Connect with us

RSS

‘The New York Times’ and Israel

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Photo: Charles Haynes via Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.orgNothing engages New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman more than the unrelenting laceration of Israel. He has blamed “feckless” American Jewish leaders for supporting “a colonial Israeli occupation” while equating Jewish settlers with Palestinian suicide bombers. He advised readers to “never forget just how crazy some of Israel’s Jewish settlers are.” They assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin when he tried to cede part of the West Bank for peace with the Palestinians. (Rabin’s assassin, who lived in the Israeli city of Herzliya, was not a settler.) Friedman dismissed devastating Palestinian terrorist attacks as merely “a continual poke in the ribs” to Israeli civilians.

Unless Israel returned to its vulnerable pre-1967 boundaries, Friedman imagined, “it will be stuck with an apartheid-like, democracy-sapping, permanent occupation.” Settlements were “insane” and a “cancer for the Jewish people.” He identified the violent Palestinian intifada with the American struggle for civil rights while insisting that his repetitive recitation of Israel’s failings helps the Jewish state preserve its moral integrity. He claimed that Palestinian violence was justified as “spontaneous acts of a people being occupied by another people.”

Bracketing Jewish settlers with Palestinian suicide bombers, Friedman has insisted that there is “no hope for peace without a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank,” effectively sandwiching Israel between its hostile neighbors and leaving it dangerously vulnerable. But if Israel retains these territories (biblical Judea and Samaria) it “would become either an undemocratic apartheid state … or a non-Jewish state.” The solution, he imagines, is to dismantle settlements, thereby depriving Israel of its biblical homeland, which he identifies as Palestinian land. Otherwise, “it could no longer be a Jewish democracy.”

Friedman has hardly been the only Times critic of Zionism and Israel. Two decades before there was a Jewish state, there was a Jewish reporter—Joseph W. Levy—whose hostility to Zionism was evident in his coverage of Palestine. He ignored murderous Arab attacks against Jews, blamed Zionists for Arab violence and guided critics of Zionism into the Times. Jewish publisher Adolph Ochs was determined that the Times not be identified as a “Jewish” newspaper.

For his son-in-law and successor, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who launched the enduring family dynasty, Zionism raised doubts about the loyalty of American Jews. Editors were told not to refer to “the Jewish people” but to “people of the Jewish faith.” Reporters whose first name was Abraham received bylines with their initials only, the better to conceal their Jewish identity. Sulzberger worried about having a “Jewish specialist” posted in Jerusalem and preferred to “never put a Jew in the ‘showcase’ lest the Times be devalued in ‘gentile circles.’”

Times Jewish Jerusalem bureau chiefs, columnists and reporters have been unrelenting critics of Israel. Among them, Roger Cohen, citing Israel’s ”corrosive business of occupation,” recommended more American “hammering” on Israel for its “undemocratic system of oppression” and “messianic nationalism.” Serge Schmemann recommended that Israel “stop the killing, give the Palestinians a state.” Anthony Lewis, who identified himself as a “friend“ of Israel, became its constant critic, blaming it for being dominated by “religious-nationalist fervor” and identifying it with South African apartheid. Visiting the site of a Palestinian terrorist attack, Jodi Rudoren preposterously claimed that Israel was building “3,500 more settlements.” Noting that 11 Israelis had been killed by Palestinians within a month, Rudoren and Isabel Kershner blamed “extremists on both sides.” At the site of a recent terrorist attack, bureau chief Deborah Sontag emphasized that Israelis and Palestinians alike had “vehemently accused the other of intransigence.” Ethan Bronner saw no alternative to embracing competing Palestinian and Israeli narratives over whose land was the Land of Israel.

Unrelenting New York Times denigration of Zionism and Israel, stretching across nearly a century, is too deeply embedded to change any time soon, if ever. For now, Friedman decides what is fit to print about the Jewish state—as long as it is critical. Surely, Joseph Levy would be pleased.

The post ‘The New York Times’ and Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

Israeli Strike on Tehran Kills Bodyguard of Slain Hezbollah Chief

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi lays a wreath as he visits the burial site of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, on the outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon, June 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

A member of Lebanese armed group Hezbollah was killed in an Israeli air strike on Tehran alongside a member of an Iran-aligned Iraqi armed group, a senior Lebanese security source told Reuters and the Iraqi group said on Saturday.

The source identified the Hezbollah member as Abu Ali Khalil, who had served as a bodyguard for Hezbollah’s slain chief Hassan Nasrallah. The source said Khalil had been on a religious pilgrimage to Iraq when he met up with a member of the Kataeb Sayyed Al-Shuhada group.

They traveled together to Tehran and were both killed in an Israeli strike there, along with Khalil’s son, the senior security source said. Hezbollah has not joined in Iran’s air strikes against Israel from Lebanon.

Kataeb Sayyed Al-Shuhada published a statement confirming that both the head of its security unit and Khalil had been killed in an Israeli strike.

Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli aerial attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs in September.

Israel and Iran have been trading strikes for nine consecutive days since Israel launched attacks on Iran, saying Tehran was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Iran has said it does not seek nuclear weapons.

The post Israeli Strike on Tehran Kills Bodyguard of Slain Hezbollah Chief first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

Hamas Financial Officer and Commander Eliminated by IDF in the Gaza Strip

Israeli soldiers operate during a ground operation in the southern Gaza Strip, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, July 3, 2024. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS

i24 News – The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), in cooperation with the General Security Service (Shin Bet), announced on Friday the killing of Ibrahim Abu Shamala, a senior financial official in Hamas’ military wing.

The operation took place on June 17th in the central Gaza Strip.

Abu Shamala held several key positions, including financial officer for Hamas’ military wing and assistant to Marwan Issa, the deputy commander of Hamas’ military wing until his elimination in March 2024.

He was responsible for managing all the financial resources of Hamas’ military wing in Gaza, overseeing the planning and execution of the group’s war budget. This involved handling and smuggling millions of dollars into the Gaza Strip to fund Hamas’ military operations.

The post Hamas Financial Officer and Commander Eliminated by IDF in the Gaza Strip first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

Report: Wary of Assassination by Israel, Khamenei Names 3 Potential Successors

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waves during a meeting in Tehran, Iran, May 20, 2025. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS

i24 News – Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei named three senior clerics as candidates to succeed him should he be killed, the New York Times reported on Saturday citing unnamed Iranian officials. It is understood the Ayatollah fears he could be assassinated in the coming days.

Khamenei reportedly mostly speaks with his commanders through a trusted aide now, suspending electronic communications.

Khamenei has designated three senior religious figures as candidates to replace him as well as choosing successors in the military chain of command in the likely event that additional senior officials be eliminated.

Earlier on Saturday Israel confirmed the elimination of Saeed Izadi and Bhanam Shahriari.

Shahriari, head of Iran’s Quds Force Weapons Transfer Unit, responsible for arming Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, was killed in an Israeli airstrike over 1,000 km from Israel in western Iran.

The post Report: Wary of Assassination by Israel, Khamenei Names 3 Potential Successors first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

Copyright © 2017 - 2023 Jewish Post & News