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Yale Professor Exposes New York Times’ Systematic Minimization of Hamas, Palestinian Violence in Gaza War
An aerial view shows the bodies of victims of an attack following a mass infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip lying on the ground in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in southern Israel, Oct. 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg
A recent analysis by a Yale professor claimed The New York Times‘ coverage of the Gaza conflict downplayed Israeli losses after the Hamas terror group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of the Jewish state and minimized the role of Palestinian violence in sustaining the war.
The findings have added fuel to ongoing debates about media bias in reporting on the war, with one prominent critic of the Times arguing that they fit with not only a long-standing pattern of portraying Israel as a belligerent aggressor but also a deep hostility toward the Jewish state among the newspaper’s top leadership.
The study — published last month and conducted by Edieal Pinker, a professor and deputy dean at the Yale School of Management — examined 1,561 articles published by the Times between Oct. 7, 2023, and June 7, 2024. It concluded that the newspaper’s reporting adhered to a “specific narrative” in which Israel was largely portrayed as the primary aggressor while Palestinian suffering received dominant coverage.
“The net result of these imbalances and others is to create a depiction of events that is imbalanced toward creating sympathy for the Palestinian side, places most of the agency in the hands of Israel, is often at odds with actual events, and fails to give readers an understanding of how Israelis are experiencing the war,” Pinker said.
A Question of Emphasis
The study found that The New York Times devoted extensive coverage to Israeli actions in Gaza and their impact on Palestinian civilians, while making significantly fewer references to Israeli casualties, Hamas combatant losses, and Palestinian violence after Oct. 7. According to the data, 70 percent of articles that described the conflict fit this dominant narrative. Nearly half of these did not mention Israeli hostages held in Gaza, and 41 percent omitted any reference to the Israeli casualties from Hamas’s initial attack.
By contrast, Pinker’s analysis found that 1,423 of the 1,561 articles surveyed made no mention of Israeli casualties incurred after the initial Oct. 7 assault — in which Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages across southern Israel — nor of Hamas fighter deaths. The study cited data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data research group indicating that, during the study’s timeframe, Israel lost 364 soldiers, 34 civilians, and suffered hundreds of attacks in Israel and the West Bank during the ensuing war.
In addition, the Times published personal stories of Palestinian or Lebanese suffering nearly every other day, while there were far longer periods in which post-Oct. 7 Israeli casualties were not mentioned at all, according to the study.
The coverage also appeared to minimize Hamas’s role in perpetuating the war, the study claimed. Only 10 percent of articles directly related to the fighting acknowledged Hamas combatant deaths, and 18 percent of war-related articles mentioned Palestinian violence post-Oct. 7. By comparison, Israel was mentioned more than three times as often as Hamas across all articles focused on the war.
A Longstanding Narrative
Author and media critic Ashley Rindsberg, who has written extensively about The New York Times in his book The Gray Lady Winked, argued that the study’s findings are consistent with the newspaper’s historical coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The findings of the Yale study show that The New York Times is framing the current conflict in a way that’s very similar and almost a template to how it’s framed the Israel-Palestine conflict going back to the Second Intifada,” Rindsberg told The Algemeiner. “It was during the Intifada that The New York Times first created this narrative whereby Israel is almost always the sole aggressor and Palestinians are perpetual victims. Very rarely does the paper attempt to break this narrative and even suppresses facts or data that dissent from it.”
Rindsberg further argued that the Sulzberger family, which has controlled the newspaper for over a century, plays a role in shaping its editorial stance. “The Times holds onto this narrative at all costs,” he explained. “The Sulzbergers are almost genetically opposed to the concept of Judaism that underlies the state of Israel, which is an ethnic and national conception of the Jewish people, not just a religious faith. For them, Israel completely disrupts their worldview, and the result is a culture at the newspaper that supports this kind of narrative.”
The Challenge of Bias Measurement
Pinker, a dual US-Israeli citizen with a background in data analysis, emphasized that his research does not attempt to prove bias in the The New York Times‘ reporting, noting that bias is difficult to quantify statistically and would require analyzing journalistic intent.
