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New York Times Undercounts Israeli Hostages, Smears IDF as ‘Ferocious’
Israelis protest against the government and to show support for the hostages who were kidnapped during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Nov. 30, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Sometimes an entire story about New York Times bias can come packed into two short sentences of a context paragraph.
A recent article in the Times‘ arts section reported on the Jewish Museum in New York acquiring an artwork by Ruth Patir that was originally intended for the Venice Biennale. As part of the story, the Times offered up this encapsulation of events in Israel and Gaza: “Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 and abducted 240 people. The Israeli military responded with a ferocious military campaign in which more than 41,000 people have been killed, according to local health authorities, including many women and children.”
Can you spot the instances of bias?
The Israeli campaign got labeled as “ferocious,” while the Hamas terrorist attack of last Oct. 7 got no pejorative adjective from the Times. “Ferocious” was just the latest loaded modifier the Times has slapped on Israel’s careful military campaign, which the newspaper has, in its news columns, also called “brutal” and “aggressive.”
The Times has further made a point of mentioning that the Gazans killed include “many women and children.” Yet those killed and abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7 also included many women and children. Why mention the presence of women and children among the Gazans but not among the Israelis? It’s a double standard.
While I’m willing to acknowledge that there surely are innocent children who have been killed in Gaza, it’s also worth mentioning that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both ferocious terrorist groups, have themselves deliberately used children as combatants and as human shields. And that some of the innocent children may be victims of misfires of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad rockets aimed at Israel.
In addition, the “abducted 240 people” sum inaccurately understated the number. The Times elsewhere has reported that “about 250 hostages were captured in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct, 7, 2023.” The 250 number appeared in another article in the same print edition of the Times as the 240 number, leaving readers at a loss as to which figure to believe. The article about the art exhibit even included a hyperlink to a Times article reporting, “In all, about 250 people were abducted on Oct. 7, according to Israeli officials.” A Washington Post article identified 251 individually by name.
I wrote to the author of the Times article, asking why mention the “women and children” in one case but not the other. I also asked, “Is 240 just a typo that needs correcting from hitting the 4 key instead of the 5, or is the arts section and the woke editors there keeping its own lower count of kidnapped-by-Hamas people than the rest of the Times is?”
No correction has appeared, and I have received no response from the Times to my inquiry. Short of publishing a correction and an editor’s note apologizing for the slanted treatment, what are they going to say? The article speaks for itself, the latest example in a long series of what the former national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, has called the Times’ “constant” anti-Israel bias.
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 Undercounts Israeli Hostages, Smears IDF as ‘Ferocious’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.