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New York Times Adds ‘Editor’s Note’ to Article That Whitewashed Violent Anti-Israel Protest
An anti-Israel protester burns an Israeli flag in front of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, on June 8, 2024. Photo: Aashish Kiphayet/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
In Washington, DC this weekend, an anti-Israel crowd attacked a park ranger by throwing bottles at him as he tried to protect a statue that they were vandalizing. Other masked protesters chanted, “Hezbollah, Hezbollah, kill another Zionist now.”
That’s what happened according to videos shared on social media posts by members of the US Congress, both Democrat and Republican. Yet the New York Times whitewashed the protest, publishing an article that made no mention of the assault on the park ranger. The Times only added in a mention of the assault to its story two days after it was published — and after being denounced in other publications.
The byline over the Times article is that of Minho Kim. His LinkedIn profile describes him as a “news assistant” at the Times who started work there in January and who hopes “to continue writing stories on the climate crisis.” The profile says he was a 2022 graduate of Northwestern University who was born and raised in South Korea and “calls himself a voluntary third-culture adult.”
The Times article originally mentioned violence not by the protesters but by the police, who, according to the article, “used pepper spray against a protester at least once.” The article didn’t give any reason why the police did that.
The Times article consistently described the mob as a group of “pro-Palestinian protesters,” even though it would be terrible for the Palestinians to leave Hamas in power in Gaza — and even though many of the protesters appeared to be motivated more by anti-Israel animus than by sympathy for the Palestinians.
The Times article mentioned “the more than 36,000 Palestinians who had been killed during the war” without noting those numbers came from the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry and press office. The article also failed to note that number included many people who even the Gazan authorities said they hadn’t fully identified, or that Israel said it had killed upwards of 12,000 enemy fighters, or that at least some of the Palestinian deaths were the result of misfired rockets aimed at Israel.
Other basic facts in the Times article were incorrect, outdated, or lacked context. The Times context on US aid to Israel, for example, mentioned “$38 billion over ten years,” a sum that didn’t include an additional $15 billion in aid approved in April.
The Times article reported, “Many of the protesters on Saturday chanted slogans that some groups have said incite violence against Jews … But according to one protester, such slogans were not a call for violence against Jewish people, but for a broader resistance against the status quo.”
The article concluded: “‘We don’t have anything against Jews,’ said Adam Kattom, a founding member of Peoria for Palestine, who had traveled 12 hours from Peoria, Ill., to join the demonstration.” It’s hard to imagine the Times taking such a claim at face value in the context of other political protests, or allowing such a self-serving claim to be the final word of an article. You wonder about the lack of follow-up: if these protesters sincerely “don’t have anything against Jews,” why are they traveling hours to call for America to cut off the arms supplies that the Jewish state is using to defend itself against the Iran-backed terrorists who want to wipe Israel off the map and kill all the Jews?
Writing in the Free Press, Peter Savodnik described the protest as an “orgy of hatred” and wrote, “The New York Times, like CNN and The Washington Post and most every major outlet, made a big point of how the demonstrators really, really just want a cease-fire. There was no mention of Jews or antisemitism.” It’s not actually accurate that the Times didn’t mention Jews, but the paper certainly was dismissive of the antisemitism concerns.
In Commentary, John Podhoretz wrote that the event “can only be described as a Hamas rally — complete with the desecrations of American statuary.”
I emailed Kim to ask about the Times story and didn’t immediately get a reply.
The Times article itself now is labeled “Published June 8, 2024” and “Updated June 10, 2024” and carries an “editor’s note.” It reads “Editor’s note: This article was updated on June 10 with a statement from the National Park Service.”
Sure enough, the article now includes this passage: “Later in the day, some protesters threw empty water bottles at an unarmed park ranger who stood by another vandalized statue in the square, the National Park Service said in a statement on Monday. ‘Saturday’s permitted demonstration resulted in an assault of a park ranger, injuries to two US Park Police officers, and significant damage to the park resources,’ said Cynthia Hernandez, a spokeswoman for the agency.”
It’s unusual for the Times to handle an article this way, by going into it and adding new information two days after it was originally published. What’s not unusual, alas, but rather is all too typical, is for the Times falsely to depict anti-Israel activists in America as being more “peaceful,” and less hostile, than they really are.
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.
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Barcelona’s Primavera Sound Music Festival Showcases Tunnel Installation That Simulates Gaza Bombings
An outside view of the “Unsilence Gaza” installation at the 2025 Primavera Sound music festival. Photo: Screenshot
A reproduction of a tunnel that simulates the sound of bombings in the Gaza Strip is being showcased this year at Barcelona’s annual Primavera Sound music festival, which opened on Wednesday.
