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New York Times Undercounts Israeli Hostages, Smears IDF as ‘Ferocious’
Israelis protest against the government and to show support for the hostages who were kidnapped during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Nov. 30, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Sometimes an entire story about New York Times bias can come packed into two short sentences of a context paragraph.
A recent article in the Times‘ arts section reported on the Jewish Museum in New York acquiring an artwork by Ruth Patir that was originally intended for the Venice Biennale. As part of the story, the Times offered up this encapsulation of events in Israel and Gaza: “Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 and abducted 240 people. The Israeli military responded with a ferocious military campaign in which more than 41,000 people have been killed, according to local health authorities, including many women and children.”
Can you spot the instances of bias?
The Israeli campaign got labeled as “ferocious,” while the Hamas terrorist attack of last Oct. 7 got no pejorative adjective from the Times. “Ferocious” was just the latest loaded modifier the Times has slapped on Israel’s careful military campaign, which the newspaper has, in its news columns, also called “brutal” and “aggressive.”
The Times has further made a point of mentioning that the Gazans killed include “many women and children.” Yet those killed and abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7 also included many women and children. Why mention the presence of women and children among the Gazans but not among the Israelis? It’s a double standard.
While I’m willing to acknowledge that there surely are innocent children who have been killed in Gaza, it’s also worth mentioning that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both ferocious terrorist groups, have themselves deliberately used children as combatants and as human shields. And that some of the innocent children may be victims of misfires of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad rockets aimed at Israel.
In addition, the “abducted 240 people” sum inaccurately understated the number. The Times elsewhere has reported that “about 250 hostages were captured in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct, 7, 2023.” The 250 number appeared in another article in the same print edition of the Times as the 240 number, leaving readers at a loss as to which figure to believe. The article about the art exhibit even included a hyperlink to a Times article reporting, “In all, about 250 people were abducted on Oct. 7, according to Israeli officials.” A Washington Post article identified 251 individually by name.
I wrote to the author of the Times article, asking why mention the “women and children” in one case but not the other. I also asked, “Is 240 just a typo that needs correcting from hitting the 4 key instead of the 5, or is the arts section and the woke editors there keeping its own lower count of kidnapped-by-Hamas people than the rest of the Times is?”
No correction has appeared, and I have received no response from the Times to my inquiry. Short of publishing a correction and an editor’s note apologizing for the slanted treatment, what are they going to say? The article speaks for itself, the latest example in a long series of what the former national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, has called the Times’ “constant” anti-Israel bias.
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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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.
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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.
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Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
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