RSS
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.
The post New York Times Reporting From Gaza Should Carry a Warning Label: ‘Restricted by Hamas’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
How Does ‘An Eye for an Eye’ Hold Up Today?
A Torah scroll. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
“An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” is one of the best-known rules not only in the Torah, but universally. It was recorded in the Hammurabi code of Mesopotamia more than 4,000 years ago. This rule still applies in many legal systems, and is sometimes taken literally. It is clear, however, that this statement in the Torah cannot be taken literally at all.
The Talmud (Bava Kama 83b to 84a) raises an obvious question: Perhaps one thinks it means literally an eye; in that case, if a blind man blinded another or if a cripple maimed another, how would he be able to give an eye for an eye literally?
There are even greater challenges. What if a person who has no teeth puts out the tooth of somebody who has a full set? How are you going to take a tooth for a tooth? Did they have some sort of mechanism for judging a bruise for a bruise? There was indeed a judging system:
If two men are involved in a fight when a pregnant woman comes in between them and as a result there is a miscarriage but there’s no other physical damage [this must have been a pretty common occurrence to be specified], the punishment should be in accordance with what the husband places the value of his lost child and that should be assessed by the judges.
This is then followed immediately by, life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, a burn for a burn, a bruise for a bruise, a wound for a wound.
But then in the next verse, the Torah says that if a person has a slave and he damages him, puts out his eye or knocks out his teeth, the slave should go free. On both sides of this law, you have laws that deal with financial compensation assessed by the judges in relation to the injury or the loss — as indeed would happen in most legal systems today.
The second time this law is repeated, slightly changed, is in this week’s reading (Vayikra (Leviticus) Chapter 24:). The context is a sad incident in which the son of an Israelite woman and an Egyptian father was involved in a fight and cursed God. Through his mother, he was part of the Israelite people. But because of his father, no tribe would accept him — an interesting example of how they defined Israelites then. He felt rejected and alienated. In a way I can feel sorry for him.
The law of cursing is phrased differently in verses 24:15 & 16, and expanded by adding different words for the crime of blasphemy, before reiterating the law.
Cursing God was not the way people nowadays curse or insult each other verbally. Curses were taken very seriously. It was the equivalent of rejecting not only God, but also the people. Laws of blasphemy are not only still very strongly adhered to in many countries today, but actually there is pressure now, thanks partly to the Islamic vote, to bring blasphemy back as a serious offense in Britain and elsewhere
There are people who like to make fun of the ancient Biblical laws and say how out of date they are. Yet in many ways, they are far more advanced and humanitarian than many laws that apply in different countries and under different religions around the world today.
The author is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York
The post How Does ‘An Eye for an Eye’ Hold Up Today? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
New York Times Pumps Out Al-Jazeera-Style Anti-Israel Videos for TikTok
The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The New York Times is using the Chinese-dominated TikTok video app to amplify and pump out Al-Jazeera-style short videos from Gaza demonizing Israel.
Some of the most-viewed recently posted videos on the Times TikTok account, which has 1.8 million followers, feature dramatic images—with credit omitted—and language describing Israel as an aggressor.
“Israel bombarded a large tent encampment for displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza, causing a deadly fire,” is a headline on one Times TikTok video that has been viewed more than 110,000 times.
“Families desperate for food gathered at distribution sites in Gaza as Israel’s halt on humanitarian aid surpassed 60 days,” is the headline on another video, viewed more than 100,000 times. There’s no transparency in the TikTok video of what journalist captured the video and conducted the interviews, or under what conditions or terms—it is simply credited to “The New York Times.”
The videos are also available, in horizontal format, on the Times website. There the videos carry bylines of Times staffers and, in some cases, very brief attribution of the source of the images. For example, an April 7 video headlined “Israeli Strike By a Major Hospital in Gaza Kills and Injures Journalists” is credited to Nader Ibrahim and Jon Hazell. Ibrahim is a “senior video journalist” based in London and came to the Times from the BBC; Hazell is a video editor also based in London. The video carries a brief attribution to “Anadolu Agency, via Reuters.” What the Times doesn’t tell its readers or viewers is that the “Anadolu Agency” is a state-controlled organ of the government of Turkey, which hosts and is ideologically aligned with Hamas.
