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New York Times Praises ‘Charm’ of Hezbollah Terrorist Leader
The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
A New York Times news account of the funeral of Hezbollah terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah refers to his “charm” and “charisma.”
“He served many roles in the lives of Hezbollah members, acting as a religious leader, political strategist and commander in chief,” the New York Times reporters Christina Goldbaum and Euan Ward wrote in a dispatch that the Times labeled as coming from Beirut, Lebanon. “His charm — a rarity among leaders in the region — was also key to unifying Hezbollah’s followers. The group’s current leader, Mr. Qassem, does not share Mr. Nasrallah’s stature or charisma.”
The CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, noted, “Nasrallah deserves no reverence, only the cold judgment of history. His hands were covered in the blood of innocents, his legacy is little more than death and suffering.” Greenblatt described Nasrallah as a “murderous terrorist” and as “a fanatic who spread anti-Semitism, extremism, and violence across the Middle East and beyond. His enduring legacy is one of death – thousands of Jews, Israelis, Lebanese, Syrians, Yemenis, and others fell victim to his reign of terror.”
I emailed Goldbaum and asked her: “I noticed in your NYT story today on Nasrallah’s funeral you refer to his ‘charm.’ What did you mean by that exactly? How would you respond to families of victims of Hezbollah-sponsored terrorism who did not find it charming to have their loved ones killed by Hezbollah?”
I also inquired, “Given that you are in Lebanon with a lot of armed Hezbollah people about, are you able to write the truth about Hezbollah or do you have to write nice things, like that Nasrallah was charming, because you are afraid of being kidnapped or killed if you tell the truth?”
She did not respond.
My Webster’s Second defines charming as “pleasing in a high degree; delighting; fascinating; of attractive character and personality.” It offers as synonyms “delightful, amiable, lovely, pleasing.”
When Nasrallah was killed, President Biden issued a statement noting that “his many victims” included “thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians.”
The New York Times article from the funeral that discussed Nasrallah’s supposed “charm” made no mention of those victims. Nor did it mention Nasrallah’s notoriously threatening comment, as translated by Prime Minister Netanyahu, that “If all the Jews gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of chasing them down around the world.”
The Times did not mention the 12 Druse children killed by a Hezbollah rocket strike on a soccer field in Majdal Shams in 2024 while Nasrallah led the terrorist group.
The U.S. State Department says Hezbollah “is responsible for multiple large-scale terrorist attacks, including the 1983 suicide truck bombings of U.S. Embassy Beiruit and the U.S. Marine barracks; the 1984 attack on the U.S. Embassy Beirut annex; and the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847, during which U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem was murdered.” It says the group “was also implicated, along with Iran, in the 1992 attacks on the Israeli embassy in Argentina and the 1994 bombing of the Argentine‑Israelite Mutual Association in Buenos Aires.” Some “charm.”
The Times article misleadingly refers to “Hezbollah’s raison d’être: armed resistance against Israeli occupation.” That understates Hezbollah’s true objective, which is subjugating Lebanon to Iranian control as part of the Iranian campaign to extend fanatic revolutionary Islamist clerical rule worldwide and put America and Israel to death along the way. In fact, the Times sanitized its report of the Nasrallah funeral by omitting from the account the violent chants heard there of “Death to America, Death to Israel.” The Times deceives readers by claiming Hezbollah is all about “Israeli occupation,” when it’s actually about “death to America.”
In addition to the bylines of Goldbaum and Ward, the Times article extolling Nasrallah’s “charm” also says “Dayana Iwaza and Jacob Roubai contributed reporting.” Iwaza’s Linked In and Instagram profiles identify her as a part time or free-lance contributor also to Aljazeera, a network controlled by Qatar that Israel says has served as cover for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists.
The Times article already carries one correction: “A correction was made on Feb. 23, 2025: An earlier version of this article misidentified the newly appointed president of Lebanon. He is Joseph Aoun, not Michel Aoun, a former president of the country.”
