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New York Times Deplores Israeli Rhetoric While Denouncing Israeli Settlers as a ‘Cancer’

A taxi passes by in front of The New York Times head office, Feb. 7, 2013. Photo: Reuters / Carlo Allegri / File.

It’s a classic antisemitic double standard. When Israelis use heated rhetoric about Hamas, the New York Times raises alarm bells. But when American “progressives” call Jews “cancer,” the Times either ignores it or itself is among the perpetrators.

A “guest essay” in the Times by Omer Bartov, a professor of “Holocaust and genocide studies” at Brown University, denounced what he called “deeply alarming language,” statements that he said “indicate a genocidal intent.”

Bartov writes, “On Oct. 9, Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said, ‘We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,’ a statement indicating dehumanization, which has genocidal echoes. The next day, the head of the Israeli Army’s coordinator of government activities in the territories, Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, addressed the population of Gaza in Arabic: ‘Human animals must be treated as such.’”

Leave aside whether calling someone a “human animal,” rather than merely an animal or an inhuman animal, really does indicate “dehumanization.” And leave aside, too, that Alian is an Israeli Druze, which the Times doesn’t mention, perhaps because it complicates the narrative the newspaper is pushing of Jewish racism.

In addition to the “guest essay,” the Times mobilized its London bureau chief, Mark Landler, to catch up to the opinion piece by manufacturing an entire news article about what a headline called “Inflammatory Rhetoric From Israeli Leaders.”

Landler’s first example is that same “human animals” quote from Gallant that is mentioned in Bartov’s op-ed. Landler also faults a former Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, for declaring, “We’re fighting Nazis.” Landler doesn’t mention that Israelis in Gaza discovered an Arabic-language copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf in a children’s room in a civilian home in Gaza that was used as a Hamas headquarters. Landler also doesn’t mention that Hamas’ covenant aspires to kill all the Jews (“there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”)

The Times has also been quite assertive recently about denouncing Donald Trump’s rhetoric. One Times news article was about Donald Trump’s promise to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” That article reported, “The former president’s remarks drew criticism from some liberals and historians who pointed to echoes of dehumanizing rhetoric wielded by fascist dictators like Hitler and Benito Mussolini.” The Times followed up with a second news article, on the front page, reporting, “Mr. Trump used language that echoed authoritarian leaders who rose to power in Germany and Italy in the 1930s, degrading his political adversaries as ‘vermin’ who needed to be ‘rooted out.’”

Where does the double standard come in?

A Democratic congressman from Wisconsin, Mark Pocan, denounced a largely Jewish pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, as “cancerous to democracy” and as “a cancerous presence on our democracy and politics in general.” The Times hasn’t reported on it. Instead, the Times quoted Pocan about AIPAC without mentioning his use of the cancer slur.

Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who left the paper for a while in an attempt to run for governor of Oregon as a Democrat, recently called Israeli settlements and “violent settlers” a “cancer on the region.” (“It’s imperative that Israel freeze settlements and rein in violent settlers, for they are a cancer on the region,” was the precise sentence, which mixes the metaphor, because one reins in a horse, not a cancer.)

So long as the Times is on high-alert for “dehumanizing rhetoric” with “genocidal echoes,” why give a pass to language that compares Jews to cancer? Such language has a long and unfortunate history. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s collections include an “antisemitic propaganda flyer” acquired by a Jewish child in France between 1942 and 1945. It compares Jews to tuberculosis, syphilis, and cancer. A “fact sheet on the elements of antisemitic discourse,” prepared by Kenneth Marcus of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, notes that “in Nazi Germany, Jewishness was often compared to a cancer.”

Susan Sontag, in her 1978 book Illness as Metaphor, writes, “Modern totalitarian movements, whether of the right or of the left, have been peculiarly — and revealingly — inclined to use disease imagery … European Jewry was repeatedly analogized to syphilis, and to a cancer that must be excised.” Sontag writes that using cancer as a metaphor “amount to saying, first of all, that the event or situation is unqualifiedly and unredeemably wicked. It enormously ups the ante.”

Sontag writes: “To describe a phenomenon as a cancer is an incitement to violence … It could be argued that the cancer metaphors are in themselves implicitly genocidal.”

Sontag notes that “the standard metaphor of Arab polemics — heard by Israelis on the radio every day for the last twenty years — is that Israel is ‘a cancer in the heart of the Arab world’ or ‘the cancer of the Middle East.’”

And Sontag adds, “The cancer metaphor is particularly crass. It is invariably an encouragement to simplify what is complex and an invitation to self-righteousness, if not to fanaticism.”

It’s sad to see coming from Kristof, who was identified in 2011 by the former mayor of New York, Ed Koch, as “truly an enemy of Israel.” If the Times is going to get into the business of raising alarms about Israeli rhetoric or about language with echoes of authoritarianism, it might want to be a little more careful about its own and about that of its allies on the left. Otherwise, the Times‘ concerns just look like unprincipled partisanship or Israel-bashing.

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 New York Times Deplores Israeli Rhetoric While Denouncing Israeli Settlers as a ‘Cancer’ 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.

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