Text that goes along with the video on the Times website says, “The strike killed one journalist and injured nine others, according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate. At least one more person was killed, according to Gaza’s government office. Among those injured was Hasan Aslih, whom the Israeli military accused, without providing evidence, of being a Hamas militant.”
The bias here is clear. “Gaza’s government office” is the Hamas terrorists, but the Times doesn’t say that. Israel gets the “without providing evidence” treatment, but actually the IDF did offer up details, with a statement on social media, “Asilh, who operates under the guise of a journalist and owns a press company, is a terrorist operative in Hamas’ Khan Yunis Brigade. On October 7, he infiltrated Israeli territory and participated in Hamas’ murderous massacre. Asilh documented and uploaded footage of looting, arson and murder to social media.”
The Times is churning out video after video along this model—produced not in the Times Jerusalem bureau, but by workers in London or New York relying on scantily credited video from foreign wire services, advancing a pro-Hamas narrative and giving short shrift to Israel’s point of view. An April 17 video credited to Ibrahim is headlined, “Israeli Strike Kills at Least a Dozen in ‘Humanitarian Zone,’ Gazan Officials Say.” Text says, “Gaza’s Civil Defense, the local emergency rescue service, reported that an Israeli strike overnight into Thursday in the Mawasi encampment area killed at least a dozen people, including children. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.” Gaza’s “civil defense” is the Hamas terrorist organization.
A May 4, 2025 video by McKinnon de Kuyper includes images attributed only to “AFPTV” without disclosing to Times readers that the AFP board includes three representatives appointed by the French government. The Times describes de Kuyper as based in New York as a “weekend video journalist, operating livestreams and producing clips and breaking news packages for our website and social platforms.”
De Kuyper also is credited with a May 14, 2025, video headlined “Dozens Killed in Israeli Strikes in Northern Gaza, Officials Say.”
A May 7, 2025, video headlined “Airstrikes Kill Dozens in Gaza City” is attributed only to “By The New York Times.” It says, “The single deadliest bombing took place near a popular cafe in Gaza City where at least 33 people were killed, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.” The IDF announced May 8 that during a May 7 strike in the area of Gaza City it had eliminated “Muhammad Rasmi Marzouq Barakeh, a terrorist in Hamas’ military intelligence, who infiltrated Israel during the brutal October 7 massacre, and participated in the abduction of Yaffa Adar.” The Times video doesn’t report that.
Another video, also produced from London, amplifies a protest within Israel against the Israeli government’s policies.
I’ve had my quarrels and complaints over the years with print New York Times coverage produced by the newspaper’s journalists in Washington, New York, and Israel. But these propaganda-style videos are so strident and apparently calculated to generate an emotional response that they make previous New York Times news articles in print look, by comparison, like something produced by Israel’s government press office. What’s the point of having the New York Times produce this stuff when anyone can go to the TikTok account of Qatari-sponsored Al Jazeera and get basically the same material, also amplified to US-based viewers by TikTok’s proprietary algorithm?
Perhaps the New York Times management thinks they can profit in the short term by surfing the wave of Jew-hate, but it will be at the cost of eroding for longtime customers whatever credibility it built up over the years. Maybe they think that the legacy print customers aren’t paying attention to what the newspaper is doing on the social media platforms. Not so—we see it, and we are disgusted—not by what the Times is accusing Israel of doing, but by the Times’s abandonment, in the process, of traditional journalistic standards of quality, accuracy, and transparency.
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 Pumps Out Al-Jazeera-Style Anti-Israel Videos for TikTok first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Even After Death of Terrorist, the AP Continues to Sell His Photos
The bodies of people, some of them elderly, lie on a street after they were killed during a mass-infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Sderot, southern Israel, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
An Israeli air strike on Tuesday, May 13, killed a Palestinian journalist in Gaza whom the IDF identified as a Hamas terrorist, the army said. Despite HonestReporting calling out the Associated Press (AP), the agency continues to sell his photos on its global platform, in what some legal experts say may be considered material/financial support of a designated foreign terrorist organization in violation of US law that prohibits such conduct.