If the Times took its journalistic credibility more seriously, maybe it would add a second correction, or an editor’s note, to the effect that it was a ridiculous mistake to describe Hassan Nasrallah as “charming.” It’s one thing to quote someone as saying that, it’s quite another for the newspaper to report it as fact, unattributed, in the newspaper’s own voice. Where were the Times editors?
And what were the reporters thinking? If in fact they were intimidated by the tens of thousands of Hezbollah supporters, maybe the best thing for the Times to have done on this one would have been to write the story from somewhere safe, or at least to disclose to readers that the story was affected by a threat of violence.
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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Hamas Says No Interim Hostage Deal Possible Without Work Toward Permanent Ceasefire
Explosions send smoke into the air in Gaza, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, July 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
The spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing said on Friday that while the Palestinian terrorist group favors reaching an interim truce in the Gaza war, if such an agreement is not reached in current negotiations it could revert to insisting on a full package deal to end the conflict.
Hamas has previously offered to release all the hostages held in Gaza and conclude a permanent ceasefire agreement, and Israel has refused, Abu Ubaida added in a televised speech.
Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have hosted more than 10 days of talks on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day truce in the war.
Israeli officials were not immediately available for comment on the eve of the Jewish Sabbath.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on a call he had with Pope Leo on Friday that Israel‘s efforts to secure a hostage release deal and 60-day ceasefire “have so far not been reciprocated by Hamas.”
As part of the potential deal, 10 hostages held in Gaza would be returned along with the bodies of 18 others, spread out over 60 days. In exchange, Israel would release a number of detained Palestinians.
“If the enemy remains obstinate and evades this round as it has done every time before, we cannot guarantee a return to partial deals or the proposal of the 10 captives,” said Abu Ubaida.
Disputes remain over maps of Israeli army withdrawals, aid delivery mechanisms into Gaza, and guarantees that any eventual truce would lead to ending the war, said two Hamas officials who spoke to Reuters on Friday.
The officials said the talks have not reached a breakthrough on the issues under discussion.
Hamas says any agreement must lead to ending the war, while Netanyahu says the war will only end once Hamas is disarmed and its leaders expelled from Gaza.
Almost 1,650 Israelis and foreign nationals have been killed as a result of the conflict, including 1,200 killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel, according to Israeli tallies. Over 250 hostages were kidnapped during Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught.
Israel responded with an ongoing military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
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Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel
People hold images of the victims of the 1994 bombing attack on the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) community center, marking the 30th anniversary of the attack, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Irina Dambrauskas
Iran on Friday marked the 31st anniversary of the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires by slamming Argentina for what it called “baseless” accusations over Tehran’s alleged role in the terrorist attack and accusing Israel of politicizing the atrocity to influence the investigation and judicial process.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on the anniversary of Argentina’s deadliest terrorist attack, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 300.
“While completely rejecting the accusations against Iranian citizens, the Islamic Republic of Iran condemns attempts by certain Argentine factions to pressure the judiciary into issuing baseless charges and politically motivated rulings,” the statement read.
“Reaffirming that the charges against its citizens are unfounded, the Islamic Republic of Iran insists on restoring their reputation and calls for an end to this staged legal proceeding,” it continued.
Last month, a federal judge in Argentina ordered the trial in absentia of 10 Iranian and Lebanese nationals suspected of orchestrating the attack in Buenos Aires.
The ten suspects set to stand trial include former Iranian and Lebanese ministers and diplomats, all of whom are subject to international arrest warrants issued by Argentina for their alleged roles in the terrorist attack.
In its statement on Friday, Iran also accused Israel of influencing the investigation to advance a political campaign against the Islamist regime in Tehran, claiming the case has been used to serve Israeli interests and hinder efforts to uncover the truth.
“From the outset, elements and entities linked to the Zionist regime [Israel] exploited this suspicious explosion, pushing the investigation down a false and misleading path, among whose consequences was to disrupt the long‑standing relations between the people of Iran and Argentina,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said.
“Clear, undeniable evidence now shows the Zionist regime and its affiliates exerting influence on the Argentine judiciary to frame Iranian nationals,” the statement continued.
