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‘Hamas Restricts Journalists in Gaza,’ New York Times Confesses — That Could Explain the Hospital Obsession
Israeli soldiers inspect the Al Shifa hospital complex, amid their ground operation against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, in Gaza City, Nov. 15, 2023, in this handout image. Photo: Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS
Instead of covering the war between Israel and Iran-backed Hamas, the New York Times has turned itself into the newsletter of the Gaza hospital association.
Since the war began with Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, the Times has published, by my count, 19 front-page articles that are either primarily or substantially about the impact of the war on Gaza hospitals. That’s far more front-page articles than the Times has published on other aspects of the war that might be more newsworthy — say, the fate of the approximately 240 hostages, or the nature of Iran’s involvement in training and financing the Hamas terrorists, or plans for the future of Gaza after Israel achieves its goals of dismantling Hamas and recovering the hostages.
Most of the coverage has been of the he said/she said variety. The Times repeats Israeli statements that the hospitals are terrorist headquarters, while also repeating denials by Hamas and hospital officials.
The Nov. 11 edition of the New York Times had a front-page article headlined, “Gaza’s Hospitals Bear the Brunt As Battles Rage.” It reported, “Hamas denies operating within the hospital or under it, as does the hospital director, Mohammad Abu Salmiya.”
The Nov. 12 edition of the Times had a front-page article headlined, “Plight of Gaza’s Main Hospital Worsens as Israeli Forces Close In.” It reported, “The Israeli military has accused Hamas of operating an underground command center below Al-Shifa, using it as a shield. The hospital’s administration and Hamas have denied that.”
This is boilerplate that just gets copied and pasted into each day’s new front-page Times article on the same topic.
On Nov. 14: “Hospital Shakes In Gaza as Fights Rage at Doorstep.” The article reported, “Israeli officials say Hamas uses hospitals in Gaza, including Al-Shifa, as shields to conceal vast complexes for their fighters in tunnels underneath. Hamas has denied the allegations.”
On Nov. 15: “Israeli Military Reports Assault at Gaza Hospital.” The article reported, “Israel asserts that Hamas has dug a network of tunnels beneath Gaza’s hospitals, using the patients and workers inside them as human shields for its command centers and safe houses. Hamas and hospital officials have denied the accusations.”
The Times international editor and associate managing editor, Phil Pan, who hadn’t had a byline in the newspaper since 2018, went to Gaza City himself to check into Al Shifa hospital and report under his own byline that his visit “will not settle the question of whether Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that rules Gaza, has been using Al-Shifa Hospital to hide weapons and command centers.”
I don’t know what Pan expected he’d find there. A sign behind the main information desk with colorful arrows? “Cardiology, third floor. Cafeteria, second floor. Hamas Terrorist Headquarters, basement.”
Even before this war, there was ample evidence that Hamas was using Gaza hospitals as bases. And the Times has already published one editors’ note conceding that the newspaper “should have taken more care” with coverage of an explosion by an errant Palestinian rocket at a parking lot near one Gaza hospital. David Collier reported that one of the doctors frequently quoted in the Times denying Hamas’ presence at the hospital has a history of social media posts celebrating terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.
A spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, notes that evidence has mounted. The IDF says it found that one of the hostages, 19-year-old Noa Marciano, had been murdered by Hamas terrorists inside the Shifa hospital. It published video of armed terrorists hustling Nepalese and Thai civilian hostages into the hospital. It found a terrorist tunnel with a blast-proof door and a firing hole. It found a booby-trapped vehicle full of weapons. It found Hamas weapons and uniforms hidden inside the hospital’s MRI area, where security cameras had been covered up.
“It’s increasingly clear that our assertion that Hamas uses hospitals as civilians shields — not just Shifa — is true,” Hecht writes. He says that translates into a journalistic point: “Same-sideness doesn’t always work. Israel is a liberal democracy. Hamas is a recognized terrorist organization. Giving equal weight to claims from both sides — one with a functional check and balance systems and another that knowingly butchers children in a surprise attack — is just plain wrong.”
Why is the Times focusing so obsessively about the Gaza hospitals rather than on other newsworthy stories in Gaza and in Israel, or, for that matter, in Lebanon, Iran, and China? A hint comes in a dispatch by the newspaper’s Jerusalem bureau chief, the error-prone Patrick Kingsley, who acknowledged, “Hamas restricts journalists in Gaza.”
Talk about burying the lede. What would be useful from the Times is more transparency about precisely how Hamas has been restricting journalists in Gaza. Does Hamas threaten the journalists with violence? Does Hamas tell the journalists that they should write about the hospitals and not about other topics? Does it order the journalists to report the doctors’ denials of Hamas activity even though everyone knows those denials are bogus?
The disclaimer that “Hamas restricts journalists in Gaza” is worth remembering as a cautionary label on everything the Times reports about the place.
The Times may eventually retreat from the Gaza topic and move on to other classical anti-Israel themes such as depicting the Jews as killers of innocent children. Before the Gaza hospital association newsletter drops the subject, though, would it be too much to ask for these intrepid Times journalists to go back to the Gazan doctors and ask: When they said there were no Hamasniks in the hospital, were they intentionally lying to the press? And when the journalists repeated the denial, did they, too, know it was a lie? Times editors may prefer to describe the situation as an unsettled question, but at a certain point readers may begin to wonder why the Times journalists have been so skeptical of Israel’s claims and so solicitous of Hamas’ denials.
Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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