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Jewish Leader Slams New York Times for ‘Dreadful’ Bias as Paper Faults ‘Ferocious’ Israel, ‘Rabidly Partisan’ Adelson
Israeli soldiers respond to an alert of an apparent security incident, in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Oct. 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
For a telltale indicator of New York Times bias, keep an eye on the adjectives and adverbs.
Two recent front-page Times articles offer examples of this particular problem skewing the coverage.
A Times article purporting to show how Israelis “feel little sympathy” for Gazans suffering includes the line, “Michael Zigdon, who operates a small food shack in Netivot’s rundown market and had employed two men from Gaza until the attack, expressed little sympathy for Gazans, who have endured a ferocious Israeli military onslaught for the past eight months.”
The “ferocious” adjective gets hurled by the Times a second time in the same article, which goes on, in case any reader failed to absorb the point the first time, to say that “the death toll in Gaza has spiraled to at least 37,000 since Israel began its ferocious offensive.”
The Israeli self-defense operation gets described by the Times as “ferocious,” while the Hamas attack of Oct. 7 earns no such label. My Webster’s Second defines ferocious as “having or exhibiting ferocity, cruelty, savagery, etc; violently cruel.” Ferocity is defined as coming from the Latin root ferus, meaning wild, “as the ferocity of barbarians.”
That qualifies as slander of Israel, opinion masquerading as New York Times news writing. If the Times news writers and editors want to accuse Israel of waging barbaric, savage, wild, violently cruel warfare against Gazans, they are welcome to make a factual case for that. I think they’d have a hard time of it, given all the evidence about the care that Israel has used to limit noncombatant casualties. But making the accusation in a backhanded, backdoor way by sprinkling tendentious adjectives into news articles is a kind of deception so subtle that a lot of Times readers might not even notice it.
Usually the Times gets faulted for false moral equivalence between the Hamas terrorists and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) defending the Jewish state. In this case, there’s no equivalence; there’s just a straight-out smear of the Israelis as “ferocious” with no parallel negative description of the Gazan attackers.
In the same article, Israel’s government gets labeled as “hawkish” and “right-wing,” while no such descriptions are applied to Hamas or the remaining government of Gaza.
The Times is similarly ferocious in its description of a pro-Israel philanthropist and political donor, Dr. Miriam Adelson. A front-page article about her declares: “She is, in some ways, a political carbon copy of her husband: intensely pro-Israel, rabidly partisan, and a believer in the nobility of using her money, north of $30 billion, and her media empire to buy influence and shape the world.”
“Rabidly partisan?” It’s not enough for the rabid partisans at the Times to call Adelson partisan; they need to escalate it to “rabidly” partisan? The Times published a profile of a pro-Biden Democratic political donor, Jeffrey Katzenberg, without calling him rabid.
Rabid, ferocious — the Times can’t seem to write about Israeli-Americans or Israel without insulting them. It comes after another recent Times article that called Israel’s military response “aggressive” while applying no such descriptor to the Hamas Oct. 7 attack or to the many subsequent rocket launches and missile and drone attacks against Israel by Iran and its proxies.
Some rabid Times editor might want to consider an aggressive crackdown on the adjectives and adverbs or risk the Times further eroding what little remains of its reputation for journalistic impartiality.
The American Jewish community is already increasingly losing patience with the paper. The CEO of the UJA-Federation of New York, a longtime partner of the New York Times in its Neediest Cases Fund, Eric Goldstein, wrote a letter to the editor of the paper faulting the Adelson profile and a Times online headline that said US Rep. Jamaal Bowman had been “Overtaken by Flood of Pro-Israel Money.”
“Not only does it feed a dreadful antisemitic stereotype, it does a disservice to voters in [New York’s] 16th Congressional District who made their voices heard, loud and clear. Equally troubling was the Times‘ recent A1 profile of pro-Israel advocate Miriam Adelson, which played upon those same stereotypes,” Goldstein’s letter said. It faulted the Times for “bias.”
Likewise, the national director emeritus of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Abraham Foxman, called the Bowman headline “crude, biased, and disgusting.” In another social media post, Foxman wrote, “NYTimes you are so obsessed with criticizing Israel that it distorts your news judgment.”
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 Jewish Leader Slams New York Times for ‘Dreadful’ Bias as Paper Faults ‘Ferocious’ Israel, ‘Rabidly Partisan’ Adelson first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War
Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.
Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.
“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”
GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’
Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.
“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.
“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.
“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.
After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”
RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL
Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.
“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”
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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests
A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.
People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.
“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”
Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.
On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.
Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.
On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.
“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan
Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.