RSS
Cartoon of Israeli Hostage Trampling Bloody Arab Bodies Is Sanitized by New York Times
A taxi passes by in front of The New York Times head office, Feb. 7, 2013. Photo: Reuters / Carlo Allegri
“After He Ran a Cartoon on the War in Gaza, Gannett Fired Him,” is the headline the New York Times put over its recent report about the Palm Beach Post firing an editorial page editor.
The headline, sympathetic to the ousted editor, set the tone for the whole article. The Times dispatch, though delivered in the disguise of an objective news article, sided clearly with the fired editor instead of with the local Jewish community or the newspaper’s ownership. A more accurate headline might have been, “After He Ran an Antisemitic Cartoon Depicting a Released Israeli Hostage as Trampling on the Bloody Corpses of ‘Over 40,000 Palestinians,’ Gannett Fired Him.”
The Times article was by Benjamin Mullin, a reporter who covers the media industry. Had the Times chosen to assign the piece to a reporter on the Israel beat, or one who covers antisemitism (which would be a worthwhile beat for the Times to establish, and especially timely since there’s a new Trump administration and the newspaper has a previous pattern of suddenly discovering a new concern about antisemitism when Republicans are in power), the result might have been different.
The headline was just one of many ways in which the Times signaled its slant on this story.
The article referred to “a local Jewish group that claimed the cartoon was antisemitic.” It wasn’t just “a local Jewish group.” It was the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County, which is the central umbrella institution of the local organized Jewish community. “Claimed” is a loaded verb. Even the Times‘ own stylebook acknowledges that “claim is not a neutral synonym for say. It means assert a right or contend something that may be open to question.”
Nor was it only the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County that called the cartoon antisemitic. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis also described the cartoon as antisemitic, noting that it “trivialized the plight of Israeli hostages and promoted antisemitic tropes of Israeli bloodlust.”
The Times could have published the cartoon itself and let the readers judge for themselves. Instead, it used a hyperlink and a bowdlerized text description of the drawing. The Times said, “The image shows two Israeli soldiers rescuing a hostage captured by Hamas. Under the words ‘Some Israeli hostages are home after over a year of merciless war,’ one of the soldiers says, ‘Watch your step’ as he, the rescued hostage and the other soldier walk through a mass of bodies with the label ‘over 40,000 Palestinians killed.’”
That description omitted one of the most outrageous aspects of the cartoon: that the Palestinian bodies were colored red, as if drenched in blood.
The Times description also omitted that one Israeli soldier was toting a machine gun, portraying the Israeli military — not the terrorist group Hamas, which was invisible and not present in the cartoon — as culpable for all the killing. The Palestinians were all depicted as unarmed, notwithstanding that “upwards of 17,000” of Gazans killed are said by Andrew Fox to have been “Hamas and affiliated combatants.”
The Times reported that the editor, Tony Doris, “said in an interview last week that the cartoon was antiwar, not antisemitic.” Yet if the cartoon was “antiwar,” why demonize only the Israeli soldiers while ignoring that Hamas is also waging war and began the present conflict by invading Israel and seizing hostages on Oct. 7, 2023? Opposing only Israel’s war and not Hamas’s isn’t antiwar; it’s anti-Israel. It suggests a double standard for Israel that is not only consistent with bias against Jews but also meets the definition of antisemitism used by the US government.
The Times didn’t seem to push or challenge the fired editor on that point; it just parroted his point of view.
As is frequent in these cases, the Times trotted out the ancestry of one of the protagonists as a supposed defense against the antisemitism charge. The Times reported, “In an interview on Saturday, he rejected the idea that the cartoon was antisemitic, saying it was simply a case of, ‘this war’s gone on long enough.’ [The cartoonist, Jeff] Danziger, an Army veteran whose father is Jewish, also said that his service as an intelligence officer has made him critical of war.” The Times told us that Danziger’s “father is Jewish,” as if that is relevant somehow, but it didn’t say what religion Danziger is, if he has any. Why was the father’s religion or Jewish status worth including but not Danziger’s own, or lack of it?
Back in 2019, after a firestorm of condemnation, the Times’ own headline said, “Times Apologizes for Publishing Anti-Semitic Cartoon.”
Back then, Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote of “the almost torrential criticism of Israel and the mainstreaming of anti-Zionism, including by this paper, which has become so common that people have been desensitized to its inherent bigotry. So long as anti-Semitic arguments or images are framed, however speciously, as commentary about Israel, there will be a tendency to view them as a form of political opinion, not ethnic prejudice.”
Sadly, six years later, the Times is still committing the same mistakes, this time in reporting on the cartoon controversy at the paper in Palm Beach.
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 Cartoon of Israeli Hostage Trampling Bloody Arab Bodies Is Sanitized by New York Times first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Two Russian Regions Block Telegram App Over Security Fears
The Telegram logo is seen on a screen of a smartphone in this picture illustration taken April 13, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin.
