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What the New York Times Left Out of Its Jerusalem Bookstore Story
Supporters visit an Educational Bookshop, after Israeli police raided two Educational Bookshops and made arrests, in East Jerusalem, Feb. 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
“Israeli Police Raid Palestinian Bookshops, Another Step in Tightened Restrictions,” is the headline over a New York Times news article.
The headline is itself a fine example of how the Times, instead of just reporting the news, pushes its own interpretive framework onto a story. The risk with that is that sometimes the interpretive framework is tendentious, or, at best, highly selective.
In this case, the Times spins the arrest as evidence of “how Israel is tightening restrictions on free speech and cultural activities for Palestinians across the country.” You wouldn’t know it from reading the Times article, but the event could just as easily and accurately be portrayed as evidence of how even Jerusalem Arabs who appear to be mainstream are involved in glorifying terrorists.
The Times seems to be ridiculing the idea that “books being sold there — including a children’s coloring book — could incite violence.” It mentions a police statement about “a children’s coloring book titled From the Jordan to the Sea,” noting, “The slogan ‘from the river to the sea’ has long been a rallying cry for Palestinian nationalism and is usually interpreted by Israelis as a denial of their country’s right to exist.”
The South African Jewish Report has an account from June 2024 of the same book being removed from shelves of South Africa’s biggest bookstore chain after an outcry.
It reports that “The color-by-number book, which is aimed at children between ages six and 10, says that it ‘introduces young readers to the key concepts driving and sustaining Palestinian resistance.’ This includes a page dedicated to the concept of intifada, which encompasses two violent Palestinian uprisings in which about 1,000 Israelis were killed by suicide bombings in the early 2000s.”
According to the South African Jewish Report, “The book then goes on to tell children that people who die for the Palestinians are ‘martyrs — heroes who have a special place in Palestinian society.’ Children can then color in a picture of the late academic, Refaat Alareer, who described all Jews as ‘evil.’ In a BBC interview, he described the Oct. 7 attack as ‘legitimate and moral.’ He compared the attack to the Warsaw ghetto uprising and accused Israel of fabricating evidence of sexual assault by Hamas on Oct. 7.”
Children “are also given a picture of ‘protest icon’ Ahed Tamimi, who has been arrested twice by Israel, the second time when she posted on social media in November 2023, ‘Come on settlers, we’ll slaughter you. What Hitler did to you was a joke. We’ll drink your blood and eat your skulls.’”
For comparison’s sake, imagine if, after the Boston Marathon bombing, Boston police had found a Muslim-owned bookstore with a coloring book encouraging children to color in a picture of the “martyr” bomber. Or imagine if, after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, New York Police found a Saudi or Afghan-owned bookstore in Brooklyn or New Jersey encouraging children to color in a picture of Osama Bin Laden or the “martyrs” who perpetrated the attack on the World Trade Center. Or imagine if, heaven forbid, the bookstore owner was a Trump-supporting conservative Christian or Jew selling coloring books glorifying as heroic martyrs perpetrators of violent attacks on news organizations, such as the one on the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland.
Reasonable people could debate whether arresting the bookstore owner would be the right move, but surely at least some journalistic curiosity about why a bookstore owner would be promoting violent extremism would be warranted, alongside any alarm about “tightened restrictions on free speech.”
The Times article online has two corrections now appended:
Corrections were made on Feb. 10, 2025
An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the relationship of the two men who were arrested at the Educational Bookshops. They are relatives, but not brothers.
An earlier version of a photo caption misstated which man was which, based on incorrect information from the news agency. Mahmood is seated in court at left and Ahmed is on the right.
It’s easy enough for the Times to correct those details.
On the more basic issue of whether the underlying story fits a narrative of “restrictions on free speech” or one of “Jerusalem Arabs glorifying terrorists,” Times readers may, alas, have to wait somewhat longer for a correction.
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.
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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 News – Iranian 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.
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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.
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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.
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