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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Other basic facts in the Times article were incorrect, outdated, or lacked context.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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Israel’s Top Diplomat Urges Lebanese People to Break Free From ‘Iranian Occupation’
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Funeral ceremony for former Hezbollah leaders Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine, outskirts of Beirut, Feb. 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has called on the Lebanese people to break free from “the Iranian occupation,” pushing Israel’s northern neighbor to weaken the political and military influence of the Iran-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah.
“The images from Nasrallah’s ‘funeral’ now precisely reflect the historic crossroads where Lebanon stands: The continuation of the Iranian occupation in Lebanon, through Hezbollah — or liberation from Iran and Hezbollah and freedom to Lebanon,” Sa’ar wrote in a post on X, referring to long-time Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli military strike in September. His funeral was held in Lebanon on Sunday.
“The choice is in the hands of Lebanon and the Lebanese people,” Sa’ar added.
The Israeli diplomat’s comments came as Lebanese President Joseph Aoun told a visiting Iranian delegation on Sunday that the country was “tired” of external conflicts playing out on its territory, asserting that Lebanon is not a battleground for others and hinting at a possible break from Iranian influence.
“Lebanon has grown tired of the wars of others on its land,” Aoun told the Iranian officials, according to a statement released by the newly appointed president’s office. “Countries should not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.”
The images from Nasrallah’s “funeral” now precisely reflect the historic crossroads where Lebanon stands:
The continuation of the Iranian occupation in Lebanon, through Hezbollah – or liberation from Iran and Hezbollah and freedom to Lebanon.
The choice is in the hands of… pic.twitter.com/6aDBZCsfYV— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) February 23, 2025
Iranian officials met Aoun during their visit to Beirut for the funeral of Nasrallah, former leader of Iran-backed Hezbollah, which fought a year-long conflict with Israel in parallel with the Gaza war that ended in a November ceasefire. Nearly five months after his death in an Israeli airstrike, Hezbollah buried Nasrallah in a mass funeral meant to showcase political strength despite the group’s weakened state following the war.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) killed Nasrallah on Sept. 27 last year in an airstrike as he met commanders in a bunker in Beirut’s southern suburbs, delivering a major setback to the Islamist group amid an Israeli offensive. The campaign went on to decimate much of Hezbollah’s leadership and military capabilities through air and ground attacks.
Hezbollah’s losses from the war with Israel were further compounded by the fall of its ally, Bashar al-Assad, in Syria, which had long served as a vital supply route for Iranian weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon under Assad’s rule.
During Sunday’s high-level meeting, Aoun said Lebanon wanted “the best relations with Tehran, for the benefit of both countries and people.” According to Aoun’s statement, Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf extended President Masoud Pezeshkian’s invitation for Aoun to visit Iran.
In a televised address at Nasrallah’s funeral in a Beirut stadium, current Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem declared his refusal to let “tyrant America” control Lebanon.
The United States helped broker the Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire after almost a year of fighting. The conflict, which Hezbollah launched in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas during the early days of the Gaza war in October 2023, resulted in thousands of deaths in Lebanon and widespread destruction across the country’s south.
Under the ceasefire agreement, Israel was given 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon, allowing the Lebanese army and UN forces to take over security as Hezbollah disarms and moves away from Israel’s northern border.
Though Israel has largely withdrawn from the south, its troops continue to hold five hilltop positions in the area, as Israeli leaders seek to reassure northern residents that they can return home safely.
Tens of thousands of residents in northern Israel were forced to evacuate their homes last year and in late 2023 amid unrelenting attacks from Hezbollah, which expressed solidarity with Hamas amid the Gaza war.
The meeting between Iranian officials and Aoun took place even though regular flights between the two countries had been suspended.
On Feb. 13, Lebanon banned flights to and from Iran after Israel accused Tehran of using civilian planes to smuggle cash to Beirut to Hezbollah and warned of possible military action against such flights. In response, Iran barred Lebanese planes from repatriating dozens of Lebanese nationals stranded in the country, stating it would not allow Lebanese flights to land until its own flights could resume in Beirut.
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X, Meta Approved Antisemitic and Anti-Muslim Ads Targeting German Voters Before Election, Study Finds
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Elon Musk, chief executive officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X/Twitter, gestures as he attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, France, June 16, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes
The nonprofit group Ekō has released research showing that the social media platforms X and Meta approved advertising featuring hate speech against Jews and Muslims that was geared toward users in Germany in the lead-up to the country’s federal elections on Sunday.
The organization submitted 10 German-language ads intended to reach German voters before the election. Meta approved half of the proposed ads while X allowed all 10. Ekō canceled all approved ads before they could appear on the sites.
The five approved for publication on Meta referred to Muslim immigrants as a “virus,” “vermin,” “rodents,” or “rapists” and advocated for them to be sterilized, burnt, or gassed. Another Meta-approved ad called for arson attacks against synagogues in order to “stop the globalist Jewish rat agenda.”
“Our findings suggest that Meta’s AI-driven ad moderation systems remain fundamentally broken, despite the Digital Services Act (DSA) now being in full effect,” an unnamed spokesperson for Ekō told TechCrunch. They added that “rather than strengthening its ad review process or hate speech policies, Meta appears to be backtracking across the board.”
Meta spokeswoman Lara Hesse provided a statement to TechCrunch in response to Ekō’s findings, noting that “these ads violate our policies. None of them were published and our systems detected and disabled the advertiser’s page before we became aware of this research.”
The statement argued that “our ads review process has several layers of analysis and detection, both before and after an ad goes live. We’ve taken extensive steps in alignment with the DSA and continue to invest significant resources to protect elections.”
