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Social Media Watchdogs Shame New York Times for “Rank Dishonesty,” “Statistical Manipulation”
A taxi passes by in front of The New York Times head office, Feb. 7, 2013. Photo: Reuters / Carlo Allegri / File.
An encouraging development in the Israel-Hamas war is that the online pro-Israel press watchdogs finally seem to be getting the upper hand over the New York Times.
A few recent examples tell the story.
A New York Times Sunday opinion article by Megan Stack, headlined “Don’t Turn Away From the Charges of Genocide Against Israel,” was authoritatively debunked by Shany Mor in a thread on X that has attracted nearly a quarter-million views.
Mor faulted Stack’s piece for “rank dishonesty,” noting that it “truncated” the “legal definition of genocide,” omitting “a crucial part of the definition.” Mor also faults the Stack piece for misquoting Israelis to depict them, falsely, as having genocidal intent.
More concludes: “Rather than trawling the internet for truncated quotes, we might want to investigate why so many of our self-appointed humanitarians have spent decades fantasizing about the day when they could drag the Jews in before a tribunal to face the charge of being the real Nazis.”
A column by Nicholas Kristof that also ran in the Sunday New York Times got a similar online dragging, and deservedly so, from the X account of Salo Aizenberg. Aizenberg noticed that in a comparison between American bombing Iraq and Israel bombing Gaza, Kristof used a comparison that started in 2004 rather than 2003. “To push fake narrative one must misrepresent,” Aizenberg wrote, in a post that attracted more than 380,000 views. “If one seeks to compare US & Israel bombing numbers to draw conclusions one MUST begin with the start of each invasion. Anything else is grossly misleading.” Aizenberg described the Kristof column as “statistical manipulation and a “major misrepresentation.”
The Kristof column conceded, “The attack on Oct. 7 was particularly savage, and no doubt my perspective would be different if I had been on the receiving end.” No doubt!
The same Kristof column included the lie: “Negotiation and exchanges have done a much better job liberating hostages than bombardment. So far Israeli troops have killed more hostages than they have freed (one, at the beginning of the war).” That same false claim was made in the Stack piece: “Israel has rescued only a single hostage — and Israeli soldiers shot dead three Israeli hostages who were waving a white flag and begging for rescue, later explaining they mistook them for Palestinians. Almost all of the 110 Israeli hostages who’ve made it home were released by truce, negotiation and prisoner exchange.”
Neither Stack nor Kristof acknowledge that it was military pressure applied by Israel that led to the release of the hostages, who included not only Israelis but also Thai, Russian, and Filipino nationals. All of the hostages, not merely one, were freed by Israeli troops. It was only after Israel started bombing Gaza that Hamas became willing to negotiate and return any of the hostages.
A senior research analyst at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, Gilead Ini, called out the Times for a news article in which the Times described a “100 days” tape on a soccer player’s wrist as referring “to the start of the war between Israel and Hamas” rather than to the days of captivity for Israeli hostages. Ini described the Times phrase as a “misrepresentation” and “the journalistic equivalent of callously tearing down a hostage poster.” Ini’s post on X garnered nearly 36,000 views.
Another social media post by Camera’s Ini mocked the Times for a subheadline about a 72 to 11 vote in which the Senate overwhelmingly rejected a Bernie Sanders-Rand Paul extreme amendment aimed at hassling Israel. Sanders is an independent and Paul is a Republican. The Times subheadline claimed “the debate highlighted Democratic resistance to providing unfettered aid,” but actually the vote highlighted bipartisan support for Israel in responding to a horrible terrorist attack. Ini’s tweet of the Times headline asked, “Is that what it highlighted?” alongside a list of the many Democratic senators who opposed the Sanders-Paul measure. The tweet attracted more than 11,000 views.
Back in 2017, when the New York Times eliminated the “public editor” watchdog position that it had created after a scandal involving a reporter who fabricated material, the newspaper’s publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., explained, “today, our followers on social media and our readers across the internet have come together to collectively serve as a modern watchdog, more vigilant and forceful than one person could ever be.”
