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New York Times Pushed Biden to Refuse Arms to Israel
US President Joe Biden addresses rising levels of antisemitism, during a speech at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Annual Days of Remembrance ceremony, at the US Capitol building in Washington, DC, US, May 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Furious at President Biden for publicly holding up an arms shipment to Israel in wartime?
You might consider also directing your ire at the New York Times, which laid the groundwork for Biden’s decision with two articles.
An April 13 New York Times staff editorial, headlined, “Military Aid to Israel Cannot Be Unconditional,” called on Biden to cut off weapons deliveries.
“America cannot continue, as it has, to supply Israel with the arms it has been using in its war against Hamas,” the editorial said. “A growing number of senators, led by Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, have been urging Mr. Biden to consider pausing military transfers to Israel, which the executive branch can do without congressional approval. They were right to push for this action.”
The Times editorial acknowledged, “Pausing the flow of weapons to Israel would not be an easy step for Mr. Biden to take” but weighed against that the argument that “the war in Gaza has taken an enormous toll in human lives.”
When it was published, I called the editorial “tastelessly timed” and “rife with factual and logical errors.”
The arms shipment that Biden cut off reportedly included 2,000-pound bombs. Israel’s use of those bombs was the subject of a December 2023 New York Times “visual investigation.” That article was also one of seven that were among the entry for which the New York Times won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.
Back when the Times investigation was published, I wrote in the Algemeiner, as part of a larger piece detailing the article’s flaws, that the Times piece was part of a campaign to cut off weapons to Israel: “The policy goal is clear: to cut off Israel’s arms supply. ‘But the US has not stopped supplying weapons to Israel,’ the Times narrator says at one point, implying that is what the US should do.”
On May 8 — less than a month after the Times editorial appeared, and two days after the Times Pulitzer for the 2,000-pound bomb article was announced — Biden went on CNN to disclose that he’d hold up arms deliveries to Israel.
Would he have taken the step without the encouragement to do so from the New York Times? There’s no way to know for sure. Often there is a sort of circular feedback loop between the press and sources in Washington, with government officials advocating for a policy option — like a pause in weapons shipments — leaking their point of view to the newspaper to generate sympathetic articles. These same officials then point to these same newspaper articles in internal administration debates as ostensibly independent backing for the policy options they had favored from the start.
A Times article from this week says, “For a time, the United States held a monopoly on these bombs. But now Mark 80s are made and sold by a number of countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Pakistan, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. Israel makes its own versions.” If that is accurate (you never know with the New York Times), and Israel does manage to obtain the bombs domestically or from another vendor, then it undercuts the claim that cutting off the American shipments will benefit Gazan civilians. The best thing for Gazan civilians and for Israel is a rapid and decisive Israeli victory over Hamas, so if anything, the American decision is counterproductive.
When it comes to political news coverage, Biden has been, with increasing frequency, criticizing the media. “While the press doesn’t write about it — [applause] — the momentum is clearly in our favor, with the polls moving towards us and away from Trump,” Biden said on May 10 at a Seattle campaign reception, according to a White House transcript. Perhaps if Biden applied some of that same skepticism to the New York Times coverage of Israel and Gaza, the US-Israel relationship, and US policy toward Israel, would be in better shape.
Or maybe the trick is somehow to figure out how to get to Biden the Algemeiner columns debunking and answering the New York Times articles, so that he can read them together and make up his mind with more complete, less erroneous information.
Speculation about the decision has focused on a variety of factors, ranging from the influence of Secretary of State Blinken to Arab-American voters in Michigan to an Arab-American National Security Council official. The malign influence of the New York Times, though, shouldn’t be overlooked.
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 New York Times Pushed Biden to Refuse Arms to Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Treasure Trove spotlights a menorah designed in the early years of the State of Israel
This laurel branch Hanukkah menorah, designed by artist Maurice Ascalon (1913-2003), won first prize at the 1950 Tel Aviv Design Competition. Between 2,000 and 4,000 of these were made by the Pal-Bell factory in Israel, and they were sold not only in Israel but in select department stores around the world, including Macy’s in New York and Harrods in London.