Instead, the study aimed to assess whether imbalances in coverage could shape public perceptions in a way that diverges from the broader reality of the war. One potential contributing factor, the study noted, is the vastly different levels of press access between Israel and Gaza. Israel generally allows journalists to operate freely, whereas Hamas tightly controls reporting inside the enclave. This disparity could create unintentional biases, the study suggested.
It also did not examine the impact of other editorial decisions that could influence coverage, such as photo selection, headline framing, or the tone of opinion pieces.
New York Times Responds
The New York Times, which has frequently faced criticism from both supporters and opponents of Israel over its coverage, defended its reporting. In a statement responding to the study, a spokesperson said the newspaper had published over 13,000 articles, photos, and videos providing “rich context, confronting truths, and horrific human stories” about the war.
“The New York Times has covered this war with more rigor than virtually any other US news organization, reporting on the conflict from all angles,” the spokesperson said. They pointed to the paper’s investigations into Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, as well as its extensive reporting on Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
“Our editors make careful and deliberate choices about every story we publish to ensure our language, framing, prominence, and tone remain true to our mission of independent journalism,” the statement continued. “We remain open to good-faith disagreement but will not change our coverage to buttress entrenched perspectives. Our commitment is to independent reporting that our readers can trust.”
In January, former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken commented on the lack of coverage of Hamas’s role in the war, calling it “astounding” in an interview with the Times.
“You hear virtually nothing from anyone since Oct. 7 about Hamas,” Blinken said at the time. “Why there hasn’t been a unanimous chorus around the world for Hamas to put down its weapons, to give up the hostages, to surrender?”
The post Yale Professor Exposes New York Times’ Systematic Minimization of Hamas, Palestinian Violence in Gaza War first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Blocks Ramallah Meeting with Arab Ministers, Israeli Official Says
A closed Israeli military gate stands near Ramallah in the West Bank, February 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Israel will not allow a planned meeting in the Palestinian administrative capital of Ramallah, in the West Bank, to go ahead, an Israeli official said on Saturday, after Arab ministers planning to attend were stopped from coming.
The move, days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government announced one of the largest expansions of settlements in the West Bank in years, underlined escalating tensions over the issue of international recognition of a future Palestinian state.
Saturday’s meeting comes ahead of an international conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, that is due to be held in New York on June 17-20 to discuss the issue of Palestinian statehood, which Israel fiercely opposes.
The delegation of senior Arab officials due to visit Ramallah – including the Jordanian, Egyptian, Saudi Arabian and Bahraini foreign ministers – postponed the visit after “Israel’s obstruction of it,” Jordan’s foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that the block was “a clear breach of Israel’s obligations as an occupying force.”
The ministers required Israeli consent to travel to the West Bank from Jordan.
An Israeli official said the ministers intended to take part in “a provocative meeting” to discuss promoting the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“Such a state would undoubtedly become a terrorist state in the heart of the land of Israel,” the official said. “Israel will not cooperate with such moves aimed at harming it and its security.”
A Saudi source told Reuters that Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud had delayed a planned trip to the West Bank.
Israel has come under increasing pressure from the United Nations and European countries which favour a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, under which an independent Palestinian state would exist alongside Israel.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that recognizing a Palestinian state was not only a “moral duty but a political necessity.”
Palestinians want the West Bank territory, which was seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, as the core of a future state along with Gaza and East Jerusalem.
But the area is now criss-crossed with settlements that have squeezed some 3 million Palestinians into pockets increasingly cut off from each other though a network of military checkpoints.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said the announcement this week of 22 new settlements in the West Bank was an “historic moment” for settlements and “a clear message to Macron.” He said recognition of a Palestinian state would be “thrown into the dustbin of history.”
