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In Nasser Hospital Coverage, New York Times Underperforms the Babylon Bee
A taxi passes by in front of The New York Times head office, Feb. 7, 2013. Photo: Reuters / Carlo Allegri / File.
Will the New York Times ever stop falling for the Gaza “hospitals threatened” Hamas publicity stunt?
The New York Times of Thursday February 15 resumed the newspaper’s preferred post-October 7 status as a kind of Gaza hospital trade association newsletter. “Hundreds Vacate Hospital in Fear of Israeli Attack,” is the lead, front-page headline.
The article carries the bylines of three Times journalists, with “reporting was contributed” credits for another seven, for a total of ten journalists. Among those contributing reporting is a newer name, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad. Her social media timeline is full of retweets of journalistically objective material such as “Across the country Zionists are beating, gassing, shooting, lynching Palestinians. They’re unhinged. The videos we’re seeing are reminiscent of the Nakba. State-settler collusion emboldening an unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood & land. Terrorist, genocidal nation” and “IDF Soldier Recounts Harrowing, Heroic War Story Of Killing 8-Month-Old Child.”
You might think that by now the Times would have learned from its mistakes in terms of covering Gaza hospitals that turn out to be Hamas terrorist bases.
Back in October, the Times published an editors’ note confessing that editors “should have taken more care,” instead of falling for false Hamas claims blaming Israel for killing hundreds at Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza City.
Earlier this week, the Times even belatedly acknowledged about Al-Shifa Hospital that “Hamas used the hospital for cover, stored weapons inside it and maintained a hardened tunnel beneath the complex. The Times had obsessed about that hospital on its front page for weeks, passing along to its readers ritualistic denials from Hamas and the hospital’s leadership notwithstanding that they were transparently bogus.
This time around, with Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, the Times dials up the Gaza hospital hype yet again. “Thousands of Gazans have sheltered at the Nasser Medical Complex in the southern city of Khan Younis for weeks, and many are terrified that Israeli forces will bombard or storm the complex, said Mohammed Abu Lehya, a doctor there,” the Times says. “Hanin Abu Tiba, 27, an English teacher sheltering at the hospital, described dire conditions inside, with food running out and aid convoys all but unable to deliver supplies.”
“We are all scared,” the Times quotes a radiologist named Dr. Mohammad Abu Moussa as saying.
“Terrified,” “dire,” “scared.” Get the emotional message? The Times also duly trots out the same World Health Organization officials that warned about the other hospitals that turned out to be Hamas headquarters. The whole Times framing is to accuse Israel for attacking the hospital, rather than to accuse the Hamas terrorist organization of using the hospital as cover.
The same doctors, English teacher, and World Health Organization official that the Times has access to for quoting about how scared they are of the Israelis are not asked by the Times, at least in the story, about whether they’ve seen any Israeli hostages. They are not asked, at least in the story, whether Hamas has used the hospital as a base. They aren’t asked, at least in the Times article, about whether they are scared of Hamas. They aren’t asked, at least in the Times article, what Hamas would do to them if they didn’t provide the New York Times with appropriately alarmist quotes that make Israel sound like the aggressor.
Israel Defense Forces spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari announced late Thursday that Israel found hiding in the Nasser hospital complex “three confirmed terrorists,” including two who he said participated in the October 7 attack, among dozens of other suspects. The IDF also released interrogation video in which a captured Hamas operative described ten hostages being held in Nasser hospital.
Perhaps a few months from now the Times will get around, as it did with Al-Shifa, to acknowledging that the hospital was being used as a terrorist hiding place, and that the physicians being quoted in the Times article were probably well aware of that.
As a business strategy, there may be some kind of short-term upside to this approach. The Times gets traffic from the Israel-haters sharing the story about those cruel Israelis targeting a hospital and causing the “dire” conditions. And then, months later, it later gets traffic from the pro-Israel crowd sharing the eventual acknowledgement that, yes, the hospital was a terrorist nest. But there’s a cost to the newspaper’s credibility. Readers who expect the Times overall to serve consistently as a skeptical, independent voice rather than a purveyor of anti-Israel propaganda eventually will tire of seeing the newspaper they once loved and respected become a joke.
The parody humor sites get it. The Babylon Bee is running headlines like “Hamas Says All The AK-47s Found In Gaza Hospital Were Strictly For Medicinal Use” and “Palestinian Authority Warns That Gaza Hospitals Running Dangerously Low On Ammunition.” Why can’t the Times editors see it?
That’s not to say that there are not Gazans with real, acute, medical needs. Israel has in some cases facilitated evacuations for them, or coordinated their safe passage to other facilities. The situation for innocent, sick Gazans is surely dire, and they surely are scared. Yet the Times coverage places the blame on Israel while pretty much giving a pass to Hamas.
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 In Nasser Hospital Coverage, New York Times Underperforms the Babylon Bee first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Eyes Bringing Azerbaijan, Central Asian Nations into Abraham Accords, Sources Say
US President Donald Trump points a finger as he delivers remarks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, July 31, 2025. Photo: Kent Nishimura via Reuters Connect
President Donald Trump’s administration is actively discussing with Azerbaijan the possibility of bringing that nation and some Central Asian allies into the Abraham Accords, hoping to deepen their existing ties with Israel, according to five sources with knowledge of the matter.
As part of the Abraham Accords, inked in 2020 and 2021 during Trump’s first term in office, four Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel after US mediation.
Azerbaijan and every country in Central Asia, by contrast, already have longstanding relations with Israel, meaning that an expansion of the accords to include them would largely be symbolic, focusing on strengthening ties in areas like trade and military cooperation, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Such an expansion would reflect Trump’s openness to pacts that are less ambitious than his administration’s goal to convince regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia to restore ties with Israel while war rages in Gaza.
