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New York Times State Department Reporter Emerges as Foe of Israel
The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The New York Times reporter who covers the US State Department, Edward Wong, has had a rocky past few weeks, inflicting a series of half-truths and outright falsehoods on Times readers.
Wong’s technique sometimes is to write a sentence that is technically accurate but leaves out so much significant context that it winds up being functionally inaccurate, or at least highly misleading.
Consider, for example, this sentence in a recent Times article about American military aid to Israel: “The annual aid had been about $3 billion, but Mr. [President Joe] Biden increased that amount after Israel began waging war in Gaza after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks by Hamas.”
Actually, it wasn’t only “Mr. Biden” who increased the aid, but also Congress, which under the US Constitution has the power to appropriate funds. There have been several votes on this since the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel, and they’ve been overwhelming. For example, an April 20, 2024 House vote on the “Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act” was 366 in favor and 58 opposed. An April 2024 vote in the Senate was 79 to 18. Even before the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, the aid levels had been at $3.3 billion in foreign military financing and an additional $500 million a year in cooperative missile defense funding.
Wong uses the same half-truth technique in a different sentence in the same article: “At one point, Mr. Biden said he was withholding a single shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel to try to dissuade it from destroying Rafah, a city in southern Gaza, but the Israeli military reduced most of Rafah to rubble anyway.”
This conveniently omits that the Israeli military didn’t merely reduce “most of Rafah to rubble,” but that also the Rafah governorate is where Israel killed the leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, and also where Israel rescued two hostages, Fernando Marman and Louis Har. It further omits that the humanitarian catastrophe that the Biden administration warned would ensue after a Rafah invasion by Israel — “I have studied the maps. There’s nowhere for those folks to go,” Vice President Kamala Harris said — failed to materialize.
Wong writes that “some Democrats in Congress and their aides are certain to be furious at the administration for trying to push through the $8 billion package of weapons sales to Israel.” Under the Constitution, the “aides” don’t have a say in the matter; the members of Congress do. The $8 billion is part of a $15 billion package that passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. Any Democrats or Republicans who wanted to block the weapons had their opportunity, and they lost the vote.
What is driving Wong’s selective reporting?
Wong made his own views clear in a “news analysis” published in the Times. That article claimed, without evidence, that, “Mr. Biden’s unwavering public support of an Israel led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as it wages a deadly war against Hamas in Gaza has been especially costly in terms of American and global public opinion.” That’s not “news analysis”; it’s a false claim.
The same piece claimed, without evidence, that “no foreign policy issue has been more divisive for Mr. Biden than his support for Israel throughout its war in Gaza.” Actually, aid to Ukraine has been more divisive; the Ukraine aid passed the House only by a 311-112 margin, still overwhelming, but narrower than the Israel aid vote.
During the US presidential campaign, Donald Trump criticized Biden for not being supportive enough of Israel, saying in one debate that Biden had become “like a Palestinian.” If Wong thinks Biden’s problem with American public opinion is that Biden’s been too pro-Israel, it’s evidence of the far-left Times readership and social circles of Times journalists, not any indication of the underlying reality.
The headline and subheadline of the Wong news analysis claim, “Biden and Aides Courted Allies Who Undermined US Goals/The Biden administration has been caught by surprise when partners like South Korea and Israel have acted against US.interests and principles.”
What “US interests and principles” has Israel acted against?
The article claims, “America’s alliances and partnerships under Mr. Biden’s stewardship have been complicated. Key partners have acted counter to the values that Mr. Biden has espoused, notably democracy, rule of law, and human rights. In some cases, those countries have undermined the power and standing of the United States in the world.” Yet not a single example is provided of how Israel has “undermined the power and standing of the United States in the world.”
Nor is the counterfactual example considered of how it would have undermined the power and standing of the United States in the world if the US had chosen instead to abandon Israel to defeat by Iranian-backed terrorists hoping to wipe Israel off the map. Is that the policy that Wong would have preferred, a Hamas takeover of Israel along the lines of the Taliban takeover of Kabul? Would that have been a big boost to American prestige? How would an alternative policy of allowing Israel to be conquered by Iran-backed terrorists have been consistent with American values of democracy and human rights?