The unique installation, titled “Unsilence Gaza,” allows visitors to walk through a dark tunnel-like path where they hear noises of explosions as well as dramatic, ominous music. At the end of the tunnel, there is a wall with a message that says in English, Spanish, and Catalan: “Silence isn’t the opposite of the sound of bombs, it allows them to happen.” The outside of the installation features the message: “When everything blows up, don’t hide in the silence.”
The installation makes no mention of the Gaza-based Hamas terrorist organization that started the ongoing war with Israel after it orchestrated the deadly, mass terror attack across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
UNSILENCE GAZA #PrimaveraSound2025 Instalación de 15 metros de túnel que simula el ruido de un bombardeo a Gaza en el festival de #primaverasound de #barcelona pic.twitter.com/L7XnpF06u1
— Barcelona.lives (@BarcelonaLives) June 4, 2025
The installation was designed by Palestinian sound engineer Oussama Rima and is located by the main entrance of the annual music festival, held at the Parc del Fòrum. T-shirts and sweatshirts with the words “Unsilence Gaza” are also being sold at the festival and proceeds from the sales will be donated to the Palestinian Medical Relief Society to support emergency medical aid.
The Primavera Sound Foundation said on its website that the installation aims to remind people about the power of sound and how, especially in Gaza, it is associated with pain, fear, “torture and trauma.”
“We have normalized seeing war, but not listening to it,” the foundation said. “We live in a world saturated with violent images. Hypervisibility has anaesthetised us: we see, but we do not react. Sound, on the other hand, can still move us. At Primavera Sound, sound is emotion, connection, pleasure. But sound can also be the opposite: it can become a weapon. With this installation, we want to remind you that in Gaza and other parts of the world, sound is pain. It is fear. It is torture and trauma.”
In its statement, the foundation made no mention of Hamas or Israel. Instead, it talked about “genocide,” increased military spending, “warmongering rhetoric and attempts to criminalize and silence voices that defend peace.” The installation was conceptualized by the non-profit organizations Casa Nostra, Casa Vostra and the International Institute for Nonviolent Action (NOVACT), with support from the Primavera Sound Foundation.
More than 150 artists will perform at the Primavera Sound music festival this year including Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX, Troye Sivan, Chappell Roan, FKA Twigs, HAIM, Fontaines D.C., IDLES and Magdalena Bay.
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Sephardic Jewish Film Festival in NYC to Feature Array of Movies Celebrating Culture, Tradition, History
A promotional image for the film “Giado: Holocaust in the Desert” being screened at the 2025 New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival. Photo: Provided
The New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival (NYSJFF), also known as the Sephardic Film Festival, returns to New York on Sunday for a week-long celebration of films that spotlight the traditions, cultures, and histories of Sephardic Jews.
This year’s festival will features documentaries, feature films, and shorts that highlight stories set in Israel, Morocco, France, Turkey, and more. It kicks off on Sunday night with a Pomegranate Awards ceremony, whose honorees will include French-born Israeli singer Yael Naim, Iranian-American writer Roya Hakakian, and French-Tunisian actor and screenwriter Michel Boujenah. Acclaimed Brazilian Jewish singer-songwriter Fortuna will receive the ASF Pomegranate Lifetime Achievement Award for Preservation of Sephardic Culture. Fortuna will also perform at the opening night ceremony with Trio Mediterraneo and special guest Frank London, a Grammy-winning trumpeter and co-founder of The Klezmatics.
NYSJFF is organized by the American Sephardic Federation.
A documentary about Naim will make its world premiere at the film festival on Monday and the screening will be followed by a Q&A with Naim and the film’s director, Jill Coulon. Also screening on Monday is the 1985 French comedy “Three Men and a Cradle” starring Boujenah, who will participate in a Q&A after the screening. Boujenah won the coveted César Award for best supporting actor for his role in the film, which is about three adult friends who are enjoying their single life until they get stuck taking care of a baby.
The Sephardic Film Festival will additionally feature the North American premiere of the films “The Last Righteous Man (Baba Sali)” and “Jinxed.” The latter is a Hebrew-language comedy, directed by Hanan Savyon and Guy Amir, about two repairmen who go to fix a television and instead find a dead body in a client’s apartment. They are then mistaken for murder suspects and get mixed up with the mafia and police investigations, as bad luck follows them around.
