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Double Standards as New York Times Accuses IDF of Using Palestinians as Human Shields
Replete with a headline designed to tarnish Israel’s entire military, The New York Times recently published an investigation alleging that IDF soldiers were using Gazans as human shields during operations in the Gaza Strip.
In order to make its case, The New York Times says it “interviewed 16 Israeli soldiers and officials who knew about the practice, as well as three Palestinians, on the record, who were forced to take part in it.”
While the small number of Palestinians are named, the Israelis are not. It is always problematic to present anonymous testimony in a story where we don’t know the motivations behind those who are talking to the journalists.
The Role of ‘Breaking the Silence’
Two of the Israelis, however, were connected to The New York Times through Breaking the Silence, whose motivations are very clear.
The organization, which was founded in 2004 by former IDF soldiers who are highly critical of Israel, claims to “expose the public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories” using testimonies that are purported to be “meticulously researched” while “all facts are cross-checked with additional eyewitnesses.”
However, as its critics have repeatedly alleged, the group appears to frequently rely on “either fabricated or exaggerated” testimonies from former soldiers — some of whom received a salary from Breaking the Silence — and are “motivated by financial and political concerns to further a pro-Palestinian agenda.”
Breaking the Silence also provided two photos to The New York Times for its story. Given the lack of context and the poor visual quality of both photos, it is impossible to confirm whether these images are evidence of anything let alone the captions that allege IDF misdemeanors.
It would be naive to suggest that every soldier in the IDF or any other comparable army behaves in an exemplary fashion.
Only this last September, The New Yorker published a database of what it said is the “largest known collection of investigations of possible war crimes committed [by the US military] in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11—nearly eight hundred incidents in all.”
Some of the alleged crimes include “the case of soldiers raping a fourteen-year-old girl and subsequently murdering her and her family; the alleged killing of a man by a Green Beret who cut off his victim’s ear and kept it; and cruelty toward detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and at the Bagram Air Base detention facility.”
All of this is not to claim that the IDF is necessarily more moral than the American military, although there is certainly a good case to be made. The point is that nobody would condemn the entirety of the US Army as an immoral entity that brings shame to its country despite the behavior of a minority of its troops.
Yet when it comes to New York Times coverage of and investigations into the IDF, it’s impossible to ignore the Gray Lady’s wider agenda that continuously seeks to delegitimize Israeli self-defense against the terrorists who are currently attacking it from multiple fronts.
For example, only days ago, the paper published an article that accused Israel of committing war crimes and “shooting children at point-blank range.” That story also relied on questionable testimonies and even more questionable X-rays purporting to show IDF bullets lodged in the heads of Palestinian children. The very authenticity of the X-rays was called into question, as the entire story was torn apart online.
When it comes to verifying evidence and testimonies, The New York Times isn’t doesn’t exactly cover itself in glory.
Who Actually Uses Human Shields?
But hasn’t The New York Times also investigated Hamas’ use of human shields?
Yes and no.
On September 10, 2024, it published this story:
Yet despite the headline, the term “human shields” does not appear even once in the body of the article.
Nowhere is there an examination of how Hamas deliberately, as a policy, embeds itself within civilian infrastructure as a means of protecting its terrorists and their weaponry from Israel. Nowhere does it address how Hamas leaders are fully prepared to sacrifice innocent Gazans in pursuit of their own sick ideological goals.
Indeed, the entire concept of human shields only works if you are facing an enemy that values human life and is not prepared to toss International Humanitarian Law and the Laws of Warfare into the wind.
Double Standards
But while Israel is committed to upholding those laws, the other side, Hamas plays by different rules.
Of course, the IDF should be held to these standards, and accountability is important to maintain them. That does not, however, give The New York Times a free pass to exercise double standards when it comes to the issue of human shields.
When @nytimes uses individual cases that go against the IDF’s own Code of Ethics to tarnish Israel’s entire army yet fails to address Hamas’ policy of using Gaza’s entire population as human shields, that’s not journalism, it’s a double standard. https://t.co/TnITu8Mmgv
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 14, 2024
Notably, it appears that while The New York Times is content to treat the IDF using human shields as fact, when it comes to Hamas, the terrorist organization’s use of human shields is treated as an Israeli claim — despite evidence from Hamas operatives and leaders confirming this policy.