The talking head that Wong musters to support his article’s point of view is Matt Duss, an extreme aide to extreme socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Sanders recently ran afoul of the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, who posted, “The idea that @BernieSanders voluntarily would sit for an interview with Hasan Piker, an individual who routinely has used his platform to spread anti-Jewish tropes, amplify propaganda from a designated terrorist group, and promote toxic anti-Zionism, says an awful lot about the senior senator from Vermont and the normalization of antisemitism.”
Instead of holding Sanders to account for his extremism, the New York Times and Wong choose to amplify his point of view and basically endorse it as reasonable. It’s blame-Israel-and-its-USsupporters-for-everything-that-goes-wrong.
And Wong has a track record. He was out on social media claiming falsely that “the Israeli military has killed more than 100 Palestinian journalists in Gaza in the last year,” omitting that many of the so-called journalists were actually terrorist operatives, according to Israel. I previously described a June 2023 article by Wong as “so egregiously slanted against Israel that it reads as if it were dictated by the Iranian information ministry.” Perhaps it’s time for the Times editors to reassign Wong to a different beat, or counsel him that if he’s determined to pursue an anti-Israel advocacy agenda, he might find himself better suited applying for a position elsewhere.
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 State Department Reporter Emerges as Foe of Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US House Members Ask Marco Rubio to Bar Turkey From Rejoining F-35 Program
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Nathan Howard
A bipartisan coalition of more than 40 US lawmakers is pressing Secretary of State Marco Rubio to prevent Turkey from rejoining the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, citing ongoing national security concerns and violations of US law.
Members of Congress on Thursday warned that lifting existing sanctions or readmitting Turkey to the US F-35 fifth-generation fighter program would “jeopardize the integrity of F-35 systems” and risk exposing sensitive US military technology to Russia. The letter pointed to Ankara’s 2017 purchase of the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system, despite repeated US warnings, as the central reason Turkey was expelled from the multibillion-dollar fighter jet program in 2019.
“The S-400 poses a direct threat to US aircraft, including the F-16 and F-35,” the lawmakers wrote. “If operated alongside these platforms, it risks exposing sensitive military technology to Russian intelligence.”
The group of signatories, spanning both parties, stressed that Turkey still possesses the Russian weapons systems and has shown “no willingness to comply with US law.” They urged Rubio and the Trump administration to uphold the Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) and maintain Ankara’s exclusion from the F-35 program until the S-400s are fully removed.
The letter comes after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed during a NATO summit in June that Ankara and Washington have begun discussing Turkey’s readmission into the program.
Lawmakers argued that reversing course now would undermine both US credibility and allied confidence in American defense commitments. They also warned it could disrupt development of the next-generation fighter jet announced by the administration earlier this year.
“This is not a partisan issue,” the letter emphasized. “We must continue to hold allies and adversaries alike accountable when their actions threaten US interests.”
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US Lawmakers Urge Treasury to Investigate Whether Irish Bill Targeting Israel Violates Anti-Boycott Law
A pro-Hamas demonstration in Ireland led by nationalist party Sinn Fein. Photo: Reuters/Clodagh Kilcoyne
A group of US lawmakers is calling on the Treasury Department to investigate and potentially penalize Ireland over proposed legislation targeting Israeli goods, warning that the move could trigger sanctions under longstanding US anti-boycott laws.
In a letter sent on Thursday to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, 16 Republican members of Congress expressed “serious concerns” about Ireland’s recent legislative push to ban trade with territories under Israeli administration, including the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.
The letter, spearheaded by Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY), called for the US to “send a clear signal” that any attempts to economically isolate Israel will “carry consequences.”
The Irish measure, introduced by Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Simon Harris, seeks to prohibit the import of goods and services originating from what the legislation refers to as “occupied Palestinian territories,” including Israeli communities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Supporters say the bill aligns with international law and human rights principles, while opponents, including the signatories of the letter, characterize it as a direct extension of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel as a step toward the destruction of the world’s lone Jewish state.
