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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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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials

FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

i24 NewsIranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.

“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.

The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.

The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.

According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”

The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.

Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.

Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.

The post Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.

Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.

Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.

Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.

There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.

The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.

Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.

US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS

The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.

Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.

The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.

The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.

The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.

The post Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say

Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo

The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.

The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.

The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.

The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.

The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.

The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.

On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.

While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.

The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.

USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.

One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.

The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.

The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.

Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.

The post US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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