The Sephardic Film Festival will also host the New York premieres of “Matchmaking 2,” “Neuilly-Poissy” and “The 90s – The Revelry — Hillula,” which was a box office hit in Israel.
The film festival line-up includes “Over My Dead Body,” which explores Persian-American Jewish traditions; a documentary short about efforts to preserve the Ladino language spoken by Sephardic Jews; and a film that highlights the first-hand testimony of Yosef Dadosh who, at the age of 20, was one of 3,000 Libyan Jews deported by the Italians to the Giado concentration camp during the Holocaust.
This year, the Sephardic Film Festival is part of a new, larger cultural festival called Festival Sefarad, which will be a citywide celebration of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish communities. Festival Sefarad will include film screening, musical performances, workshops, book talks, and Shabbat dinners throughout the month of June. The festival is organized by the American Sephardic Federation with support from the UJA-Federation of New York.
“Our inspiration to expand the 27th NY Sephardic Jewish Film Festival into the first-ever Festival Sefarad is the acute need, in the face of so much adversity and antisemitism, to create communal, intellectual, and cultural events that bring all Jews together,” Jason Guberman, executive director of the American Sephardi Federation, said in a statement. “With the support of the UJA-Federation of NY and 50 organizations throughout Brooklyn, Manhattan, Long Island, and Queens, the ASF is hosting over 40 events that showcase the dynamism, resilience, and joy of the Greater Sephardic world for Jews of all backgrounds and friends.”
The 27th New York Sephardic Jewish Film festival runs from June 8-June 15. The festival concludes with a live concert by legendary artist Enrico Macias. Tickets for the film festival are available online. The annual festival, which started in 1990, has previously screened films from Morocco, India, Yemen, Kurdistan, and more.
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Trump Administration Imposes Sanctions on Four ICC Judges Over ‘Baseless Actions’ Targeting US, Israel
An exterior view of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands, March 31, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw
US President Donald Trump‘s administration on Thursday imposed sanctions on four judges at the International Criminal Court, an unprecedented retaliation over the war tribunal’s issuance of an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a past decision to open a case into alleged war crimes by US troops in Afghanistan.
Washington designated Solomy Balungi Bossa of Uganda, Luz del Carmen Ibanez Carranza of Peru, Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini Gansou of Benin, and Beti Hohler of Slovenia, according to a statement from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“As ICC judges, these four individuals have actively engaged in the ICC’s illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America or our close ally, Israel. The ICC is politicized and falsely claims unfettered discretion to investigate, charge, and prosecute nationals of the United States and our allies,” Rubio said.
The ICC slammed the move, saying it was an attempt to undermine the independence of an international judicial institution that provides hope and justice to millions of victims of “unimaginable atrocities.”
“It is with deep concern that we note the latest actions announced by the government of the United States … These … are regrettable attempts to impede the court and its personnel in the exercise of their independent judicial functions,” the ICC‘s governing body said in a statement on Friday.
Both judges Bossa and Ibanez Carranza have been on the ICC bench since 2018. In 2020 they were involved in an appeals chamber decision that allowed the ICC prosecutor to open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes by American troops in Afghanistan.
Since 2021, the court had deprioritized the investigation into American troops in Afghanistan and focused on alleged crimes committed by the Afghan government and the Taliban forces.
ICC judges also issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, former Israeli defense chief Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri last November for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Gaza conflict. Alapini Gansou and Hohler ruled to authorize the arrest warrant against Netanyahu and Gallant, Rubio said.
The move deepens the administration‘s animosity toward the court. During the first Trump administration in 2020, Washington imposed sanctions on then-prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and one of her top aides over the court’s work on Afghanistan.
The measures also follow a January vote at the US House of Representatives to punish the ICC in protest over its Netanyahu arrest warrant. The move underscored strong support among Trump‘s fellow Republicans for Israel’s government.
Sanctions severely hamper individuals’ abilities to carry out even routine financial transactions as any banks with ties to the United States, or that conduct transactions in dollars, are expected to have to comply with the restrictions.
But the Treasury Department also issued general licenses, including one allowing the wind-down of any existing transactions involving those targeted on Thursday until July 8, as long as any payment to them is made to a blocked, interest-bearing account located in the US.
The new sanctions come at a difficult time for the ICC, which is already reeling from earlier US sanctions against its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, who last month stepped aside temporarily amid a United Nations investigation into his alleged sexual misconduct.
The ICC, which was established in 2002, has international jurisdiction to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in member states or if a situation is referred by the UN Security Council.
However, the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which established the court. Other countries including the US have similarly not signed the ICC charter. Nonetheless, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.
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