RSS
‘Recalcitrant,’ ‘Bellicose,’ ‘Ultranationalist’: New York Times Uses Harsh Labels for Israel — but Not Hamas
Israeli soldiers operate in the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in this handout picture released on March 5, 2024. Photo: Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS
Another day, another snarky New York Times adjective hurled at Israel — but not at the terrorists Israel is fighting.
The Times‘ Jerusalem bureau chief, Patrick Kingsley, had a story up on the newspaper’s internet homepage saying Israel’s “governing coalition depends on support of ultranationalist leaders who are opposed to a permanent truce.” It also said, “[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s grip on power relies on the support of two far-right parties opposed to any agreement that would leave Hamas in power in Gaza.” And it referred to Bezalel Smotrich, “a far-right firebrand whose party holds the balance of power in Mr. Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.”
What’s remarkable here is the double standard. Israel and Israelis get pejorative labels: “ultranationalist,” “far-right.” Yet the Times seems to have abandoned even its prior practice of using the “militant” euphemism to describe Hamas, which is a terrorist organization. Hamas gets “no labels” treatment from the Times article, aside from a passing description of its negotiating position as “flexible” in contrast to Israel’s “hardball.” This is a Times news article, not an opinion piece or even something carrying a “news analysis” label. Where are the Times editors who are supposed to be preventing and policing this sort of blatant tilt?
The Kingsley story also misled Times readers in that it was inaccurate to suggest, as his article did, that opposition to leaving Hamas in power in Gaza is confined to Israel’s “far right.” Such opposition is a widely held view in Israel, and, for that matter, in America, at least outside the far-left New York Times.
This was only the latest in a series of recent examples of the Times slapping nasty names on Israel while staying studiously neutral in describing Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran.
An article in the July 3 edition of the Times that carried the bylines of Times bigfeet Peter Baker and David Sanger described Israel as “a recalcitrant ally whose continued war against Hamas was creating yet another threat to a second term.” Hamas and Iran, which are both mentioned in the Times article, got no insulting descriptive label, not even the apparently passé “militant.” Yet Israel is called “recalcitrant,” which my Webster’s Second translates to “making obstinate opposition; refusing to obey authority, custom, regulation, etc.; stubbornly defiant; noncompliant; refractory.” To a sophisticated ear, this may even echo antisemitic tropes; a Louis D. Brandeis Center Fact Sheet on the “elements of antisemitic discourse” mentions “intransigence,” which is close to stubborn defiance.
Another news article, on page one of the July 5 New York Times, said, “Israeli officials have voiced increasingly bellicose threats of a potential invasion of Lebanon to push Hezbollah away from the border.” Bellicose, my Webster’s Second says, means “warlike; disposed to quarrel or fight.” Hezbollah was described in the same article more politely as “the politically powerful Lebanese armed group.” That article, too, slapped a “far-right” label on Smotrich and a “right-wing” label on the Israeli government, while applying no label at all — no label whatsoever — to Hamas.
It’s outrageous — the Times labels Israel as “bellicose” and “right-wing,” while Hamas gets no label at all and Hezbollah, which is also a terrorist group, just gets “politically powerful,” as if it is some American advocacy group like the American Federation of Teachers or the National Rifle Association.
The Times has also slapped the “ferocious,” “aggressive,” and “rabidly partisan” labels recently on Israel and its allies in other articles that typically also failed to apply similarly tendentious descriptions to Hamas or Hezbollah — or Iran, which backs both Islamist terrorist groups.
For Israel and its friends, it’s pick the Times insult of the day. For Iran and its friends, the Times adopts “no labels.”
I’ve been in and around the news business for three and a half decades at this point, a lot of them as an editor, and, at nearly every paper I worked at, invariably reporters would try to slip loaded words like this into news articles to see what they could get away with. Good editors take those words out to protect the newspaper’s reputation for fairness and accuracy. Or at least they used to.
At a minimum, if such words are used, they need to be applied to all sides rather than just one side. Otherwise, the Times risks earning a hard-to-shake “rapidly partisan” label for its own newsroom.
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 ‘Recalcitrant,’ ‘Bellicose,’ ‘Ultranationalist’: New York Times Uses Harsh Labels for Israel — but Not Hamas first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Trudeau would enforce ICC arrest warrants against Netanyahu, Gallant for post-Oct. 7 war crimes in Gaza
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested that Canada would abide by any rulings of the International Criminal Court in The Hague if and when comes to carrying out a pair of […]
The post Trudeau would enforce ICC arrest warrants against Netanyahu, Gallant for post-Oct. 7 war crimes in Gaza appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
RSS
Montreal’s Dawson College shut down by student strike in solidarity with Palestine; Concordia remains open despite protests
Dawson College in Montreal shut down classes for almost 10,000 students on Thursday Nov. 21, after students voted 447-247 in favour of a strike to demonstrate solidarity with Gaza. The […]
The post Montreal’s Dawson College shut down by student strike in solidarity with Palestine; Concordia remains open despite protests appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
RSS
US ‘Rejects’ ICC Arrest Warrants for Israeli Officials, Lawmakers Vow to Retaliate With Sanctions
The International Criminal Court, The Hague, Netherlands. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
The US castigated the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its decision on Thursday to issue arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, with lawmakers in Congress promising to seek retribution against the court once President-elect Donald Trump retakes the White House in January.
