One of the most absurd fronts in an ongoing Arab/Palestinian war on Israel’s legitimacy is the inane fight about who owns the original recipe of popular food. It is part of a larger campaign conducted by detractors of the Jewish state. And the New York Times has, once again, weighed in with a story that highlights their views.
In the New York Times, an article about the observance of Judaism's holiest day, Yom Kippur, becomes a vehicle for eroding Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish state.
A recent NYT "critics pick" was "Foragers," a partisan, political film on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by Palestinian filmmaker Jumana Manna. Reviewer Will Heinrich not only accepts the filmmaker’s messaging as unvarnished truth, but bolsters and amplifies it in his own words to falsely suggest Israel is an apartheid state.
For the second week in a row, the front page of the New York Times featured an article that either provided fuel for antisemitism or sanitized those who have been accused of it. The latest purports to expose the role of Russian disinformation in dividing the Women’s March protest movement, but downplays the antisemitism of the movement's leaders, particularly that of Linda Sarsour, and whitewashes the BDS movement she promotes.
A much ballyhooed New York Times investigation of Hasidic schools includes multiple aspersions that feed into anti-Jewish tropes about money, greed and exploitation. These are cast without context, statistics or other rigorous, supportive evidence. It is a style of advocacy journalism that fuels antisemitism and undermines what would be better achieved with a properly contextualized and statistically supported report.
The Western media has increasingly abetted Palestinian propaganda efforts to erase the Jewish claim to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. Far too many journalists today accept the historic revisionism and political falsehoods put out by Palestinian activists and leaders and promote it with their own jargon and linguistic tricks.
Last year, Ramadan anti-Israel incitement and violence — in the guise of a Jihad for Jerusalem — saw many in the mainstream media ignore the historic patterns of provocation by the Palestinian leadership and instead echo their pretexts blaming Israel. Media reporting this year follows the same pattern.
On Tuesday night, a Palestinian terrorist went on a shooting spree in Bnei Brak with an assault rifle, murdering 5 people, bringing the total # of victims killed in terror attacks over the past days to 11. It followed an attack in Hadera on Sunday and another days earlier in Be'er Sheva. It comes against a backdrop of incitement just days before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan commences, and evokes last year's Ramadan violence -- the Jihad for Jerusalem that culminated in the Hamas war against Israel. To report accurately about incitement and violence, journalists should be prepared and armed with the knowledge of recent and past history.