Some US lawmakers have also described the Irish bill as an example of “antisemitic hate” that could risk hurting relations between Dublin and Washington.
“Such policies not only promote economic discrimination but also create legal uncertainty for US companies operating in Ireland,” the lawmakers wrote in this week’s letter, urging Bessent to determine whether Ireland’s actions qualify as participation in an “unsanctioned international boycott” under Section 999 of the Internal Revenue Code, also known as the Ribicoff Amendment.
Under that statute, the Treasury Department is required to maintain a list of countries that pressure companies to comply with international boycotts not sanctioned by the US. Inclusion on the list carries tax-reporting burdens and possible penalties for American firms and individuals doing business in those nations.
“If the criteria are met, Ireland should be added to the boycott list,” the letter said, arguing that such a step would help protect US companies from legal exposure and reaffirm American opposition to economic efforts aimed at isolating Israel.
Legal experts have argued that if the Irish bill becomes law, it could chase American capital out of the country while also hurting companies that do business with Ireland. Under US law, it is illegal for American companies to participate in boycotts of Israel backed by foreign governments. Several US states have also gone beyond federal restrictions to pass separate measures that bar companies from receiving state contracts if they boycott Israel.
Ireland has been one of the fiercest critics of Israel on the international stage since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza, leading the Jewish state to shutter its embassy in Dublin.
Last year, Ireland officially recognized a Palestinian state, a decision that Israel described as a “reward for terrorism.”
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US Families File Lawsuit Accusing UNRWA of Supporting Hamas, Hezbollah
A truck, marked with United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) logo, crosses into Egypt from Gaza, at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, during a temporary truce between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah, Egypt, Nov. 27, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
American families of victims of Hamas and Hezbollah attacks have filed a lawsuit against the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, accusing the organization of violating US antiterrorism laws by providing material support to the Islamist terror groups behind the deadly assaults.
Last week, more than 200 families filed a lawsuit in a Washington, DC district court accusing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) of violating US antiterrorism laws by providing funding and support to Hamas and Hezbollah, both designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
The lawsuit alleges that UNRWA employs staff with direct ties to the Iran-backed terror group, including individuals allegedly involved in carrying out attacks against the Jewish state.
However, UNRWA has firmly denied the allegations, labeling them as “baseless” and condemning the lawsuit as “meritless, absurd, dangerous, and morally reprehensible.”
According to the organization, the lawsuit is part of a wider campaign of “misinformation and lawfare” targeting its work in the Gaza Strip, where it says Palestinians are enduring “mass, deliberate and forced starvation.”
The UN agency reports that more than 150,000 donors across the United States have supported its programs providing food, medical aid, education, and trauma assistance in the war-torn enclave amid the ongoing conflict.
In a press release, UNRWA USA affirmed that it will continue its humanitarian efforts despite facing legal challenges aimed at undermining its work.
“Starvation does not pause for politics. Neither will we,” the statement read.
Last year, Israeli security documents revealed that of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees in Gaza, 440 were actively involved in Hamas’s military operations, with 2,000 registered as Hamas operatives.
According to these documents, at least nine UNRWA employees took part directly in the terror group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
Israeli officials also uncovered a large Hamas data center beneath UNRWA headquarters, with cables running through the facility above, and found that Hamas also stored weapons in other UNRWA sites.
The UN agency has also aligned with Hamas in efforts against the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an Israeli and US-backed program that delivers aid directly to Palestinians, blocking Hamas from diverting supplies for terror activities and selling them at inflated prices.
These Israeli intelligence documents also revealed that a senior Hamas leader, killed in an Israeli strike in September 2024, had served as the head of the UNRWA teachers’ union in Lebanon, where Lebanon is based,
UNRWA’s education programs have been found by IMPACT-se, an international organization that monitors global education, to contribute to the radicalization of younger generations of Palestinians.