You might find a flatbread recipe in the food section of The New York Times, but if you’re looking for a recipe that flattens the distinction between civilian and terrorist, look no further than the news section.
In Adam Rasgon’s July 24 article “6 Killed in West Bank Shooting, Officials Say, Among the Deadliest in Months,” he reports on a disputed event that left four Palestinians and two Israelis dead. While acknowledging different accounts of the incident from the Israeli military and a Palestinian mayor, the paper’s report included an erroneous claim whose significance goes well beyond a particular incident or report. With no support whatsoever, The Times claimed that the Israeli military (IDF) “referred to the group [of four Palestinians] as ‘terrorists,’ a term it often uses to refer to any Palestinian it deems a security threat.” In replacing evidence-based reporting with a sweeping inference, The Times muddied the definition of “terrorist” and implied the IDF uses such terms callously as a blanket slur.
Such a characterization is not only disingenuous and editorialized, but flatly wrong, as it ignores the fact that Israel has laws on its books that define terror.
Israel’s 2016 Anti-Terror law includes a procedure to designate terrorist organizations and explicitly defines the range of offenses labeled “acts of terrorism.” A person or organization who commits an act of terrorism is a terrorist, irrespective of identity. Rather than engage in a good-faith evaluation or critique of the anti-terror law’s definition, or acknowledge Israel has had actual and ample experience identifying terrorism, The Times lazily resorted to both incorrect and insulting innuendo.
The IDF also has a solid track record of calling both Palestinians and Jews “terrorists” when the definition is met, such as earlier this year when an IDF Central Command officer informed the prime minister that resources devoted to Jewish terrorism in the West Bank was a security risk to the country.
While Israel applies the label terrorism to both Israelis and Palestinians, The Times does not share this approach. The paper is not only wrong when it describes how Israel uses the terrorist label, but The Times itself has had a longstanding allergy to using the word “terrorist” when it comes to Palestinian terror perpetrated on Israelis – even the day after thousands of terrorists infiltrated Israel and killed, raped and kidnapped.
1/ After likely the largest atrocity against Jewish civilians since the Holocaust, the @nytimes front page—which talks of an “assault” by “militants” whose “gunmen” infiltrated Israel—does use a “terror” word once.
Only, it’s in reference to *Palestinians* being terrified. pic.twitter.com/Pl12ibSODm
— Gilead Ini (@GileadIni) October 8, 2023
The paper continues to refer to the Hamas terrorists of October 7 as “militants,” most recently in a July 26 article.
A recent and egregious example of the paper’s inability to identify terrorism and terrorists is its spectacular failure to acknowledge that a group it repeatedly cited for the proposition that the IDF was targeting journalists recently admitted it could not be trusted. On June 26, the Committee for Protection of Journalists (CPJ) was forced to admit that it had terrorists on its membership rolls and would be conducting a large-scale review.
The Times previously colluded with CPJ in spreading the libel that Israel was targeting journalists in Gaza. Recall that CPJ was one of Nicholas Kristof’s key sources – he called it “a respected American organization” – in accusing Israel of systemic sexual violence against Palestinians. Beyond Kristof, the paper cited repeatedly to the CPJ – who accused Israel of a “deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists” – and also signed CPJ’s letter calling on Israeli authorities to protect journalists as noncombatants, the insinuation being that Israel was targeting them.
The Times has done nothing to correct this perception, despite the publication of dozens of recent death notices from Hamas and PIJ revealing “journalists” to be terrorists, as well as CPJ’s announcement about the review. That The Times relied so heavily on the organization dramatically undermines the paper’s credibility with respect to claims of this nature. Its decision not to report on CPJ’s journalist review because of a terror organization’s disclosures should be a scandal.
The article’s bias extended further when the paper hid from readers the recent Jerusalem Post report on official security data, demonstrating that since March, enforcement efforts against extremist Israelis intensified, leading to a decrease in violent acts against Palestinians. Instead, Rasgon presented the trend as both rising and ignored, writing, “Israeli settler violence against Palestinians has surged in the West Bank in recent years.” (Two more recent Times articles similarly reported a rise in “settler violence” without acknowledging the report that it has decreased in recent months.)
Given that the events in the report are admittedly disputed, The Times irresponsibly set its readers up to form an opinion based on wrong ideas – like that the IDF haphazardly labels Palestinians terrorists – and lack of knowledge, in failing to tell its audience that violence on the part of Israelis against Palestinians is decreasing.
By substituting evidence with lazy, suggestive and callous editorializing, The Times reveals a pattern that goes far beyond poor phrasing. When a democratic country’s legal designations are dismissed as mere slurs, verified terror affiliations among “journalists” are totally ignored, and data showing decreased violence is omitted to fit a pre-existing narrative, the result is the furthering of an agenda – not journalism.