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New York Times Reporting From Gaza Should Carry a Warning Label: ‘Restricted by Hamas’
Palestinian fighters from the armed wing of Hamas take part in a military parade to mark the anniversary of the 2014 war with Israel, near the border in the central Gaza Strip, July 19, 2023. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
The New York Times appears to be yielding to immense outside pressure to tilt its Gaza war coverage even further against Israel.
Last week “more than 100” anti-Israel protesters were arrested after protests at the Times‘ printing plant and Times Square headquarters, according to an account on the CommonDreams.org website, which is sympathetic to the protesters. The group Writers Against the War in Gaza, which includes former New York Times “staff writers” who left to protest what they saw as the paper’s pro-Israel tilt, went so far as to publish a parody newspaper, designed like the Times, called the New York War Crimes. It advised readers concerned about the “current Zionist genocide against Gaza” that “if you still subscribe to The Times, unsubscribe. If you read The Times, stop.”
As that pressure was building, the Times swung to emphasize the “starving Gazans” story that seems to be replacing the “hospitals” story as the narrative that Hamas and its allies want to highlight. After a long span without much of its own firsthand reporting from inside Gaza (aside from brief visits by reporters accompanied by Israeli military spokespeople), the New York Times published a piece that appeared in print under the headline, “In Rafah, Survival Is a Daily Grind: ‘Everything Is Difficult.’”
Online, it carries the byline of Bilal Shbair and the explanation, “Bilal Shbair reported from Rafah, Gaza.”
If the Times has its own reporter operating in Rafah, you might think the editors would assign him to try to ask and answer readers-want-to-know sort of questions such as, “How much of the aid is Hamas stealing?” or “Where are the kidnapped Israelis?” or “Who would the people there like to run the place after Israel destroys Hamas?” or “Does Hamas still control the place enough that it would kill anyone who wrote anything negative about them?”
Instead, the Times coverage emphasizes hunger, hunger, hunger, which seems to be the new Hamas-approved line. Back in November, the paper’s Jerusalem bureau chief, Patrick Kingsley, publicly acknowledged, “Hamas restricts journalists in Gaza.” Israel says Hamas still has four battalions of fighters in Rafah. Is Bilal Shbair’s work subject to the Hamas restrictions that Kingsley mentions? If so, how? What is he allowed to write about, what isn’t he allowed to write about, and what would be the punishment to him if he wrote about what Hamas doesn’t want him to write about or if he deviates from writing what Hamas does want him to write about?
The text of this particular piece, alas, doesn’t inspire much confidence in Shbair’s freedom to tell the truth. For example, he writes, “Israel has accused Hamas of using civilian buildings like schools and mosques for terrorist activities, a charge Hamas denies.” Why frame that as “accused” and “denies” when Israel has provided vast amounts of video and photographic proof, along with tours for Times journalists, demonstrating that it is true, as Gazans would have to be willfully blind not to know.
Another passage in the Times article reports, “On Wednesday, Israeli forces hit an aid warehouse in Rafah that killed a UN worker, according to UNRWA, the largest aid group on the ground in Gaza.”
If you look at another Times story, it says that strike killed a Hamas commander, identified as Muhammad Abu Hasna. But this story says nothing about that — it just mentions the UN worker who was killed.
The Times hasn’t totally abandoned the “hospitals” story for the “hunger” story. Shbair’s account from Rafah says, “In an interview, Marwan al-Hams, the director of Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital, Rafah’s largest, listed the services it could no longer provide: intensive care, complex surgeries, CT scans or MRIs, and cancer treatments. The doctors lack painkillers and medicines for diabetes and high blood pressure. Their ability to provide dialysis is so reduced that patients with kidney diseases have died.”
A natural question might be” “Is Hamas using the hospital as a base like it did many of the other hospitals in Gaza?” Yet that question goes unasked by the Times.
Basically, Hamas doesn’t permit genuinely independent reporting from any Hamas-controlled area, which is part of why the Times has been reluctant to publish such coverage up till now. Yet this latest article suggests that the Times seems to have decided the dateline and the hunger details are somehow worth the tradeoff of independence.
Other coverage from within Gaza by the Times misleads readers about how much aid is going in.
For example, one article claims, “An average of just six commercial trucks carrying food and other supplies have been allowed to enter Gaza each day since early December.”
Earlier the Times said it was 96 trucks a day.
