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‘The New York Times’ and Israel
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Photo: Charles Haynes via Wikimedia Commons.
JNS.org – Nothing 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.
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Palestinian Detained after West Bank Terror Ramming
Illustrative: Israeli police at the scene of a car-ramming terrorist attack near a market in Jerusalem on Monday, April 24, 2023. Photograph: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters.
JNS.org – A Palestinian rammed his vehicle into a cop car in the West Bank on Saturday in what the military was investigating as a terror attack.
The incident occurred at the Eli gas station, the scene of repeated acts of terrorism against Israelis.
“A Palestinian vehicle accelerated towards a police car and collided with it, there were no casualties,” according to the Israel Defense Forces.
“Troops caught the terrorist and transferred him to security forces for further investigation,” added the statement.
On Sunday, three Israeli police officers were killed in a drive-by shooting near the Tarqumiya checkpoint, some 7.5 miles northwest of Hebron in Judea.
They were named as Chief Inspector Arik Ben Eliyahu, 37, of Kiryat Gat, who is survived by his wife and three children; Command Sgt. Maj. Hadas Branch, 53, of Sde Moshe, who is survived by her husband, three children and granddaughter; and 1st Sgt. Roni Shakuri, 61, of Sderot, who is survived by his wife, daughter and granddaughter.
Shakuri’s other daughter, 1st Sgt. Mor Shakuri, 29, was killed on Oct. 7 while battling an attempt by Hamas terrorists to take control of the police station in Sderot, in southern Israel near the border with Gaza.
The post Palestinian Detained after West Bank Terror Ramming first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Ukraine Concerned at Reports of Iranian Ballistic Missiles to Russia
A missile unveiled by Iran is launched in an unknown location in Iran in this picture received by Reuters on August 20, 2020. WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Saturday it was deeply concerned by reports about a possible impending transfer of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia.
In a statement emailed to reporters, the ministry said the deepening military cooperation between Tehran and Moscow was a threat to Ukraine, Europe and the Middle East, and called on the international community to increase pressure on Iran and Russia.
CNN and The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Iran had transferred short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, citing unidentified sources.
Reuters reported in August that Russia was expecting the imminent delivery of hundreds of Fath-360 close-range ballistic missiles from Iran and that dozens of Russian military personnel were being trained in Iran on the satellite-guided weapons for eventual use in the war in Ukraine.
On Friday, the United States, a key ally of Ukraine, also voiced concern about the potential transfer of missiles.
“Any transfer of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia would represent a dramatic escalation in Iran’s support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” White House National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett said.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York said on Friday that Tehran’s position on the Ukraine conflict was unchanged.
“Iran considers the provision of military assistance to the parties engaged in the conflict – which leads to increased human casualties, destruction of infrastructure, and a distancing from ceasefire negotiations – to be inhumane,” it said.
“Thus, not only does Iran abstain from engaging in such actions itself, but it also calls upon other countries to cease the supply of weapons to the sides involved in the conflict.”
The post Ukraine Concerned at Reports of Iranian Ballistic Missiles to Russia first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Pakistani Man Charged with Planning Terror Attack Against NY Jews on Oct. 7 or Yom Kippur
The flag of the ISIS terrorist group. Image: Reuters/Alaa Al-Marjani/File Photo.
JNS.org – A Pakistani national, whom Canadian authorities arrested on Wednesday, planned to carry out an ISIS-styled, mass shooting terror attack against Jews in New York, the U.S. Justice Department alleged on Friday.
Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, 20, who also answers to Shahzeb Jadoon, “attempted to travel from Canada to New York City, where he intended to use automatic and semi-automatic weapons to carry out a mass shooting in support of ISIS at a Jewish center in Brooklyn, N.Y.,” per the complaint.
Khan allegedly distributed ISIS videos and literature and expressed support for ISIS on social media and via encrypted messages. Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham is a U.S.-designated terror organization.
The defendant allegedly wrote that he wanted to target “Israeli Jewish Chabads … scattered all around,” per the 19-page complaint.
The Justice Department alleges that Khan “conveyed that he hoped to carry out this attack on or around Oct. 7, 2024—which Khan recognized as the one year anniversary of the brutal terrorist attacks in Israel by Hamas, a designated foreign terror organization, which, on Oct. 7, 2023, launched a wave of violent, large-scale terrorist attacks in Israel that resulted in the deaths and hostage taking of hundreds of civilians, including American citizens.”
Khan allegedly told undercover officers that he wanted to “go for Oct. 7 or Oct 11, Yom Kippur, a major festival for the Jews,” per the complaint. “Khan emphasized that ‘Oct. 7 and Oct. 11 are the best days for targeting the Jews,’ because ‘Oct. 7 they will surely have some protests and Oct. 11 is Yom Kippur,’ and ‘they don’t have any other major festival then till next summer.’”
“In selecting New York City as his target location, Khan told the undercover law enforcement officers that ‘New York is perfect to target Jews’ because it has the ‘largest Jewish population In America,’ and, as such, ‘even if we don’t attack a event, we could rack up easily a lot of Jews,” the complaint adds.
The defendant told the undercover officers that “he intended to kill as many Jewish civilians as possible, proclaiming that ‘we are going to New York City to slaughter them,’” per the complaint, which added that Khan allegedly sent a photograph “of the specific area” where he planned to attack to the undercover officers.
Per the complaint, Khan also allegedly told the undercover officers not to wear beards, so they wouldn’t attract attention, and that “you guys will even have to attend some synagogue or Chabad sessions” to “check the insides of the buildings.” He told them it was necessary to identify emergency exits in buildings, “so we can trap them and kill them inside,” per the complaint.
“In addition, Khan also explained that they should not record their ISIS allegiance video, or ‘bayah,’ until later because it would run the risk of them being caught by law enforcement prior to the planned attack,” the complaint alleges.
One of several cities that Khan flagged had “more relaxed” gun laws, he allegedly told the undercover officers.
“What’s the point of living till you’re 70 and dying on a hospital bed when we can attain shahadah in our youths, Inshalah,” he said, per the complaint. (The complaint defines the first term as a declaration of faith and the second as God willing.)
“The defendant is alleged to have planned a terrorist attack in New York City around Oct. 7 of this year with the stated goal of slaughtering, in the name of ISIS, as many Jewish people as possible,” stated Merrick Garland, the U.S. attorney general.
“Thanks to the investigative work of the FBI, and the quick action of our Canadian law enforcement partners, the defendant was taken into custody,” Garland said. “Jewish communities—like all communities in this country—should not have to fear that they will be targeted by a hate-fueled terrorist attack.”
The post Pakistani Man Charged with Planning Terror Attack Against NY Jews on Oct. 7 or Yom Kippur first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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