SEPT. 8 UPDATE:
New York Times Corrects
After CAMERA's outreach to editors, the New York Times corrected the passage that falsely exonerated anti-Israel demonstrators. See below for a detailed update.
The recent surge in antisemitic incidents in Australia began almost immediately after Hamas’s massacre. On Oct 9, 2023, at a demonstration in front of the Sydney Opera House, a crowd chanted “F**k the Jews!”
Several witnesses also reported hearing “Gas the Jews,” though a widely circulated video claiming to capture that chant was apparently miscaptioned — the menacing crowd, an Australian investigation found, was actually shouting, “Where’s the Jews?” If the latter alternative isn’t particularly comforting coming from the F-the-Jews crowd, rest easy. The New York Times assures that none of the chants that evening were antisemitic.
As Times reporter Victoria Kim recounted last week,
The demonstration led to accusations that the crowd had yelled anti-Jewish slurs, stirring up months of controversy, until local officials later concluded based on forensic video analysis that they were unfounded.
Unfounded. Never mind that the newspaper’s own link, for those bothering to click, leads to an Australian report that (unlike the New York Times) accurately lays out the facts:
[New South Wales] Police say forensic analysis has found no evidence the phrase "gas the Jews" was chanted in videos circulating online from a pro-Palestinian rally at the Sydney Opera House in October.
However, police said they also obtained statements from several individuals who attended the protest who said they heard the phrase, but investigators could not attribute these statements to a specific individual.
On October 9, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters rallied at the landmark, which was lit blue and white in solidarity with Israel following the Hamas attacks on the Jewish state.
Protesters waved Palestinian flags and chanted slogans like "f… the Jews", "free Palestine" and "shame Israel".
The New South Wales premier is quoted in the piece calling the protest “racist.” Even one of the rally organizers admitted “there were anti-Semitic phrases that I heard.” But the New York Times hears no evil.
When it comes to the Jews, that hearing loss is chronic. The pattern of erasing antisemitism stretches back decades:
After a Gaza cleric in October 2000 called on his followers to butcher Jews — "Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them. Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them” — the New York Times sanitized the quote to conceal the incitement.
When Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas cited anti-Jewish verses to charge Jews with perfidy, the paper covered the speech but ignored the slur.
A Gazan hatemonger who insisted “most Jews” are “evil” was whitewashed as an admirable bridge-builder.
A congressional candidate who blamed America’s wars on American Jews was also given a free pass.
Antisemitic authors are given space to promote antisemitic books with no acknowledgment of the antisemitism.
Cartoons published in the Times have perfectly mirrored Nazi-era, anti-Jewish propaganda.
News reports have described principled politicians being bulldozed by powerful rabbis.
The BDS movement, which seeks to erase Israel by making Jews a minority, has consistently been rewritten as nothing more than anti-occupation.
The globalize-the-intifada movement, which effectively incites violence against Jews, has similarly been downplayed.
Those describing Zionists as “scum of the earth” and endorsing violence have been rebranded as anti-war and pro-Palestinian.
Is it any surprise, then, that the New York Times wrongly claimed the Sydney rally was cleared of antisemitism?
Even given this history of downplaying antisemitism, a generous observer might extend the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the reporter never made it past the "Gas the Jews" dispute to learn that "F**k the Jews" was certainly chanted. But when confronted directly with the evidence, the paper declined to amend its story. At that point, this ceases to be a mistake and becomes a reflection of the Times’ editorial posture.
Update: New York Times Corrects
After CAMERA informed editors that demonstrators at the Sydney Opera House were not, in fact, cleared of yelling anti-Jewish slurs, the newspaper updated its story and published a correction. The passage in question now reads:
The demonstration led to accusations that the crowd had yelled a particularly shocking anti-Jewish slur, stirring up months of controversy. Local officials conducted forensic video analysis to ultimately conclude that the phrase had not been used, even though other “offensive and completely unacceptable” statements against Jewish people were made.
An appended correction notes:
A correction was made on Sept. 4, 2025:
An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the conclusion by Australian officials that anti-Jewish slurs were not used at a pro-Palestine rally at the Sydney Opera House on Oct. 9, 2023. They determined that some “offensive and completely unacceptable” statements against Jews were made, not that no such statements were made.