For example:
“Al-Shifa, Israeli officials have argued, is an example of Hamas’s willingness to use hospitals as cover and turn civilians into human shields.”
“The Israeli military says that Hamas has ‘cynically exploited’ schools, hospitals and shelters, using them as bases and civilians as human shields.”
When asked by The Times of Israel about the Times story, the IDF responded that “the orders and instructions of the IDF forbid using civilians in Gaza who were arrested in the field for military missions,” adding that “The orders and instructions are made clear regularly to soldiers in the field during the war.”
This is key. What The New York Times won’t say is that all of the soldiers who spoke out have the option of reporting what they allege to have seen directly to a functioning investigatory system.
As the IDF explains:
IDF forces are obligated to report incidents that raise suspicion for violations of the law or IDF orders. Any report (submitted by IDF forces or received otherwise), complaint, or allegation that suggests misconduct by IDF forces, undergoes an initial examination process, irrespective of its source.
In certain cases, the report, complaint, or claim received raises prima facie a reasonable suspicion for criminal misconduct (such as concrete allegations that raise a reasonable suspicion of looting or the abuse of detainees). In such cases, the MAG promptly orders to launch a criminal investigation. Criminal investigations of alleged misconduct occurring in the context of operational activity are conducted by a specialized department under the IDF Military Police Criminal Investigation Division, the National Unit for Operational Affairs. The unit’s work is directed by the MAG.
Put simply, there is an Israeli mechanism for investigating the very accusations that The New York Times has highlighted. In addition, Israel benefits from a multitude of civil society organizations and a free press that exists to hold those in power accountable.
The New York Times, however, is only interested in advocating for Palestinian welfare when it sees an opportunity to malign Israel. The IDF is certainly not beyond criticism or reproach. But is it too much to ask for The New York Times to ditch the double standards?
Probably, yes.
The author the Editorial Director of HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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Trump Administration Announces New Antisemitism Investigations Into 55 Universities
Linda McMahon, US education secretary, during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, on Feb. 26, 2025. Photo: Al Drago/Pool/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The US Department of Education has added dozens of colleges and universities to the list of institutions it will investigate for civil rights violations stemming from their alleged failure to address campus antisemitism.
“The department is deeply disappointed that Jewish students studying on elite US campuses continue to fear for their safety amid the relentless antisemitic eruptions that have severely disrupted campus life for more than a year,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said on Monday in a statement. “US colleges and universities benefit from enormous public investments funded by US taxpayers. That support is a privilege, and it is contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal antidiscrimination laws.”
McMahon named 55 institutions, public and private, in total that were not included in the administration’s February announcement of five investigations of antisemitism at Columbia University, Northwestern University, Portland State University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
The new schools include: Harvard University, Swarthmore College, Drexel University, and Princeton University — all of which have struggled with antisemitic anti-Israel activity and pro-Hamas agitation, as The Algemeiner has previously reported.
Since Hamas’s invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Harvard has seen its law school student government issue a resolution which falsely accused Israel of genocide; its students quote terrorists during an “Apartheid Week” event held in April; and dozens of its students and faculty participate in an illegal pro-Hamas encampment attended by members of a group that shared an antisemitic cartoon.
Additionally, many Harvard students openly cheered Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, which included sexual assault and child abduction, and a mob led by the president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review followed, surrounded, and intimidated a Jewish student, screaming “Shame! Shame! Shame!” into his ears.
After these incidents and more, Harvard fought tooth and nail to discredit lawsuits which alleged that its response to campus antisemitism amounted to the enabling of discriminatory behavior in violation of federal civil rights law. Harvard eventually settled multiple complaints out of court, but at least one plaintiff, Harvard alumnus Shabbos Kestenbaum, refused to be a party to the agreements, arguing that they allowed the university to evade accountability for its alleged indifference to antisemitism.
At Swarthmore College, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) recently raided and occupied the college’s Parrish Hall dressed like Hamas fighters, their faces wrapped with and concealed by keffiyehs. By the time the college formally warned the students that their behavior would trigger disciplinary measures, they had shouted slogans through bullhorns, attempted to break into offices that had been locked to keep them out, and pounded the doors of others that refused to admit them access. Meanwhile, SJP collaborators reportedly circumvented security’s lockdown of the building to smuggle food inside. Several students then grew impatient and attempted to end the lockdown themselves by raiding the building, and in doing so caused a physical altercation with security, whom they proceeded to pelt with expletives and other imprecations.
