If you missed the recent controversy involving The New York Times, here’s a quick overview of what happened and its broader implications.
At the center of the storm is Nicholas Kristof’s unusual column from last Monday, where he repeated discredited claims alleging that Israeli dogs had assaulted Palestinian prisoners. Critics have been vocal, pointing out that Kristof seemed to uncritically accept information from sources known for promoting Hamas narratives.
The claims made by Kristof are so extraordinary that the Israeli government has announced plans to pursue a defamation lawsuit against both him and the Times.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented, accusing Kristof and the newspaper of “slandering the soldiers of Israel,” and of spreading a harmful myth equating Hamas’s violent acts with the actions of Israel’s military forces.
This situation draws attention to the documented incidents of Hamas militants committing assaults, including against women, children, and even the deceased, during and after their attack on October 7, 2023.
Those proven war crimes are a prime reason why the paper’s dogmatic defense of Kristof’s column is as outrageous as the column itself. By embracing without reservations the Hamas-tainted sourcing and the author’s claims that echo ancient antisemitic tropes about Jews, the Times has tied itself to wild assertions that most rookie reporters would suspect.
Laughable defense
Despite some internal misgivings about how such preposterous claims got through the editing process and were published, the paper’s top editors have issued unyielding statements defending the column and its extreme assertions.
In one of those statements, the editors called the column a “deeply-reported piece of opinion journalism” and insisted it “draws together on-the-record accounts and cites several analyses documenting the practice of sexual violence and abuse conducted by various parts of Israel’s security forces and settlers.”
The most laughable claim is that the column was “extensively fact-checked.” How do you fact check the claim of dogs raping prisoners when science says it’s not anatomically possible?
That’s not independent fact-checking, that’s just repeating the writer’s and his sources’ assertion without offering a shred of new evidence.
Also, the reference to the column being “opinion journalism” does not confer an exemption from facts. In my long experience with opinion writing, I have kept in mind a line from the late, great Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who said, “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.”
Others have made similar points about Kristof’s work, including Free Press columnist Matti Friedman and Dan Senor on Senor’s always-excellent podcast, “Call Me Back.”
According to Friedman, Kristof’s column is a prime example of “a broader shift in modern journalism,” where many people have traded credibility to become “a weapon in the fight for justice.”
He and Senor also make the key point that if the column’s wild assertions are even plausibly true, they would be the basis of a “bombshell news story.”
But other than defending Kristof, the paper has not followed the sensational claims with an attempt to uncover evidence that could show the events actually happened.
As such, the Times’ reactionary defense strikes me as a moment whose significance goes well beyond the views of a biased writer and his biased editors’ incompetence.
The episode marks a turning point in the American left’s divorce from Israel. The column, and the paper’s bombastic defense, ends any hope the marriage can be saved.
The Times is the lead spear carrier for the radical left-wing of the Democratic Party. The issues, people and language the paper champions are table setters for much of the progressive agenda.
From DEI to transgender surgeries, to hating Donald Trump and promoting climate change dogma, the Gray Lady has become the Pink Lady.
No leftist cause is too wild or impractical to embrace, and that certainly includes demonizing the lone Jewish state.
Open season on Israel
Although the paper has stopped short of directly calling Israel a colonizing entity, its views about the region and its wars consistently condemn Israel while giving Hamas, Hezbollah and other Iranian terror proxies every benefit of the doubt.
In that context, the paper’s conduct in the case at hand reads like a signal to Dems that it’s open season on Israel.
In truth, radical Dems have been increasingly turning against Israel in recent years. The handful of House members known as the squad often make blatantly antisemitic comments, and 40 of 47 Dem Senators recently voted against supplying Israel with defensive weapons.
Meanwhile, complaints accusing the Times of biased Mideast coverage are nothing new among many Israeli and American conservatives, including but not limited to Jewish ones.
But this time is clearly and painfully different. The Kristof defense is not just chiding Israel or dreamily pushing for a two-state solution.
Rather, it resembles a condemnation of Israel’s right to defend itself from those who vow to eliminate it.
Kristof’s column reeked of the same anti-Israel bias that is increasingly finding its way into the paper’s every nook and cranny.
Reporters openly accused Netanyahu of talking Trump into the war against Iran, as if America has no interest of its own in eliminating the mullahs’ nuclear program.
Antisemites make the same argument, and both they and the Times ignore Trump’s long history of declaring that he would do whatever it takes to stop the program.
Nor does the Times give much credence to Iran’s consistent promise to eliminate the two nations it calls the “Little Satan” and the “Great Satan.”
On top of the paper’s cockeyed coverage, comes now one of the weirdest and most lopsided stories it has published.
Here are the “nut” or overview paragraphs of a long article that started on the front page of the May 12th print edition, the day after Kristof’s column ran.
“A New York Times investigation found a well-organized campaign by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government that embraced Eurovision as a soft power tool, and a secretive contest organizer that was ill-equipped to respond.
“As the normally lighthearted contest became a proxy fight over Middle Eastern affairs and human rights, Eurovision struggled to defend a core tenet: Politics play no role in the event.”
Yes, that’s some “lighthearted contest” where other nations called for Israeli contestants to be denied admission and demanded a Palestinian state because of the war in Gaza.
Slanted coverage
Yet it’s only Israel’s conduct the Times sees fit to examine with a fine-tooth comb.
Better, it look inward. Consider the photo mistake where it showed a supposedly starving Gaza baby, only to concede after complaints that the baby’s doctor said it was born with health and genetic conditions that affected brain and muscle development.
Or how about its story claiming Israel bombed a Gaza hospital killing hundreds of people? It was eventually followed by an admission that the coverage should have been “more journalistically rigorous.”
Notice how the big mistakes all favor the same side. Hopefully, the same editors will wake up and make a u-turn on Kristof.
