The New York Times is still at it

By Phyllis Chesler

I have been documenting the anti-Israel biases in the New York Times for a long, long time. I am so glad that others have taken up this truly tedious task. But I cannot keep totally quiet.

For example, today, here is their lead headline on page A1, occupying the rightmost column.

“Israel Threatens to Renew Combat In Hostage Crisis: Vowing to End the Truce Unless the Release of Captives Resume.”

Have the editors been living on a far distant planet? Do they not remember that it was Hamas who violated the cease-fire agreement many, many times and that it was Hamas that has just refused to send the next promised batch of hostages?

Are the remaining hostages even alive? Are they even worse off than the three men whom Hamas returned in exchange for more than eighty Arabs with blood on their hands? And is that the reason for the halt in freeing the next group. The three Israeli male hostages looked like concentration camp survivors. The Arab prisoners being returned to Gaza looked fleshy, healthy—as did the crowds who greeted their buses.

Where is the alleged genocide of Gazans? Where is the alleged starvation of Gazans?

Are the journalists at the NYT blind, dead, and dumb? What anti-reality playbook are they following? Have they utterly forgotten about all the Iran-backed Arab terrorist attacks against Israelis and about what really happened on 10/7?

In the second paragraph the lead-article journalists describe PM Netanyahu’s “warning” as based entirely on his (own, private?) view that Hamas “had violated the agreement.” It is Hamas who announed it was halting the release of hostages. Further, in the third paragraph they provide Hamas with lots of wiggle room: “under the terms of the cease-fire, only three were supposed to be let go on Saturday.”

They—who are they anyway?—want only three souls back; the journalists are parsing President Trump’s call for “all the hostages” back.

Thus, if Israel, backed by President Trump, goes in to completely destroy Gaza; or to take 5% of Gazan territory for each hostage still in captivity—perhaps forever; or to take back only the territory that Israel was recently forced to vacate—then what? The cease-fire stands? Do these NYT reporters hope that the terrorists and Israel will reach some last-minute “compromise before Saturday”?

The lead article continues on page A8. The pull quote is as follows: “Each side accuses the other of violating terms of the cease-fire.”

But this is a complete lie. Only Hamas has done so. Israel has not.

Contrast this with the NYT article, also on page A8, titled “Palestinian Leader Ends Payment to Prisoners Jailed by Israel.”

Not. So. Fast. This is only something that the doddering autocrat of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has said. He only said so. He is probably lying in order to continue to receive payments from the United States. Also, these are not just “prisoners.” These are mainly Arabs with Israeli blood on their hands.

At the very end of this piece, there are two quotes. Here’s a quote from Qadura Fares, the Palestinian Authority’s commissioner for prisoner affairs: he called on Abbas to “immediately retract” the decree. And one former prisoner, Esmat Mansour, said: “The prisoners are icon[ic]. They are the ones who have sacrificed for our freedom.”

Both quotes suggest that Abbas and the PA will face enormous and probably violent opposition if they really discontinue their policy of pay-for-slay.

Here’s the kicker. The families of prisoners would “still be eligible for social welfare payments as long as they demonstrate a financial need, as opposed to being compensated for fighting against Israeli’s rule.” The same result by a deft name-change.

Nowhere does the NYT indicate that it is the Arabs in Judea and Samaria who have, and who wish to, entirely ethnically cleanse every last Jew from their own Jewish homeland, just as all the Muslim and Arab countries have done to Jews and to other infidels. Nowhere do these well-paid journalists ever remind their readers that at least 20% of Arabs, Christian, Druze, and Muslim, live in Israel where they have better housing, medical and dental care, education, and the ability to become teachers, journalists, lawyers, judges, physicians, nurses, police officers—and even IDF soldiers as long as they volunteer to do so. They are not automatically drafted. So much for the continued insistence that Israel is an apartheid state.

It is the Arab Muslim Middle East and Muslims in North Africa and Central Asia (Iran, Afghanistan), who maintain apartheid states, both in terms of religion and gender—and states in which Jews, Ba-hai, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, etc. have been “ethnically cleansed,” driven into exile or persecuted to death.

All context, all history is “cleansed” from such reportage. Reader: please beware.

First published in Israel National News