The Swarthmore administration responded to the incident by barring SJ from operating on its campus while school officials investigate the incident.
In May, a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” installed at Drexel University in Philadelphia forced school officials to lock down the campus to protect it from a flood of non-students who joined the demonstration. The previous month, the Raymond G. Perelman Center for Jewish Life was vandalized, with agitators removing large channel letters spelling out Perelman’s name from a brick structure near the entrance to the building. The disturbing act, perpetrated by masked individuals, occurred amid an explosion of antisemitic hate crimes across the US.
Princeton University has drawn scrutiny for, among other reasons, what it teaches students about Israel. In 2023, the International Legal Forum (ILF), a nonprofit organization based in Tel Aviv which advocates for equality in Israel and the Middle East, noted that a syllabus for a course taught at Princeton’s Department of Near Eastern Studies included a book that accuses the Israel Defense Forces of “maiming” Palestinians and harvesting their organs — a claim that critics described as a disturbing blood libel which serves no other purpose than to promote antisemitic conspiracies and tropes.
The Trump administration has moved rapidly to address campus antisemitism since taking office in January.
On Friday, it canceled $400 million in funding to Columbia University as punishment for the school’s alleged harboring of antisemitic faculty, students, and staff and shielding them from disciplinary sanctions. Prior to that, US President Donald Trump issued a highly anticipated executive order which calls for “using all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise … hold to account perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.”
A major provision of the order authorizes the deportation of extremist “alien” student activists, whose support for terrorist organizations, intellectual and material, such as Hamas contributed to fostering antisemitism, violence, and property destruction on college campuses. That policy is currently being challenged in the courts, as a federal judge in Manhattan has halted its application to the case of a male alumnus of Columbia University who was arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after being identified as an architect of the Hamilton Hall building takeover, which took place during the closing weeks of the 2023-2024 academic year.
Trump has defended the attempted deportation and argued that more are forthcoming.
“This is the first of many to come. We know there are more students at Columbia and other universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, antisemitism, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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US Supreme Court Decision Reopens Family’s Efforts to Recover Nazi-Stolen Painting Worth Millions
The US Supreme Court building in Washington, DC, May 17, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
A ruling by the US Supreme Court on Monday has restarted a fight over the ownership of artist Camille Pissarro’s 1897 oil painting “Rue Saint-Honoré, in the afternoon. Effect of rain,” a work stolen by the Nazi regime and now hanging in Madrid’s Thyssen-Bornemisza museum.
Citing a new California law, the justices reversed the decision of lower courts which sided with the Spanish museum against the descendants of German Jewish art collector Julius Cassirer, who purchased the painting from Pissarro in 1900 and whose daughter-in-law Lilly Cassirer Neubauer was coerced into selling the work in order to obtain exit visas for herself and her husband to flee Germany.
The painting is estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars. It features a gray image of a street scene with impressionistic renderings of carriages. The Thyssen-Bornemisza museum describes the painting as part of “a series of fifteen works that Camille Pissarro painted in Paris from the window of his hotel in the place du Théâtre Français during the winter of 1897 and 1898.”
The Nazis auctioned the painting in 1943, and it ultimately ended up in the possession of the Spanish government in the 1990s following a purchase from Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza. The museum says it did not know of the painting’s provenance when buying the work. Heirs of the Cassirer Neubauer family first sued in 2005 upon learning of the art’s survival in 2000 and failing to come to an agreement with the museum.
David Cassirer, great-grandson of Cassirer Neubauer, praised the Supreme Court “for insisting on applying principles of right and wrong.” He said in a statement that “as a Holocaust survivor, my late father, Claude Cassirer, was very proud to become an American citizen in 1947, and he cherished the values of this country.”
When California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law now cited by the Supreme Court, he said that “for survivors of the Holocaust and their families, the fight to take back ownership of art and other personal items stolen by the Nazis continues to traumatize those who have already gone through the unimaginable.” Newsom called it “both a moral and legal imperative that these valuable and sentimental pieces be returned to their rightful owners, and I am proud to strengthen California’s laws to help secure justice for families.”
The legislation mandates that California law must apply in lawsuits involving artwork or other personal property that was stolen or looted during the Holocaust due to political persecution, like in the case involving the Cassirer family. The legislation builds on existing California law that aids the state’s residents in recovering stolen property, including property stolen during the Holocaust.
