If a magician never reveals his tricks, then we shouldn’t expect the New York Times to acknowledge the brazen sleight of hand it used to cover up for terrorists involved in the Oct. 7 massacre.
But the secret behind the newspaper’s illusion should be revealed. The Times, after all, promises something far greater than petty amusement. It promises journalism that’s “beyond reproach” and of the “highest possible standards,” as the paper’s guidelines put it, all of which makes it, in words of its executive editor, “a pillar of democracy.”
From the perspective of the audience, the trick looked something like this: They see that Israel charged several U.N. employees with participating the Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre. They are told of how Israel hasn’t shared evidence for such charges. And with the wave of the wand, the U.N. is vindicated, and Israel is incriminated.
Israel and UNRWA have long had contentious relations, and they have sharply deteriorated since the war began. Earlier this year, Israel accused a dozen workers of participating in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led terror attack in Israel or its aftermath, an allegation that imperiled the organization because it led donors, including the United States, to suspend their financial support.
The United Nations fired 10 of the 12 employees Israel accused. An internal U.N. investigation later found that Israel had not provided evidence to back up its separate allegation that many UNRWA workers had ties to Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.
UNRWA is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
There could hardly be a more egregious and indefensible example of misdirection. The U.N. investigation mentioned by the paper did not look into Israel’s complaint about UNRWA staff involvement in the Oct. 7 massacre. But a separate UN investigation did. And that investigation — again, the one into U.N. staff involvement in the massacre, but the one that the newspaper chose to ignore when discussion allegations of U.N. staff involvement in the massacre — largely vindicated Israel.
As the United Nations announced on Aug. 5, “the evidence obtained … indicated that the UNRWA staff members may have been involved in the armed attacks of 7 October 2023.” (This was the agency’s diplomatic language — as a separate piece in a separate section of the newspaper noted, “A U.N. spokesman said that they probably did take part.”)
One allegation. One U.N. investigation into the allegation. But when the allegation goes into the magician’s hat, an altogether separate investigation gets pulled out. It might not be magic. But it’s certainly not journalism of the “highest possible standards.”
Sept. 24 update: Even after being informed of the distorted language, Times editors failed to make any changes.