The kingdom has repeatedly said it would not recognize Israel without steps towards Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state.
Another key sticking point is Azerbaijan’s conflict with its neighbor Armenia, since the Trump administration considers a peace deal between the two Caucasus nations as a precondition to join the Abraham Accords, three sources said.
While Trump officials have publicly floated several potential entrants into the accords, the talks centered on Azerbaijan are among the most structured and serious, the sources said. Two of the sources argued a deal could be reached within months or even weeks.
Trump’s special envoy for peace missions, Steve Witkoff, traveled to Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, in March to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Aryeh Lightstone, a key Witkoff aide, met Aliyev later in the spring in part to discuss the Abraham Accords, three of the sources said.
As part of the discussions, Azerbaijani officials have contacted officials in Central Asian nations, including in nearby Kazakhstan, to gauge their interest in a broader Abraham Accords expansion, those sources said. It was not clear which other countries in Central Asia – which includes Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan – were contacted.
The State Department, asked for comment, did not discuss specific countries, but said expanding the accords has been one of the key objectives of Trump. “We are working to get more countries to join,” said a US official.
The Azerbaijani government declined to comment.
The White House, the Israeli foreign ministry and the Kazakhstani embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
Any new accords would not modify the previous Abraham Accords deals signed by Israel.
OBSTACLES REMAIN
The original Abraham Accords – inked between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan – were centered on restoration of ties. The second round of expansion appears to be morphing into a broader mechanism designed to expand US and Israeli soft power.
Wedged between Russia to the north and Iran to the south, Azerbaijan occupies a critical link in trade flows between Central Asia and the West. The Caucasus and Central Asia are also rich in natural resources, including oil and gas, prompting various major powers to compete for influence in the region.
Expanding the accords to nations that already have diplomatic relations with Israel may also be a means of delivering symbolic wins to a president who is known to talk up even relatively small victories.
Two sources described the discussions involving Central Asia as embryonic – but the discussions with Azerbaijan as relatively advanced.
But challenges remain and there is no guarantee a deal will be reached, particularly with slow progress in talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The two countries, which both won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, have been at loggerheads since the late 1980s when Nagorno-Karabakh – an Azerbaijani region that had a mostly ethnic-Armenian population – broke away from Azerbaijan with support from Armenia.
In 2023, Azerbaijan retook Karabakh, prompting about 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee to Armenia. Both sides have since said they want to sign a treaty on a formal end to the conflict.
Primarily Christian Armenia and the US have close ties, and the Trump administration is wary of taking action that could upset authorities in Yerevan.
Still, US officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump himself, have argued that a peace deal between those two nations is near.
“Armenia and Azerbaijan, we worked magic there,” Trump told reporters earlier in July. “And it’s pretty close.”
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Trump Reaffirms Support for Morocco’s Sovereignty Over Western Sahara
A Polisario fighter sits on a rock at a forward base, on the outskirts of Tifariti, Western Sahara, Sept. 9, 2016. Photo: Reuters / Zohra Bensemra / File.
US President Donald Trump has reaffirmed support for Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, saying a Moroccan autonomy plan for the territory was the sole solution to the disputed region, state news agency MAP said on Saturday.
The long-frozen conflict pits Morocco, which considers the territory as its own, against the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, which seeks an independent state there.
Trump at the end of his first term in office recognized the Moroccan claims to Western Sahara, which has phosphate reserves and rich fishing grounds, as part of a deal under which Morocco agreed to normalize its relations with Israel.
His secretary of state, Marco Rubio, made clear in April that support for Morocco on the issue remained US policy, but these were Trump’s first quoted remarks on the dispute during his second term.
“I also reiterate that the United States recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara and supports Morocco’s serious, credible and realistic autonomy proposal as the only basis for a just and lasting solution to the dispute,” MAP quoted Trump as saying in a message to Morocco’s King Mohammed VI.
“Together we are advancing shared priorities for peace and security in the region, including by building on the Abraham Accords, combating terrorism and expanding commercial cooperation,” Trump said.
As part of the Abraham Accords signed during Trump’s first term, four Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel after US mediation.
In June this year, Britain became the third permanent member of the U.N. Security Council to back an autonomy plan under Moroccan sovereignty for the territory after the U.S. and France.
Algeria, which has recognized the self-declared Sahrawi Republic, has refused to take part in roundtables convened by the U.N. envoy to Western Sahara and insists on holding a referendum with independence as an option.
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Israel Says Its Missions in UAE Remain Open Despite Reported Security Threats
President Isaac Herzog meets on Dec. 5, 2022, with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi. Photo: GPO/Amos Ben Gershom
i24 News – Israel’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday that its missions to the United Arab Emirates are open on Friday and representatives continue to operate at the embassy in Abu Dhabi and the consulate in Dubai in cooperation with local authorities.
This includes, the statement underlined, ensuring the protection of Israeli diplomats.
On Thursday, reports appeared in Israeli media that Israel was evacuating most of its diplomatic staff in the UAE after the National Security Council heightened its travel warning for Israelis staying in the Gulf country for fear of an Iranian or Iran-sponsored attacks.
“We are emphasizing this travel warning given our understanding that terrorist organizations (the Iranians, Hamas, Hezbollah and Global Jihad) are increasing their efforts to harm Israel,” the NSC said in a statement.
After signing the Abraham Accords with Israel in 2020, the UAE has been among the closest regional allies of the Jewish state.
Israel is concerned about its citizens and diplomats being targeted in retaliatory attacks following its 12-day war against Iran last month.
Earlier this year, the UAE sentenced three citizens of Uzbekistan to death for last year’s murder of Israeli-Moldovan rabbi Zvi Cohen.