Authorities in two Russian regions have blocked the Telegram messenger because of concerns that the app could be used by enemies, a regional digital development minister was quoted as saying by the TASS state news agency on Saturday.
Dagestan and Chechnya are mainly Muslim regions in southern Russia where intelligence services have registered an increase in militant Islamist activity.
“It (Telegram) is often used by enemies, an example of which is the riots at the Makhachkala airport,” said Yuri Gamzatov, Dagestan’s digital development minister, adding that the decision to block the messenger had been made at the federal level.
Gamzatov was referring to an anti-Israel riot in Dagestan in October 2023, when hundreds of protesters stormed an airport to try to attack passengers arriving on a plane from the Jewish state. No passengers were injured, and authorities have prosecuted several people over the incident.
News of the plane’s arrival had spread on local Telegram channels, where users posted calls for antisemitic violence. Telegram condemned the attack and said it would block the channels.
Telegram did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the blocks in Russia.
Based in Dubai and founded by Russian-born Pavel Durov, the messenger has nearly 1 billion users and is used widely in Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet republics.
Moscow tried but failed to block Telegram in 2018 and has in the past demanded the platform hand over user data. Durov is under formal investigation in France as part of a probe into organized crime on the app.
Gamzatov, the minister in Dagestan, said Telegram could be unblocked in the future, but encouraged users to switch to other messengers in the meantime.
The post Two Russian Regions Block Telegram App Over Security Fears first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Trump’s Scottish Golf Resort Vandalized with Pro-Palestine Graffiti
US President Donald Trump speaks at the White House, in Washington, DC, Feb. 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
US President Donald Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland has been daubed with pro-Palestinian graffiti, with a protest group claiming responsibility.
Local media on Saturday showed images of red paint scrawled across walls at the course with the slogans “Free Gaza” and “Free Palestine” as well as insults against Trump.
“Gaza is not for sale” was also painted on one of the greens and holes dug up on the course.
Palestine Action said it caused the damage, posting on social media platform X: “Whilst Trump attempts to treat Gaza as his property, he should know his own property is within reach.”
Last month, Trump enraged the Arab world by declaring unexpectedly that the United States would take over Gaza, resettle its over 2-million Palestinian population and develop it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Police Scotland said it was investigating.
“Around 4.40am on Saturday, 8 March, 2025, we received a report of damage to the golf course and a premises on Maidens Road, Turnberry,” a Police Scotland spokesperson said, adding that enquiries were ongoing.
Separately on Saturday, a man waving a Palestinian flag climbed the Big Ben tower at London’s Palace of Westminster.
The post Trump’s Scottish Golf Resort Vandalized with Pro-Palestine Graffiti first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Columbia University Promises to Address Trump Administration’s Concerns After $400 Million in Funding Pulled
A student protester parades a Palestinian flag outside the entrance to Hamilton Hall on the campus of Columbia University, in New York, US, April 30, 2024. Photo: Mary Altaffer/Pool via REUTERS
Columbia University’s interim president said the school is working to address the “legitimate concerns” of US President Donald Trump’s administration after $400 million of federal government grants and contracts to the university were canceled over allegations of antisemitism on campus.
In an announcement on Friday, the government cited what it described as antisemitic harassment on and near the school’s New York City campus as the reason for pulling the funding. The university has repeatedly been at the forefront of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel student protest movement since the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent war in Gaza.
“I want to assure the entire Columbia community that we are committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns,” Katrina Armstrong, the university’s interim president, said in a late-night message to alumni on Friday. “To that end, Columbia can, and will, continue to take serious action toward combating antisemitism on our campus.”
The Trump administration said the canceled funding is only a portion of the $5 billion in government grants that has been committed to the school, but the school is bracing for a financial hit.
“There is no question that the cancellation of these funds will immediately impact research and other critical functions of the University, impacting students, faculty, staff, research, and patient care,” Armstrong said.
Federal funding accounted for about $1.3 billion of the university’s $6.6 billion in operating revenue in the 2024 fiscal year, according to a Columbia financial report.
Some Jewish students and staff have been among the pro-Palestinian protesters, and they say their criticism of Israel is being wrongly conflated with antisemitism. Minouche Shafik resigned last year as Columbia’s president after the university’s handling of the protests drew criticism from pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian sides alike.
The administration has declined to say what contracts and grants it has canceled, but the Education Department argues the demonstrations have been unlawful and deprive Jewish students of learning opportunities.
Civil rights groups say the immediate cuts are unconstitutional punishment for protected speech and likely to face legal challenges.
The post Columbia University Promises to Address Trump Administration’s Concerns After $400 Million in Funding Pulled first appeared on Algemeiner.com.