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New York Times Unloads Immense New ‘1619-Project’-Style Attack on Israel

A boy walks home in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Kida, Aug. 31, 2010. Photo: REUTERS/Nir Elias

The New York Times has unveiled a new, 1619-Project-style attack on Israel — an error-ridden, overwrought, extensively hyped, self-referential, self-congratulatory, and super-long article.

Like the 1619 Project, this latest article comes with a catchy, short headline: “The Unpunished.”

Like the 1619 Project, this project is a product of the New York Times Magazine.

And like the 1619 Project, it comes with an introduction and display text that overstates and oversimplifies its claims: “How Extremists Took Over Israel” and “After 50 years of failure to stop violence and terrorism against Palestinians by Jewish ultranationalists, lawlessness has become the law.” Not to mention: “This story is told in three parts. The first documents the unequal system of justice that grew around Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. The second shows how extremists targeted not only Palestinians but also Israeli officials trying to make peace. The third explores how this movement gained control of the state itself. Taken together, they tell the story of how a radical ideology moved from the fringes to the heart of Israeli political power.”

The Times article itself is so mind-numbingly long that the newspaper published a Cliffs-Notes-style summary of it that unfortunately isn’t much help, either.

The summary complains about what it calls a “two-tier situation” in which West Bank Arabs face military law while Israeli citizens there “are treated according to the civil law of the State of Israel.” Yet nearly all countries, including the United States, distinguish between citizens and non-citizens in their legal system. The Times, in all its many words, doesn’t explain why or how the distinctions Israel makes are different or worse or unjustified given the extraordinary and unusual violent terrorist threat the country faces from Arabs opposed to its existence and determined to eradicate the Jewish presence there.

The paper also claims that, “in the West Bank, a new generation of ultranationalists has taken an even more radical turn against the very notion of a democratic Israeli state. Their objective is to tear down Israel’s institutions and to establish ‘Jewish rule’: anointing a king, building a temple in place of the Jerusalem mosques sacred to Muslims worldwide, imposing a religious regime on all Jews.”

That’s a sweeping over-generalization. Jews have prayed since the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in ancient times for its rebuilding, speedily and in our days, as part of the messianic redemption. That hasn’t been a threat to anyone.

Many West Bank residents, as the Times itself has acknowledged frequently, are both “secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews” who “moved there largely for cheaper housing.” The New York Times reported in February 2023 about “religious right-wingers,” residents of Efrat in the West Bank, who “have become a visible presence at weekly anti-government protests in Tel Aviv, a bastion of secular and liberal Israelis.” It described them as “more liberal-minded religious Zionists, who support a more pluralist approach to Jewish life and a more tolerant approach to Palestinians, even while still opposing Palestinian sovereignty.” That level of nuance and complexity is absent from the summary of the latest Times investigation, rendering it inaccurate and misleading.

The full Times article is no better. The Times asks, “How did a young nation turn so quickly on its own democratic ideals, and at what price? Any meaningful answer to these questions has to take into account how a half-century of lawless behavior that went largely unpunished propelled a radical form of ultranationalism to the center of Israeli politics.”

There is a passing, brief acknowledgement that “many Israelis who moved to the West Bank did so for reasons other than ideology, and among the settlers, there is a large majority who aren’t involved in violence or other illegal acts against Palestinians.” Yet the Times‘ focus is relentlessly on the extremists, distorting the reality.

The language the Times chooses to use echoes the debate over civil rights for black Americans. “Two separate and unequal systems of justice: one for Jews and another for Palestinians.”

The Times mischaracterizes Jewish history. “While the Zionism of the earlier period was largely secular and socialist, the new settlers believed they were advancing God’s agenda,” the Times claims. “Largely” is not “exclusively.” Some of the earlier Zionists also believed they were advancing God’s agenda. To the First Zionist Congress in 1897, Rabbi Samuel Mohilever sent a message, quoted in Gil Troy’s The Zionist Ideas, saying “the resettlement of our country … is one of the fundamental commandments of our Torah.” Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence begins by stating that “the Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious, and political identity was shaped.” The document adds, “It will be based on freedom, justice, and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.”

The Times also mischaracterizes Palestinian history. It refers to a mayor of Nablus, Bassam Shaka, as among “prominent Palestinian figures,” without mentioning that he was a supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) when it was a terrorist group and was jailed by Jordan as a member of the Syrian Baath Party — as was reported earlier by the Times itself.

The Times is unremittingly pessimistic. It quotes a former Shin Bet director, Ami Ayalon, saying, “We are not discussing Jewish terrorism. We are discussing the failure of Israel.” Yet Israel has not failed. It is a nuclear power with a strong economy, loyal and patriotic citizens, and strong support from the US Congress. Every year, tens of thousands of Jews from around the world voluntarily choose to leave countries such as France and the United States and move to Israel.

The Times is so negative that it manages to attack Israelis for planting trees. A photo with the article has a cutline that says, “Settlers planting trees near an illegal settlement called Mitzpe Yair, in the South Hebron hills, as a way of claiming territory.”

The Times predictably blames Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for inviting extremists into his coalition. “Netanyahu, who is now on trial for bribery and other corruption charges, repeatedly failed in his attempts to form a coalition after most of the parties announced that they were no longer willing to join him. He personally involved himself in negotiations to ally Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party and Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism Party, making them kingmakers for anyone trying to form a coalition government. In November 2022, the bet paid off: With the now-critical support of the extreme right, Netanyahu returned to office.”