The ICC rejected an appeal by Israel to dismiss the warrants, instead charging Netanyahu and Gallant with “crimes against humanity and war crimes” in the Gaza conflict. The international body accused the Israeli officials of using “starvation as a method of warfare,” as well as “murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.” The court also claimed it discovered “reasonable grounds” to slap Netanyahu and Gallant with charges of “intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population.”
Israeli officials vehemently denied the charges, denouncing the ICC’s decision as politically motivated and based on false allegations.
The White House issued a statement condemning the ICC’s announcement.
“The United States fundamentally rejects the court’s decision to issue arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials. We remain deeply concerned by the prosecutor’s rush to seek arrest warrants and the troubling process errors that led to this decision,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, has come under fire for initially making his surprise demand for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on the same day in May that he suddenly canceled a long-planned visit to both Gaza and Israel to collect evidence of alleged war crimes. The last-second cancellation infuriated US and British leaders, according to Reuters, which reported that the trip would have offered Israeli leaders a first opportunity to present their position and outline any action they were taking to respond to the war crime allegations.
Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), Trump[s pick to serve as his incoming national security adviser, wrote on X/Twitter that the ICC will face a “strong response” when the next administration takes office in January.
“These allegations have been refuted by the US government,” Waltz wrote in a post on X. “Israel has lawfully defended its people & borders from genocidal terrorists. You can expect a strong response to the antisemitic bias of the ICC & UN come January.”
In May, the ICC chief prosecutor officially requested arrest warrants for the Israeli premier, Gallant, and three Hamas terrorist leaders — Yahya Sinwar, Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif), and Ismail Haniyeh — accusing all five men of “bearing criminal responsibility” for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Israel or the Gaza Strip. The three Hamas leaders have since been killed, and Gallant was recently fired as Israel’s defense minister.
US and Israeli officials subsequently issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza with its massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
A flood of prominent Republican lawmakers repudiated the decision by the ICC and have vowed to sanction the organization.
“The Court is a dangerous joke. It is now time for the US Senate to act and sanction this irresponsible body. The Court defied every concept of fundamental fairness and legitimized a corrupt prosecutor’s actions,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wrote on social media.
Graham also called on Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the current Senate majority leader, to advance bipartisan legislation that would sanction the ICC over its targeting of Israeli officials.
Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the Senate Republican Leader-elect, lambasted the ICC’s arrest warrants as “outrageous.” He vowed to place legislation on the floor to sanction the international court next year if the current Senate does not take action.
“The ICC’s arrest warrant against Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Gallant is outrageous, unlawful, and dangerous. Leader Schumer should bring a bill to the floor sanctioning the ICC. If he chooses not to act, the new Senate Republican majority next year will,” Thune wrote on X/Twitter.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) wrote a statement in agreement with Thune, calling on the ICC to “abandon its unlawful pursuit of arrest warrants against Israeli officials.” Collins added that if the court refuses to drop the sanctions, “the Senate should immediately consider the bipartisan legislation passed by the House to sanction the ICC.”
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) demanded the ICC reverse course on the warrants or risk being sanctioned by the United States.
“The ICC has lost all credibility. Instead of being an anti-Israel propaganda machine, it must reverse its unlawful arrest warrants against Israeli officials, or face sanctions,” Ernst wrote.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) wrote that “it’s past time to sanction the ICC.”
Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) lambasted the court as “illegitimate” and called on Congress to punish the international organization.
“Congress should immediately pass the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act so that President Trump can sanction ICC officials on day one,” Budd posted on X/Twitter.
Some Democratic lawmakers also bashed the ICC, calling on the Biden administration to take swift action against the international court.
“I’m outraged by the ICC’s politically motivated efforts to target Israel and equate it to the Hamas terrorists who intentionally murdered, raped, and kidnapped civilians on October 7. I’m once again calling on [President Joe Biden] to use his authority to swiftly respond to this overreach,” Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) wrote.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), a lawmaker who has positioned himself as a stalwart ally of Israel in the year following the Oct. 7 slaughters, dismissed the ICC’s warrants as having “no standing, relevance, or path.”
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), arguably the most vocal Democratic supporter of Israel in the House of Representatives, wrote that the ICC decision “represents the weaponization of international law at its most egregious.” He added that the ICC “has set a precedent for criminalizing self-defense.”
“The ICC ignores the cause and context of the war. Israel did not initiate the war,” Torres wrote in a statement.
“None of that context seems to matter to the kangaroo court of the ICC, which cannot let facts get in the way of its ideological crusade against the Jewish State. The ICC should be sanctioned not for enforcing the law but for distorting it beyond recognition,” he added.
In May, the House passed the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, which would place sanctions on the ICC for “any effort to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute any protected person of the United States and its allies.” In October, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) urged Schumer to bring the bill to the Senate floor for a vote.
The post US ‘Rejects’ ICC Arrest Warrants for Israeli Officials, Lawmakers Vow to Retaliate With Sanctions first appeared on Algemeiner.com.