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New York Times Marks October 7 With New Display of “Constant” “Anti-Israel Bias”
The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The New York Times coverage of the anniversary of the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel has been marred by the same inaccuracies, misconceptions, and biases that have characterized the newspaper’s coverage of the war for the past year.
The print Times front page of October 8 featured a picture of one of the anti-Israel protests that have been a feature of college campuses, European capitals, and some American cities over the past year. “Calls for peace, and protests of the fighting, have come from around the world, including in New York City on Monday,” the photo cutline said.
By characterizing the anti-Israel protests as “calls for peace” rather than support for terrorism or for the violent eradication of Israel, the Times editors are expressing an editorial opinion that doesn’t necessarily fit the facts.
In New York City on Monday, individuals who were among those anti-Israel protest groups beat up the board co-chair of Democratic Majority for Israel, Todd Richman. And later in the week, a Times headline and news article conceded, “A Columbia Student Group Endorses Hamas and Oct. 7.” Figuring out which keffiyeh-wearing, Palestinian-flag-waving, groups in the streets are protesting the fighting and calling for peace, and which are merely cheering on the Hamas and Hezbollah side of the fighting, or calling for peace as a way of assuring that Hamas survives to attack Israel again in the future, is a job for skeptical reporting, not gullible front-page photo cutline writing.
Times photo selection was also the focus of a complaint by the national director emeritus of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman. “New York Times, you never disappoint -— your anti- Israel bias is a constant,” Foxman wrote in a social media post. “Today on the most painful day for Israel and the Jewish people since the Holocaust — Oct 7 — after Israel was brutally attacked by Hamas — your journalistic moral equivalency — publishes photos of both victims and perpetrators. It’s as if, when we commemorate Pearl Harbor — you would publish photos of Americans and Japanese.”
On a substantive level, Times attempts to explain the fighting to readers relied heavily on mistaken analysis and assumptions, and on Times-selected “experts” pushing theories that are not supported by strong evidence. One front-page article was headlined “Gazans Are Trapped in a Prison That Was Decades in the Making.” The “prison” notion is semi-comical, because the Times also regularly insists that Israeli bombing is destroying “every one” of Gaza’s “12 universities.” The Times can’t seem to make up its mind whether Gaza was a prison or a paradise destroyed by Israel.
The Times “prison” story concludes with a quote from a Times-selected expert.
“Everybody has got culpability here,” said Michael H. Posner, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor who now teaches at the Stern School of Business at New York University. “It’s a collective failure on the part of the West — the U.S. and the Europeans — and the Arab states to force the parties to sit down and sort out their differences.”
Not named as culpable are the Palestinians.
If there’s a “failure” here, it’s that the Times reporters and their editors imagine that all problems are solvable if only people would be forced to “sit down and sort out their differences.” Imagine if after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, or after the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing, or after the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, the Times had reacted by saying what was really needed was for someone “to force the parties to sit down and sort out their differences.”
How is the U.S. going to “force” Israel and Hamas to “sit down and sort out their differences” when the difference is that Hamas wants to wipe Israel off the map and kill all the Jews, while the Jews want to exist in peace in their own land?
Perhaps someday eventually there can be a negotiated peaceful settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs of Gaza. For now, though, there’s no indication that Hamas would accept any such long-term solution that stops short of a total Israeli surrender. The morality of forcing Israel into concessions to a bunch of would-be murderers of Jews is sketchy, because if the would-be-murderers don’t wind up keeping their end of the deal, a lot more Jews could be killed. A year after the October 7 attack, that somehow still manages to elude the Times and its sources.
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 Marks October 7 With New Display of “Constant” “Anti-Israel Bias” 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.