While in college, Raja Abdulrahim brashly defended Hamas and Hezbollah.
While working for the New York Times, she defends Hamas and Islamic Jihad with a touch more subtlety.
As we noted earlier this month, Abdulrahim’s May 8 overview of Islamic Jihad absurdly stated that the terror group was created “to fight the Israeli occupation” rather than to fight Israel’s existence; concealed the fact that Israel’s strike on Islamic Jihad leaders came a week after the group fired barrages of rockets and Israel—and that Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for those rockets; and ignored the fact that those rockets are war crimes.
Today, the Times reporter continued apace with a follow up piece on the recent fighting.
Yet again, Abdulrahim deceives readers by casting Islamic Jihad, which is sworn to the destruction of Israel and its replacement with an Islamic state, as merely opposed to Israel’s occupation: “The groups have wide support among Palestinians for their resistance to the Israeli occupation,” she writes in reference to what she calls Gaza’s “armed groups.”
Yet again — in a story specifically about the impact of Israel’s retaliation after Islamic Jihad rocket barrages — Abdulrahim never straightforwardly acknowledges that the group fired those rockets.
Instead, she cultivates doubt by referencing the rockets as mere Israeli claims: “Six senior leaders of the armed group that Israel said had been responsible for rocket attacks on Israel were killed before a cease-fire was reached on May 13,” she wrote, ignoring both that Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attacks, and that those attacks, which prompted Israel’s operation, happened just a week earlier. (Indeed, every one of the piece’s references to Palestinian rockets referenced the rockets as an Israeli allegation.)
And yet again, a New York Times piece discussing Palestinian rockets avoids telling readers that those indiscriminate rocket attacks violate international law.
It’s not that Abdulrahim entirely avoids mentioning the laws of war. She cites a two-year old statement by the anti-Israel NGO Amnesty International to suggest Israel might be guilty of war crimes in this round of fighting. It’s just that she shields Gaza’s terror organizations from such accusations — even though the same Amnesty statement she cites also admits, without equivocation, that “The rockets fired from Gaza into Israel are imprecise and their use violates international humanitarian law.”
Seems the college student who wanted Palestinian terror groups not to be viewed as terror groups, though they are, has turned into the New York Times reporter who wants Palestinian terror groups not to be viewed as war criminals, though they are.
The @nytimes in a nutshell.
From the person who told you that some of the happiest people on earth are actually miserable, #SadSadIsrael, comes praise for the person who tells us terrorists are not terrorists, and who has to scare-quote “murdered innocent Israeli civilians.” https://t.co/AKoJKztENR pic.twitter.com/ATbDYtyQWx
— David Litman (@dmlitman) November 5, 2021