In April, lead prosecutor Sebastián Basso — who took over the case after the 2015 murder of his predecessor, Alberto Nisman — requested that federal Judge Daniel Rafecas issue national and international arrest warrants for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over his alleged involvement in the attack.
Since 2006, Argentine authorities have sought the arrest of eight Iranians — including former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who died in 2017 — yet more than three decades after the deadly bombing, all suspects remain still at large.
In a post on X, the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), the country’s Jewish umbrella organization, released a statement commemorating the 31st anniversary of the bombing.
“It was a brutal attack on Argentina, its democracy, and its rule of law,” the group said. “At DAIA, we continue to demand truth and justice — because impunity is painful, and memory is a commitment to both the present and the future.”
31 años del atentado a la AMIA – DAIA. 31 años sin justicia.
El 18 de julio de 1994, un atentado terrorista dejó 85 personas muertas y más de 300 heridas. Fue un ataque brutal contra la Argentina, su democracia y su Estado de derecho.
Desde la DAIA, seguimos exigiendo verdad y… pic.twitter.com/kV2ReGNTIk
— DAIA (@DAIAArgentina) July 18, 2025
Despite Argentina’s longstanding belief that Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah terrorist group carried out the devastating attack at Iran’s request, the 1994 bombing has never been claimed or officially solved.
Meanwhile, Tehran has consistently denied any involvement and refused to arrest or extradite any suspects.
To this day, the decades-long investigation into the terrorist attack has been plagued by allegations of witness tampering, evidence manipulation, cover-ups, and annulled trials.
In 2006, former prosecutor Nisman formally charged Iran for orchestrating the attack and Hezbollah for carrying it out.
Nine years later, he accused former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — currently under house arrest on corruption charges — of attempting to cover up the crime and block efforts to extradite the suspects behind the AMIA atrocity in return for Iranian oil.
Nisman was killed later that year, and to this day, both his case and murder remain unresolved and under ongoing investigation.
The alleged cover-up was reportedly formalized through the memorandum of understanding signed in 2013 between Kirchner’s government and Iranian authorities, with the stated goal of cooperating to investigate the AMIA bombing.
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Jordan Reveals Muslim Brotherhood Operating Vast Illegal Funding Network Tied to Gaza Donations, Political Campaigns
Murad Adailah, the head of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood, attends an interview with Reuters in Amman, Jordan, Sept. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Jehad Shelbak
The Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements, has been implicated in a wide-ranging network of illegal financial activities in Jordan and abroad, according to a new investigative report.
Investigations conducted by Jordanian authorities — along with evidence gathered from seized materials — revealed that the Muslim Brotherhood raised tens of millions of Jordanian dinars through various illegal activities, the Jordan news agency (Petra) reported this week.
With operations intensifying over the past eight years, the report showed that the group’s complex financial network was funded through various sources, including illegal donations, profits from investments in Jordan and abroad, and monthly fees paid by members inside and outside the country.
The report also indicated that the Muslim Brotherhood has taken advantage of the war in Gaza to raise donations illegally.
Out of all donations meant for Gaza, the group provided no information on where the funds came from, how much was collected, or how they were distributed, and failed to work with any international or relief organizations to manage the transfers properly.
Rather, the investigations revealed that the Islamist network used illicit financial mechanisms to transfer funds abroad.
According to Jordanian authorities, the group gathered more than JD 30 million (around $42 million) over recent years.
With funds transferred to several Arab, regional, and foreign countries, part of the money was allegedly used to finance domestic political campaigns in 2024, as well as illegal activities and cells.
In April, Jordan outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s most vocal opposition group, and confiscated its assets after members of the Islamist movement were found to be linked to a sabotage plot.
The movement’s political arm in Jordan, the Islamic Action Front, became the largest political grouping in parliament after elections last September, although most seats are still held by supporters of the government.
Opponents of the group, which is banned in most Arab countries, label it a terrorist organization. However, the movement claims it renounced violence decades ago and now promotes its Islamist agenda through peaceful means.
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