Ekō’s report said that all of the ads “broke Meta and X’s own policies, and several may have also breached German national laws. Meta rejected five ads on the basis that they may qualify as social issue, electoral or politics ads, but they were not rejected on the basis of hate speech or inciting violence.”
In addition to green-lighting the five ads allowed by Meta, X approved and scheduled five more, according to the study. These labeled immigrants as rodents and said that Muslims were “flooding” Germany in order “to steal our democracy.” Another ad used an antisemitic slur and accused Jews of lying about climate change to sabotage European industry. This ad also included an AI-generated image which featured sinister men at a table surrounded by gold bars with a Star of David behind them.
Researchers used OpenAI’s DALL-E and Stable Diffusion to create the AI imagery included with each ad. One image featured immigrants crowded into a gas chamber while another showed a synagogue on fire.
One X-approved ad specifically targeted the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), accusing the center-left party of wanting to allow 60 million Muslim immigrants into the country. One more ad allowed by X urged for the killing of Muslim rapists and claimed that leftists sought “open borders.” While Meta took as much as 12 hours to approve the submitted ads, X scheduled the ads instantly.
The Sunday election saw an 83.5 percent voter turnout, the highest level seen since Germany reunified in 1990. The center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party Christian Social Union (CSU) won with 28.6 percent of the vote. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) came in second with 20.8 percent. X owner Elon Musk had previously endorsed the populist-nationalist, anti-immigrant party, saying in a livestream on his platform that “only AfD can save Germany, end of story, and people really need to get behind AfD, and otherwise things are going to get very, very much worse in Germany.” SPD came in third with 16.4 percent of the vote, followed by the Green Party with 11.6 percent.
“Our findings, alongside mounting evidence from other civil society groups, show that Big Tech will not clean up its platforms voluntarily,” the Ekō spokesperson said. “Meta and X continue to allow illegal hate speech, incitement to violence, and election disinformation to spread at scale, despite their legal obligations under the DSA.”
The report from Ekō stated that “at the core of the problem is these platforms’ toxic business model – one dependent on digital advertising revenue and fueled by engagement, no matter the cost.” The report explained that the websites’ systems “are built to maximize attention and revenue, creating little incentive to curb hate speech, disinformation, or incitement of violence.”
According to research released last month by the Anti-Defamation League, 6.2 million people in Germany “harbor elevated levels of antisemitic attitudes,” totaling 9 percent of the population and positioning the European nation with one of the lowest levels of antisemitism globally.
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Documentary About Former Hamas Hostage Abducted on Oct. 7 Wins Two Awards at Berlin Film Festival
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Brandon Kramer and Lance Kramer in front of the Berlinale Palast holding the Berlinale Documentary Award for “Holding Liat” on Feb 22, 2025. Photo: Berlin International Film Festival
A documentary about a woman who was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists from Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, 2023, and has since returned to Israel won the annual Berlinale Documentary Award and also an Ecumenical Jury Prize on Saturday at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival.
“Holding Liat” was directed by Brandon Kramer and produced by Darren Aronofsky, Lance Kramer, Yoni Brook, Ari Handel, and Justin Gonçalves. Aronofsky is an Oscar-winning director whose credits include “Black Swan,” “Requiem for a Dream,” and “The Whale.”
The Berlinale Documentary Award is accompanied by a prize money of 40,000 euros ($41,907), which is split between the director and producer of the winning film. Winning the award also means the film will advance and take part in the Oscar race for Best Documentary Feature. “Holding Liat,” which is in both English and Hebrew, received a standing ovation when it made its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival on Feb. 16.
The American film revolves around Liat Atzili, a civics and history teacher kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023, and held captive in the Gaza Strip until she returned to Israel in the first ceasefire and hostage-release deal in November 2023. Her husband, Aviv Atzili, was murdered by Hamas terrorists during their deadly rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, during which they killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
Brandon began filming “Holding Liat” shortly Liat’s abduction, first talking to her family members and unaware how his film would end and what Liat’s fate would be. A Washington, DC-based filmmaker, Brandon and his brother Lance co-founded Meridian Hill Pictures, which produced “Holding Liat.” They are related to Atzili and their documentary also highlights her parents Yehuda and Chaya, who were born in the US and made a number of efforts to secure their daughter’s release from captivity, such as meeting with politicians and other influential figures in the US.
“This isn’t a film that we wanted to make,” Brandon said upon accepting the award on Saturday. “After our relatives, Liat and Aviv Atzili, were taken from their home on Oct. 7, my brother Lance and I felt a responsibility to pick up the camera and document the family’s unique experience. We witnessed up close a family wrestling with different points of view on how to return their loved ones, hold onto their values, and seek a more peaceful future for Israelis and Palestinians. In a complicated and polarized moment, telling a nuanced story about one family, navigating their differences, their grief, and their empathy felt universal and urgent to share. Documentaries can help us find each other’s humanity and the shared language of cinema can contribute to peace.”
“Holding Liat” was not the only documentary about the hostages featured this year in the Berlin International Film Festival. “Letter to David,” from Israeli director Tom Shovel, is about hostage David Cunio, an actor who was also abducted by Hamas from the Kibbutz Nir Oz and is still being held captive. Cunio starred in Shoval’s award-winning debut feature film, “Youth,” which was shown in 2013 at the Berlinale and focused on the relationship between brothers and, ironically, revolved around a kidnapping. “Letter to David” made its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival on Feb. 14.
The 75th Berlin International Film Festival took place from Feb. 13-23.
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