Yet Netanyahu also wooed Arab and centrist parties. Indeed, Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid refusing to join a Netanyahu-led coalition also turned Ben-Gvir and Smotrich into kingmakers. The political situation is such that nearly anyone who wanted could have been a kingmaker.

The Times reports, “Shin Bet had monitored Ben-Gvir in the years after Yitzhak Rabin’s murder, and he was arrested on multiple charges including inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organization. He won acquittals or dismissals in some of the cases, but he was also convicted several times and served time in prison.” Ironically, the arrests, convictions, and prison time undercut the whole Times narrative about “a sometimes criminal nationalistic movement that has been allowed to operate with impunity.” It’s not “impunity” if there are arrests, convictions, and imprisonment. And if there’s no possibility of acquittal or dismissal, then that’s not due process or the rule of law, either.

The errors are compounded in the Times‘ “The Morning” newsletter, which explains, “Some geographical background: Mark and Ronen’s story focuses on the West Bank, which, like Gaza, is a Palestinian territory that Israel occupies.” Declaring the West Bank “a Palestinian territory that Israel occupies” denies that Jews have lived in places such as Hebron for thousands of years and that the Jewish people have longstanding historical and religious ties to the place — the West Bank literally includes Judea. The newsletter also refers to “Israel’s endorsement of settler lawlessness,” which goes beyond even the magazine article in falsely claiming an official Israeli government endorsement of violent crime.

The Times promotes this series with a video featuring New York Times magazine reporter Ronen Bergman, the Nikole Hannah-Jones of this adventure when it comes to self-regard. Text on the screen says, “How Israel Became Radicalized” and has Bergman stating, “What is happening in the West Bank is a total separation of two sets of law, one for Jews, one for the local Palestinians.”

Bergman makes much in the video about how “what is unique in the story we are publishing in the magazine, the New York Times,” is that the material is “almost in its entirety coming from Israeli officials … the professionals, in the defense establishment, and the intelligence community.” This is ironic, because the claim comes after the Times, in fine print, credits video provided by B’Tselem, a far-left Israeli human rights group that gets nearly half its funding from outside Israel, including from the UN, the European Union, and the Ford Foundation. Somehow Bergman doesn’t have the juice with the defense establishment to get video footage and needs to rely on B’Tselem?

Anyway, the claim that this is in any way “unique” is nonsense. Israel’s version of WASPs — white, Ashkenazi sabras with protektzia — have disdain for religious Jews, for West Bank settlers, and for Netanyahu. They’ve tried to undercut Likud prime ministers with leaks to friendly New York Times journalists dating back to the Begin days. Bergman has been the mouthpiece of those Israeli defense establishment types to the New York Times dating back to 2016, at least.

Nor is it unique that the Times would attack Israel in wartime by trying to falsely depict its government as being captured by extremists who, if anything, have in fact been largely sidelined since Oct. 7, 2023. Netanyahu has consistently not given them what they ask for. They aren’t in the war cabinet, not even as observers. Nor is it unique for the Times to try to define the Israeli “occupation” of the West Bank as the main problem in the Middle East rather than, say, other problems such as Islamist, Iranian, and Arab extremism, corruption, antisemitism, and rejection of Israel’s right to exist.

None of this is to say that there are not some bad apples among Israel’s West Bank settlers or that Israel has sometimes struggled with policing the West Bank. Yet criminal justice in America is imperfect, too, and criminal justice in the Palestinian Authority amounts to paying official government stipends to the families of terrorists. So why the relentless focus on Israel’s shortcomings?

Just as the 1619 project monocausally blamed racist white slave owners for everything in American history, including the American Revolution, the Times wants to claim that a handful of extremist West Bank settlers explain all of Israel’s problems, and that Israel explains all of the Middle East’s problems. That is deceptive. It leaves out plenty of important factors, including, but not limited to, the Obama-Biden incorrect conviction that paying off Iran and surrendering in Afghanistan and Syria would make America or Israel safer, the State Department-Israeli left’s incorrect conviction that peace could be successfully negotiated and kept with the PLO, and the majority of the Israeli public’s correct understanding that their security couldn’t be assured by Antony Blinken or Martin Indyk absent vast changes in Arab society.

The problem is, if you make more limited claims for the importance of the settler story, it becomes much harder to justify the immense investment of reader and reporter and editor time, space, and money to devote to it. Call it the 1619 paradox. The more excessive the space and years devoted to a New York Times investigative project, the more hyperbolically excessive will be the author’s claims for its importance, and the less likely they are to be empirically true. Or, to put it simply, the bigger a New York Times investigative project, the less likely it is to give a reader an accurate understanding of the real world.

“Unpunished,” sadly, is whichever Times editor had the poor judgment to greenlight this overly ambitious and fatally flawed project. Punished, sadly, will be any Times readers or future Pulitzer Prize jurors unfortunate enough to waste any of their time reading it.

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. He also writes at TheEditors.com.

The post New York Times Unloads Immense New ‘1619-Project’-Style Attack on Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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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.

The post Hamas Says No Interim Hostage Deal Possible Without Work Toward Permanent Ceasefire first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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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.”

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.

The post Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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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.

The post Jordan Reveals Muslim Brotherhood Operating Vast Illegal Funding Network Tied to Gaza Donations, Political Campaigns first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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