The shape of the oil containers resembles ancient Roman lamps, while the large pitcher is a reference to the single jug of oil that lasted for eight days that is at the heart of the Hanukkah story.
These hanukkiyot were manufactured out of cast bronze with a green patina that was created using reactive chemicals, a process developed by Ascalon, resulting in an antique verdigris look.
Ascalon, who was born in Hungary and originally named Moshe Klein, immigrated to Palestine in 1934 after training in Brussels and Milan. He started the Pal-Bell Company in the late 1930s for the production of ritual and secular decorative items. “Pal” is short for Palestine and “Bell” is short for bellezza, Italian for beauty and an allusion to his time in Milan where the artist learned and perfected his sculpting skills. During Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, Ascalon designed munitions for the Israeli army and, at the request of the Israeli government, retrofitted his factory to produce arms for the war effort.
Ascalon closed Pal-Bell and moved to the United States in 1956, where he taught sculpture at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles and opened Ascalon Studios, which produces large-scale sculptures for public spaces and houses of worship.
The studio, which is now run by Ascalon’s son David and his grandson Eric, was retooled during the COVID pandemic to manufacture safety boxes that allowed health-care workers to assist a patient on a ventilator while minimizing exposure.
Treasure Trove wishes you a happy Hanukkah , which starts on Dec. 25. This year, as Peter, Paul and Mary sang, “Light one candle for the terrible sacrifice, justice and freedom demand. Don’t let the light go out!”
The post Treasure Trove spotlights a menorah designed in the early years of the State of Israel appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd
Magdeburg Christmas market, December 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang
i24 News – A suspected terrorist plowed a vehicle into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, west of the capital Berlin, killing at least five and injuring dozens more.
Local police confirmed that the suspect was a Saudi national born in 1974 and acting alone.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his concern about the incident, saying that “reports from Magdeburg suggest something bad. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
Police declined to give casualty numbers, confirming only a large-scale operation at the market, where people had gathered to celebrate in the days leading up to the Christmas holidays.
The post Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister
A person waves a flag adopted by the new Syrian rulers, as people gather during a celebration called by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) near the Umayyad Mosque, after the ousting of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, Photo: December 20, 2024. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo
Syria’s new rulers have appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency which toppled Bashar al-Assad, as defense minister in the interim government, an official source said on Saturday.
Abu Qasra, who is also known by the nom de guerre Abu Hassan 600, is a senior figure in the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group which led the campaign that ousted Assad this month. He led numerous military operations during Syria’s revolution, the source said.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa discussed “the form of the military institution in the new Syria” during a meeting with armed factions on Saturday, state news agency SANA reported.
Abu Qasra during the meeting sat next to Sharaa, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, photos published by SANA showed.
Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said this week that the defense ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Assad’s army.
Bashir, who formerly led an HTS-affiliated administration in the northwestern province of Idlib, has said he will lead a three-month transitional government. The new administration has not declared plans for what will happen after that.
Earlier on Saturday, the ruling General Command named Asaad Hassan al-Shibani as foreign minister, SANA said. A source in the new administration told Reuters that this step “comes in response to the aspirations of the Syrian people to establish international relations that bring peace and stability.”
Shibani, a 37-year-old graduate of Damascus University, previously led the political department of the rebels’ Idlib government, the General Command said.
Sharaa’s group was part of al Qaeda until he broke ties in 2016. It had been confined to Idlib for years until going on the offensive in late November, sweeping through the cities of western Syria and into Damascus as the army melted away.
Sharaa has met with a number of international envoys this week. He has said his primary focus is on reconstruction and achieving economic development and that he is not interested in engaging in any new conflicts.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
Washington designated Sharaa a terrorist in 2013, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria. US officials said on Friday that Washington would remove a $10 million bounty on his head.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions.
The post Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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