical information and tendentious coverage of Abbas’ UN speech. The article, by Rick Gladstone and Jodi Rudoren, noted that “Mr. Abbas accused Israel of having systematically violated these pacts” without mentioning the many violations of the Oslo Peace Accords by Palestinians. In an article exceeding 1,000 words, the reporters made not even one reference to Palestinian terrorism, a basic historical fact that is essential to any fair and balanced understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, since the Oslo Peace Accords, there have been 22 years of Palestinian terrorist attacks — including 140 suicide bombings — which have murdered over 1,500 Israelis (in U.S. population terms, about 60,000 people killed) and made Israeli compliance with a complex and risky “peace” agreement even harder.
The paper’s token attempt at balance was to quote some perfunctory response to Abbas’ speech from Israel’s foreign ministry (“Israel does uphold its agreements”), as if anyone could — in a quotable soundbite — possibly provide sufficient details to refute the sweeping accusations that Abbas made in his speech.
The article editorializes by noting that “Mr. Abbas delivered the speech…against a backdrop of growing frustration among many Palestinians over the paralysis in peace negotiations with Israel,” as if the Israelis aren’t equally frustrated, and as if the Palestinians aren’t largely responsible for the lack of peace progress.
Gladstone and Rudoren then combine outrageously skewed reporting with blatantly false historical claims: “Compounded by new strife over contested religious sites in Jerusalem and other festering issues, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the most protracted dispute vexing the United Nations since the organization’s founding 70 years ago.”
The reporters shamelessly failed to note that the “new strife over contested religious sites in Jerusalem” was produced by Palestinian incitement, anti-Jewish harassment, and violence.
Equally egregious is their patently false claim that “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the most protracted dispute vexing the United Nations since the organization’s founding 70 years ago.” A basic Wikipedia research reveals that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict began in 1948 and has produced about 24,000 fatalities since then, while the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan began in 1947 and has produced about 47,000 fatalities, and the conflict over Kurdish separatism in Iran began in 1946 and has caused at least 30,000 fatalities.
The NYT might be appallingly biased only when it comes to Israel (in which case the paper’s prejudice becomes even more damning). But it’s more likely that the newspaper allows its political leanings to color its reporting on many other topics, even if they are less monitored for unfairness. Either way, the NYT simply can’t be trusted any more.