At the time, I was skeptical of that explanation. But today’s pro-Israel, pro-accuracy Internet watchdogs are well on the way to proving Sulzberger correct.
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.
The post Social Media Watchdogs Shame New York Times for “Rank Dishonesty,” “Statistical Manipulation” first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Condemns UN for Extending Mandate of Anti-Israel Official Francesca Albanese
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The United States has “strongly denounced” the United Nations for extending the tenure of controversial UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, repudiating the decision as an example of “antisemitic hatred” within the international organization.
“The Human Rights Council’s (HRC) support for Ms. Albanese offers yet another example of why President Trump ordered the United States to cease all participation in the HRC,” the US Mission to the UN said in a statement on Tuesday. “Ms. Albanese’s actions also make clear the United Nations tolerates antisemitic hatred, bias against Israel, and the legitimization of terrorism.”
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. The position authorizes her to monitor and report on alleged “human rights violations” that Israel supposedly commits against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Earlier this month, the UN Human Rights Council renewed the mandate of Albanese, despite widespread calls from several countries and NGOs urging UN members to oppose her reappointment due to her controversial remarks and alleged pro-Hamas stance.
Critics of Albanese have long accused her of exhibiting an excessive anti-Israel bias, calling into question her fairness and neutrality.
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s attacks on the Jewish state.
In the months following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities across southern Israel, Albanese accused the Jewish state of enacting a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions.
The United Nations launched a probe into Albanese last summer for allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations. She has also celebrated the anti-Israel protesters rampaging across US college campuses, saying they represent a “revolution” and give her “hope.”
While speaking at a Washington, DC bookstore in October, Albanese also accused Israel of weaponizing the fallout of the Oct. 7 slaughters to justify the continued “colonization” of Gaza.
“The 7th of October is a tragic date for the Israelis, but this is what also triggered the opportunity for Israel to complete and channel the project of colonial erasure. Israel seized the opportunity to complete that plan of realizing Jewish sovereignty only in the land of Palestine,” Albanese said at the time.
The UN official has also decried Israelis as “foreign” Jews who expelled “indigenous” Palestinians from their land for the purpose of creating an exclusionary ethnostate, erasing the millennia-long presence of Jewish people within the land of Israel. She has also repeatedly condemned Israel as a “colonial” enterprise, comparing the Jewish state to British India or French Algeria.
“They used to say, let us colonize Palestine as the Brits have colonized India, as the French have colonized Algeria, because up to 70 years ago, colonialism was totally acceptable. Today, it’s not and so the narrative has changed,” Albanese said.
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Award-Winning French Actress Mélanie Laurent Joins ‘Fauda’ Season 5 Cast in Lead Role
French actress Mélanie Laurent. Photo: yes Studios.
Multi-award-winning French actress Mélanie Laurent will take on a lead role in the fifth season of the popular Israeli television series “Fauda,” Israel’s yes Studios announced this week.
Laurent’s film credits include “Inglorious Basterds” (2009), “Now You See Me” (2013), and “Operation Finale” (2018). She has two César Awards and a Lumières Award. Her most recent work includes last year’s “The Flood,” a French-Italian film where she played Marie-Antionette, and the French-language film “Freedom,” which she wrote and directed.
Laurent will be featured in seven of the nine episodes in season five of “Fauda,” according to yes Studios. Details about her character and role in the Hebrew-language show have not been revealed, but she will star alongside “Fauda” co-creator and lead star Lior Raz, with whom she previously worked on the 2019 Netflix film “6 Underground.”
Season five of “Fauda” is expected to premiere on yes TV in Israel in early 2026 and will later stream worldwide on Netflix, where the first four seasons of the award-winning show are already streaming. Yes Studios announced in March that filming for “Fauda” season five will begin in late April.
The upcoming season will be filmed in Israel and overseas, following the “Fauda” team on a private mission. Details about the plot for the new season have been kept under wraps. The fifth season will mark 10 years of “Fauda” airing in Israel and around the world on Netflix.