Perhaps there is some distinction between “commercial” and UN or nonprofit relief organizations trucks, but without clarifying that distinction or providing the larger number alongside, the number is misleading. I’m not saying Gazans aren’t hungry, especially in the north where people did not follow Israeli warnings to leave. But the remaining Hamas fighters in their tunnels in Rafah almost certainly are eating pretty well, especially in comparison to the non-fighters not in the tunnels. Any coverage from Gaza that fails to illuminate that contrast falls short of telling readers the full truth of what is happening there. Perhaps Kingsley’s statement that “Hamas restricts journalists in Gaza” should be attached as a warning in large red letters before and after anything the Times prints from a journalist operating in any part of Gaza that is, like Rafah, still under Hamas control.
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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Trump Poised to Offer Saudi Arabia Over $100 Billion Arms Package, Sources Say
US President Donald speaking in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC on March 3, 2025. Photo: Leah Millis via Reuters Connect
The United States is poised to offer Saudi Arabia an arms package worth well over $100 billion, six sources with direct knowledge of the issue told Reuters, saying the proposal was being lined up for announcement during US President Donald Trump‘s visit to the kingdom in May.
The offered package comes after the administration of former President Joe Biden unsuccessfully tried to finalize a defense pact with Riyadh as part of a broad deal that envisioned Saudi Arabia normalizing ties with Israel.
The Biden proposal offered access to more advanced US weaponry in return for halting Chinese arms purchases and restricting Beijing’s investment in the country. Reuters could not establish if the Trump administration’s proposal includes similar requirements.
The White House and Saudi government communications office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A US Defense official said: “Our defense relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is stronger than ever under President Trump‘s leadership. Maintaining our security cooperation remains an important component of this partnership and we will continue to work with Saudi Arabia to address their defense needs.”
In his first term, Trump celebrated weapons sales to Saudi Arabia as good for US jobs.
Lockheed Martin Corp could supply a range of advanced weapons systems including C-130 transport aircraft, two of the sources said. One source said Lockheed would also supply missiles and radars.
RTX Corp, formerly known as Raytheon Technologies, is also expected to play a significant role in the package, which will include supplies from other major US defense contractors such as Boeing Co, Northrop Grumman Corp and General Atomics, said four of the sources.
All the sources declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.
RTX, Northrop and General Atomics declined to comment. Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Lockheed Martin spokesperson said foreign military sales are government-to-government transactions. Questions about sales to foreign governments are best addressed by the US government.
Reuters could not immediately establish how many of the deals on offer were new. Many have been in the works for some time, two of the sources said. For example, the kingdom first requested information about General Atomics’ drones in 2018, they said. Over the past 12 months, a deal for $20 billion of General Atomics’ MQ-9B SeaGuardian-style drones and other aircraft came into focus, according to one of the sources.
Several executives from defense companies are considering traveling to the region as a part of the delegation, three of the sources said.
The US has long supplied Saudi Arabia with weapons. In 2017, Trump proposed approximately $110 billion of sales to the kingdom.
As of 2018, only $14.5 billion of sales had been initiated and Congress began to question the deals in light of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
In 2021, under Biden, Congress imposed a ban on sales of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia over the Khashoggi killing and to pressure the kingdom to wind down its Yemen war, which had inflicted heavy civilian casualties.
Under US law, major international weapons deals must be reviewed by members of Congress before they are finalized.
The Biden administration began to soften its stance on Saudi Arabia in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine impacted global oil supplies. The ban on offensive weapons sales was lifted in 2024, as Washington worked more closely with Riyadh in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack to devise a plan for post-war Gaza.
A potential deal for Lockheed’s F-35 jets, which the kingdom has been reportedly interested in for years, is expected to be discussed, three of the sources said, while downplaying the chances for an F-35 deal being signed during the trip.
The United States guarantees that its close ally Israel receives more advanced American weapons than Arab states, giving it what is labeled a “Qualitative Military Edge” (QME) over its neighbors.
Israel has now owned F-35s for nine years, building multiple squadrons.
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Iran Summons Dutch Envoy to Protest Assassination Attempts Claim
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi looks on before a meeting with Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, in Tehran, Iran, Aug. 26, 2024. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
The Iranian foreign ministry summoned the Dutch ambassador to Tehran on Friday, the official IRNA news agency reported, a day after the Netherlands called in Iran‘s envoy over suspicions that Iran was behind two assassination attempts.
An Iranian foreign ministry official described the Dutch accusation as “laughable” and based on “suspicions or assumptions,” according to IRNA.
“It is regrettable that the Dutch diplomatic apparatus acts so easily on speculations injected by its security bodies and the Zionist regime [Israel], and even summons the Iranian ambassador over such an absurd fabrication,” the official, Alireza Yousefi, was quoted as saying.
