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New York Times Falls for Hamas Propaganda at a Third Hospital, Where Terrorists Hid Weapons in Incubators
Ahmad Kahalot, a senior Hamas member and director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza, speaking to Israeli interrogators. Photo: Screenshot
Of all the many egregious embarrassments of the New York Times in its flawed coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, hospitals consistently have been at the forefront.
First the Times fell for a Hamas propaganda stunt blaming Israel for killing hundreds at Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza City. It subsequently emerged that the damage was from a misfired terrorist missile aimed at Israel. The Times had to publish an editors’ note confessing that editors “should have taken more care.”
Then the Times spent weeks obsessing again and again on the front page about another Gaza City hospital, Shifa Hospital, ritualistically including lines about how “Hamas denies operating within the hospital or under it, as does the hospital director, Mohammad Abu Salmiya.” With that hospital, too, the Times put itself to shame. It never really explained to readers why it passed along the Hamas denials or those of the hospital officials, even though everyone knew they were lying.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it found that one of the hostages, 19-year-old Noa Marciano, had been murdered by Hamas terrorists inside the Shifa hospital. It published video of armed terrorists hustling Nepalese and Thai civilian hostages into the hospital. It found a terrorist tunnel with a blast-proof door and a firing hole. It found a booby-trapped vehicle full of weapons. It found Hamas weapons and uniforms hidden inside the hospital’s MRI area, where security cameras had been covered up.
Now the Times has egg on its face for coverage of a third Gaza hospital, Kamal Adwan Hospital. Yet again, the Times gullibly, or complicitly, has advanced the false Hamas narrative about cruel Israel targeting innocent doctors and patients.
Under the headline, “Israeli forces raid another hospital and detail doctors, Gaza’s health ministry says,” the Times reported, “Israeli forces rounded up civilians and medical staff in the hospital’s courtyard, and five people were injured by gunfire, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run enclave. They also interrogated medical personnel under duress, taking some to an unknown location, it said.”
The Times dispatch, by a reporter named Anushka Patil who was not in Gaza, went on as basically a press release accusing Israel of various atrocities. “Twelve children at the hospital were on life support equipment, raising fears about their survival, the Gaza health ministry said … Like many medical facilities in the enclave, it was struggling to function under severe shortages of medicine, water, food, and fuel even before it was surrounded by Israeli forces in recent days,” the Times reported. “Surgeries at the hospital were already being performed by cellphone flashlight and without anesthesia, the director of the pediatric ward, Dr. Hussam Abu Safyia, told the New York Times last month.”
As it did with coverage of the other hospitals, the Times piled on with more coverage the next day, this time from Matthew Mpoke Bigg, another Times reporter who was not in Gaza. He recycled UN attacks on Israel: “Kamal Adwan Hospital had been under siege by Israeli forces for several days, according to the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who said earlier this week that he was ‘extremely worried’ about Israeli operations there,” the second Times article said. “The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report on Thursday that Israeli forces, accompanied by tanks, had raided the hospital for a second successive day ‘with reports of mass arrests and ill treatment of people who they have detained,’ including beatings.”
None of the Times articles said, by the way, who Kamal Adwan was. He was a PLO terrorist who was involved in plotting the kidnapping and murder of the 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. It seems like a strange person to name a hospital after.
The Times piled on some more with yet a third story about Kamal Adwan Hospital, this one headlined, “Israeli forces withdraw after besieging Gaza hospital, leaving behind bodies and destruction.” Hamas claims were passed along by the Times at face value: “The Palestinian health ministry said that during the Israeli siege, 12 premature babies had been trapped inside the incubators without access to milk or life support.” Israeli claims, in contrast, were given super-skeptical treatment by the Times, including “scare quotes”: “a statement by the Israel military … that hospital workers ‘confessed’ that incubators for premature babies were being used to store weapons. The Israeli military’s claims could not be independently verified.”
A video released by the Israeli government this week showed the director of the hospital, Ahmad al-Kahlout, or Abu Hassan, acknowledging that he’s the equivalent of a brigadier general in Hamas and that 16 hospital officials — doctors, nurses, clerks — have Hamas military roles. Hamas used the hospital and an ambulance as a hiding place for a kidnapped Israeli soldier, according to the video. The Israeli military also issued a video showing that Hamas used incubators in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the hospital to hide weapons. The New York Times so far does not appear to have shared news of either video with its readers.
An honest newspaper would make that the headline — “Hamas Terrorists Used Hospital as Hiding Place.” Too much of the New York Times coverage of this war is not honest, however. It is Hamas hype. So instead of honest headlines, Times readers get headlines about “Israeli forces … besieging Gaza hospital, leaving behind bodies and destruction.” The ones destroying Gaza are the Hamas terrorists using hospitals as hiding places. The New York Times is serving as the terrorists’ propagandists.
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 Falls for Hamas Propaganda at a Third Hospital, Where Terrorists Hid Weapons in Incubators 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.