Israeli actor Idan Amedi said in February he will not return for the fifth season of “Fauda” because of his music career and ongoing rehabilitation from injuries he sustained while fighting with the Israel Defense Forces in the Gaza Strip during the Israel-Hamas war that began in 2023. Amedi starred in the show as undercover agent Sagi Tzur, who is the husband of intelligence officer Nurit (Rona-Lee Shimon), who will still be featured in the show’s next season. It remains unclear how “Fauda” will address the exit of Amedi’s character.
As Israel’s longest running action series, “Fauda” follows a team of elite Israeli undercover agents as they hunt down and apprehend terrorists. The show is based on the real-life experiences of its creators, Raz and journalist Avi Issacharoff. The new season is being led by season 4 director Omri Givon (“Hostages”) and written by Omri Shenhar (“Tehran”). “Fauda” is produced by yes TV and L. Benasuly Productions for yes TV.
“Fauda” crew member Matan Meir was killed in action in November 2023 while fighting in Gaza as an IDF reservist.
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Israel Will Keep Gaza Buffer Zone, Minister Says, as Truce Bid Stalls
Smoke rises from Gaza after an explosion, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, April 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Israeli troops will remain in the buffer zones they have created in Gaza even after any settlement to end the war, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday, as efforts to revive a ceasefire agreement faltered.
Since resuming military operations last month, Israeli forces have carved out a broad “security zone” extending deep into Gaza and squeezing some 2 million Palestinians into ever smaller areas in the south and along the coastline.
“Unlike in the past, the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is not evacuating areas that have been cleared and seized,” Katz said in a statement following a meeting with military commanders.
“The IDF will remain in the security zones as a buffer between the enemy and the communities in any temporary or permanent situation in Gaza — as in Lebanon and Syria.”
In a summary of its operations over the past month, the Israeli military said it now controls 30 percent of the Palestinian enclave.
In southern Gaza alone, Israeli forces have seized the border city of Rafah and pushed inland up to the so-called “Morag corridor” that runs from the eastern edge of Gaza to the Mediterranean Sea, between Rafah and the city of Khan Younis.
It already held a wide corridor across the central Netzarim area and has extended a buffer zone all around the frontier hundreds of meters (yards) inland, including the Shejaia area just to the east of Gaza City in the north.
Israel says its forces have killed hundreds of Hamas fighters, including many senior commanders of the Palestinian terrorist group, since March 18 but the operation has alarmed the United Nations and European countries.
More than 400,000 Palestinians have been displaced since hostilities resumed on March 18 after two months of relative calm, according to UN humanitarian agency OCHA.
Katz said Israel, which has blocked the delivery of relief supplies into the territory since early March, was creating infrastructure to allow distribution through civilian companies at a later date, but the blockade on aid would remain in place. Israeli officials have noted that Hamas often seizes humanitarian aid heading into Gaza for its own use and will sell the rest to Gazan civilians at high prices, using the money to fund its terrorism operations.
He said Israel would pursue a plan to allow Gazans who wished to leave the enclave to do so, although it remains unclear which countries would be willing to accept large numbers of Palestinians.
RED LINES
The comments from Katz, repeating Israel‘s demand on Hamas to disarm, underscore how far away the two sides remain from any ceasefire agreement, despite efforts by Egyptian mediators to revive efforts to reach a deal.
Hamas has repeatedly described calls to disarm as a red line it will not cross and has said Israeli troops must withdraw from Gaza under any permanent ceasefire.
“Any truce lacking real guarantees for halting the war, achieving full withdrawal, lifting the blockade, and beginning reconstruction will be a political trap,” Hamas said in a statement on Wednesday.
Two Israeli officials said this week there had been no progress in the talks despite media reports of a possible truce to allow the exchange of some of the 59 hostages still held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners.
Israeli officials have said the increased military pressure will force Hamas to release the hostages but the government has faced large demonstrations by Israeli protesters demanding a deal to stop the fighting and get them back.
Israel launched its war in Gaza in response to the October 2023 attack by Hamas on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage.
The post Israel Will Keep Gaza Buffer Zone, Minister Says, as Truce Bid Stalls first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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