Allegations of Hassan Eslaiah’s links to terrorism should not have come as a surprise to the AP, which officially cut ties with the freelancer after HonestReporting’s November 2023 exposé of his infiltration into Israel during the October 7 massacre, which also saw the resurfacing of a photo of former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar kissing him on the cheek.
Eslaiah’s death also provoked a social media outcry from self-appointed Palestinian “journalists,” as well as from the new Pulitzer Prize winner — people whom we have previously exposed for praising the October 7 massacre, documenting abductions of Israelis by Hamas, or excusing them.
Hassan Eslaiah (r) with former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar (l)
AP’s Deafening Silence
Although we reached out to the AP twice for comment, the wire service continues to ignore our revelation last week of more than 40 photos by Eslaiah on its digital platform, which serves hundreds of media outlets worldwide. The photos’ prices range between 35 and 495 US dollars.
Our story, which detailed the possible legal ramifications of the AP selling Eslaiah’s material, was published after the IDF targeted and wounded him in southern Gaza in early April, while publicly identifying him as a member of Hamas’ Khan Younis Brigade who had been posing as a journalist.
On May 13, he was killed in a precise air strike on the Nasser hospital in Gaza along with other terrorists, the IDF said.
Interestingly, Eslaiah’s specific photos of the October 7 atrocities inside Israel have been removed from the AP’s platform, and it’s not clear whether he received royalties when his remaining photos were purchased.
But the credit Eslaiah still gets from a respected news outlet is certainly a reputation booster. And either way, the AP can still make money off of his propaganda for Hamas:
Social Media Outcry
Meanwhile, some self-appointed Palestinian journalists and the new Pulitzer Prize winner used the X social media platform (formerly Twitter) to eulogize their admired colleague, who also happened to receive a heartfelt send-off from Hamas.
Eslaiah received a prominent lamentation from Mosab Abu Toha, a Gazan poet who won the Pulitzer Prize last week for his New Yorker essays on the war in Gaza, and whom we recently exposed for justifying the abduction of Israelis by Hamas. Incidentally, he also blocked HonestReporting on X.
Hind Khoudari, a self-appointed Gazan journalist who was quoted by various media outlets throughout the Israel-Hamas war, also wrote a moving post about Eslaiah, which prompted us to remind her online fan club that she had collaborated with Hamas, leading to the arrest of Palestinian peace activists.
“Journalist” @Hind_Gaza was outed as a Hamas collaborator whose information led to the arrest of Palestinian peace activists.
Here she is putting lipstick
on a pig
.
No amount of cameras, press vests, or press helmets can disguise who Hassan Eslaiah was.
Behind the… https://t.co/8sh1Qto6iU
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 13, 2025
Khoudari’s reaction was to accuse HonestReporting of responsibility for the deaths of Palestinian journalists, an entirely far-fetched claim with no basis in reality, but repeated by many of her followers on social media.
Motaz Azaiza, another Gazan with an iPhone who became the darling of Western media, called Eslaiah “the most kind human you will ever meet.” Kindness, apparently, does not apply to Jews in Azaiza’s eyes, considering he had posted a video of the kidnapping of Israelis into Gaza and another video replete with a triumphant caption, showing Hamas terrorists inside Israel.
Yeah. Two “kind humans” together.
Reminder: @azaizamotaz9 posted a video of the kidnapping of Israelis into Gaza & another video replete with a triumphant caption, showing Hamas terrorists inside Israel.
No wonder he admired Oct. 7 infiltrator & Hamas operative Hassan Eslaiah. https://t.co/ygkgnk7hBR
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 13, 2025
All of these “journalists” praising their hero, as well as the AP platforming his work, conveniently ignores or denies Eslaiah’s links to terrorism — which comes as little surprise.
Hassan Eslaiah is just the tip of a very big iceberg when it comes to the role of Palestinian journalists in Hamas’ propaganda campaign. And public acknowledgment of this would bring the entire edifice crashing down — something that too many media outlets, as well as Palestinian activists, will try as hard as they can to avoid.
HonestReporting is a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post Even After Death of Terrorist, the AP Continues to Sell His Photos first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login