Previously, the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum was not obligated to return the artwork to Cassirer’s heirs in California, applying Spanish law to the case as opposed to California law.
Cassirer’s lawyers, David Boies and Sam Dubbin, said in response to the Supreme Court’s overriding decision that “we hope Spain and its museum will now do the right thing and return the Nazi-looted art they are holding without further delay.”
The museum’s lawyer, Thaddeus Stauber, countered that “today’s brief order gives the Ninth Circuit the first opportunity to examine if the new California Assembly Bill is valid and what, if any, impact it may have on the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation’s repeatedly affirmed rightful ownership.” He said that the foundation, “as it has for the past 20 years, looks forward to working with all concerned to once again ensure that its ownership is confirmed with the painting remaining on public display in Madrid.”
Other descendants of Jews forced under duress during World War II to part with their artworks have continued efforts to recover paintings to differing degrees of success.
Heirs of Paul Leffmann have sought to acquire Pablo Picasso’s “The Actor” from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Two American courts have disagreed with the family.
In Amsterdam in June 2024, a museum returned “Odalisque” by Henri Matisse to heirs of Albert and Marie Stern.
In October 2024, the family of Adalbert Parlagi received Claude Monet’s “Bord de Mer” from a Louisiana family who attempted to sell the painting to an art gallery, triggering an alert to the FBI.
Months earlier, in July 2024, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Jr. announced the return of the Austrian artist Egon Schiele’s “Seated Nude Woman, front view” to the family of Fritz Grünbaum. The descendants of Gustav “Gus” Papanek repatriated the work, unaware of its theft when the family purchased it in 1938.
“The history behind Nazi-looted art is horrific and tragic, and the consequences are still impacting victims and their families to this day. It is inspiring to see both the Grünbaum and Papanek families join together to reflect on their shared history and preserve the legacy of Fritz Grünbaum,” Bragg said at the time. “I want to commend the Reif family for harnessing Fritz Grünbaum’s legacy to create a better world by using the funds from their auctions to support underprivileged artists.”
Grünbaum relative Timothy Reif said at the time that “the recovery of this important artwork — stolen from a prominent Jewish critic of Adolf Hitler — sends a message to the world that crime does not pay and that the law enforcement community in New York has not forgotten the dark lessons of World War II.”
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Former Hostage From Nova Music Festival Massacre Invites Trump to Dance With Survivors at Memorial Concert
An Israeli soldier stands during a two-minute siren marking the annual Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day, at an installation at the site of the Nova festival where party goers were killed and kidnapped during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, in Reim, southern Israel, May 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
The second annual memorial concert honoring the victims killed at the Nova music festival in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, will take place in June, and US President Donald Trump has been invited to attend.
The Tribe of Nova community announced on Tuesday details about the “Nova Healing Concert” scheduled for June 26 at Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park. Former hostage Mia Schem, who was abducted by Hamas terrorists at the site of the music festival, addressed the media in Israel on Tuesday to talk about the upcoming concert while also sharing a message with Trump.
“Thank you, President Trump, for everything you’re doing to release the hostages,” she said. “I invite you to dance with us in Yarkon Park and celebrate the moment when everyone finally returns home.”
“My vision, and that of everyone’s, is that this year should be different,” Schem added. “A year when we won’t have to shout but embrace. Let’s dance not just for them but with them. This is the strength of our community – it heals, it strengthens, it is our home.”
The setlist for the concert includes Benaia Barabi, Berry Sakharof, Mosh Ben-Ari, Sasi and Rita. The event on June 26 will also feature activities such as therapeutic workshops and spaces for dealing with trauma. Tickets are open and available to the general public, and admission is free for survivors of the Oct. 7 massacre and members of the bereaved families. All profits from ticket sales and event sponsorships will be used by the Nova Tribe Community Association to support the physical and mental healing of Oct. 7 survivors and members of their families, as well as commemoration for those murdered during the Hamas terrorist attack. Last year’s memorial concert was attended by tens of thousands of young people, according to Ynet.
Hamas-led terrorists from the Gaza Strip who infiltrated the music festival in Re’im during the early morning of Oct. 7, 2023, killed 370 people and abducted 44 hostages. Overall, the terrorists killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 captives during their rampage across southern Israel.
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