The Netherlands summoned Iran‘s ambassador after the Dutch intelligence agency, known as the AIVD, said in its annual report published on Thursday that it was likely Iran was behind two assassination attempts in the Netherlands and Spain.
Two men were arrested in June 2024 in the Dutch town of Haarlem after an assassination attempt on an Iranian residing in the country, the report said.
One of the suspects was also believed to have been behind the failed assassination attempt on Spanish politician and Iran critic Alejo Vidal-Quadras in Madrid in November 2023, it said.
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New York Times Faces Reader Backlash for ‘Arab Woman With Israeli Citizenship’ Line
The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The New York Times is receiving major backlash from its readers after the newspaper described victims of a cable car crash in Italy as “two British tourists and an Arab woman with Israeli citizenship.”
“I’m failing to see the reason of mentioning the woman’s ethnicity. Why didn’t you mention the two British tourists’ ethnicity since you’re at it?” said one Times reader, Rached Ben Yahya.
“Interesting how NYT is trying to distinguish Arab Israeli citizenship and suggest that Israeli citizenship is ‘imposed’ on her while her true identity is Arab and she is living unwillingly under occupation. Israeli media simply refers to her as ‘Israeli victim.’ I guess NYT is relying on their readers’ ignorance about Israeli Muslim citizens who enjoy full rights in every aspect of society,” another Times reader, Stanley Brill, commented on a New York Times Facebook post.
“NYT always dividing people … She was Israeli,” wrote another Times reader, Iniguez Mariano.
“I wonder if from now on we’ll be seeing the NYT casually describe accident victims as ‘Indian man with British citizenship’ and ‘Jewish man with American citizenship,’” another reader, Boaz Arad, commented on the Times social media post.
“The correct sentence would have been ‘three tourists, two British and one Israeli’ … not only did they decide to single out the Arab woman as being different, they decided solely to highlight her ethnicity. The British tourists didn’t get a similar description,” wrote one journalist and Middle East analyst, Seth Frantzman.
“They want to signal to their readers that it’s OK to be sad she died,” another reporter, Lahav Harkov, wrote in a post on X.
A fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Jason Bedrick, noted, “When Arabs with Israeli citizenship were accused of rape, the NYT just called them ‘Israelis,’” referring to an alleged rape of a British woman in Cyprus in 2019.
The social media crowd had a low opinion of the New York Times’s motives. “They want to let performative Western ‘leftists’ know that it is OK to feel sad that she died because she wasn’t a JEWISH Israeli, in which case, empathy for her would have been ‘Zionist’ and Not Acceptable,” wrote one user, with an account named Benjamin Ze’ev.
“We need to spell it out. A majority of readers of the NYT would celebrate if the victims were Jewish Israelis,” another social media commenter wrote.
The Times reporter responsible for the clumsy language, Elisabetta Povoledo, was ridiculed in 2017 for a sentence that said, “Jews and Catholics have a long history of mutual suspicion and conflict.” “Moral equivalence is our new religion,” was the headline Tablet put over its article mocking that whopper.
Povoledo also was the Times reporter who in 2015 claimed that Pope Francis said to the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, “you are an angel of peace.” Later reports cast doubt on that account, with one saying that Francis was offering an exhortation — may you be an angel of peace” —and another saying that the actual comment was “you are a bit of an angel of peace.”
So a Times reporter with previous instances of clumsiness and apparent inaccuracy when it comes to Jewish and Arab-Israeli issues has now, for the third time in a decade, managed to damage what remains of the New York Times’s reputation.
It’s as if Povoledo were imposing her own opinion that the tourist’s Arab identity is somehow more fundamental than her Israeli citizenship, or she can’t wrap her mind around the reality that Israel has Arabs with full rights serving in parliament, as students in universities, and as doctors in hospitals.
Poveledo’s Times biography says, “I was born in Italy, immigrated to Canada as a child.” It’s another example of the Times shift away from being an American newspaper. The social media editors who pluck the reporters’ sentences for use on social media don’t get bylines, and it’s not clear who was involved in this one or what their nationality or nationalities were. But as the comments on social media make clear, at least some segment of the Times readership — or former readership — has figured out what the newspaper is up to. Those readers — for good reason —are fed up with the different treatment that the newspaper applies to Israel and Israelis, Jewish or Arab.
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 Faces Reader Backlash for ‘Arab Woman With Israeli Citizenship’ Line first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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