The post Israel Blocks Ramallah Meeting with Arab Ministers, Israeli Official Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Gaza Aid Supplies Hit by Looting as Hamas Ceasefire Response Awaited
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Armed men hijacked dozens of aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip overnight and hundreds of desperate Palestinians joined in to take supplies, local aid groups said on Saturday as officials waited for Hamas to respond to the latest ceasefire proposals.
The incident was the latest in a series that has underscored the shaky security situation hampering the delivery of aid into Gaza, following the easing of a weeks-long Israeli blockade earlier this month.
US President Donald Trump said on Friday he believed a ceasefire agreement was close but Hamas has said it is still studying the latest proposals from his special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. The White House said on Thursday that Israel had agreed to the proposals.
The proposals would see a 60-day truce and the exchange of 28 of the 58 hostages still held in Gaza for more than 1,200 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, along with the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave.
On Saturday, the Israeli military, which relaunched its air and ground campaign in March following a two-month truce, said it was continuing to hit targets in Gaza, including sniper posts and had killed what it said was the head of a Hamas weapons manufacturing site.
The campaign has cleared large areas along the boundaries of the Gaza Strip, squeezing the population of more than 2 million into an ever narrower section along the coast and around the southern city of Khan Younis.
Israel imposed a blockade on all supplies entering the enclave at the beginning of March in an effort to weaken Hamas and has found itself under increasing pressure from an international community shocked by the increasingly desperate humanitarian situation the blockade has created.
The United Nations said on Friday the situation in Gaza is the worst since the start of the war began 19 months ago, with the entire population facing the risk of famine despite a resumption of limited aid deliveries earlier this month.
Israel has been allowing a limited number of trucks from the World Food Program and other international groups to bring flour to bakeries in Gaza but deliveries have been hampered by repeated incidents of looting.
At the same time, a separate system, run by a US-backed group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been delivering meals and food packages at three designated distribution sites.
However, aid groups have refused to cooperate with the GHF, which they say is not neutral, and say the amount of aid allowed in falls far short of the needs of a population at risk of famine.
“The aid that’s being sent now makes a mockery of the mass tragedy unfolding under our watch,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of the main U.N. relief organization for Palestinians, said in a message on the social media platform X.
NO BREAD IN WEEKS
The World Food Program said it brought 77 trucks carrying flour into Gaza overnight and early on Saturday and all of them were stopped on the way, with food taken by hungry people.
“After nearly 80 days of a total blockade, communities are starving and they are no longer willing to watch food pass them by,” it said in a statement.
Amjad Al-Shawa, head of an umbrella group representing Palestinian aid groups, said the dire situation was being exploited by armed groups which were attacking some of the aid convoys.
He said hundreds more trucks were needed and accused Israel of a “systematic policy of starvation.”
Overnight on Saturday, he said trucks had been stopped by armed groups near Khan Younis as they were headed towards a World Food Programme warehouse in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza and hundreds of desperate people had carried off supplies.
“We could understand that some are driven by hunger and starvation, some may not have eaten bread in several weeks, but we can’t understand armed looting, and it is not acceptable at all,” he said.
Israel says it is facilitating aid deliveries, pointing to its endorsement of the new GHF distribution centers and its consent for other aid trucks to enter Gaza.
Instead it accuses Hamas of stealing supplies intended for civilians and using them to entrench its hold on Gaza, which it had been running since 2007.
The post Gaza Aid Supplies Hit by Looting as Hamas Ceasefire Response Awaited first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Seeks Changes in US Gaza Proposal; Witkoff Calls Response ‘Unacceptable’
US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy-designate Steve Witkoff gives a speech at the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena on the inauguration day of Trump’s second presidential term, in Washington, DC, Jan. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Hamas said on Saturday it was seeking amendments to a US-backed proposal for a temporary ceasefire with Israel in Gaza, but President Donald Trump’s envoy rejected the group’s response as “totally unacceptable.”
The Palestinian terrorist group said it was willing to release 10 living hostages and hand over the bodies of 18 dead in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. But Hamas reiterated demands for an end to the war and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, conditions Israel has rejected.
A Hamas official described the group’s response to the proposals from Trump’s special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff as “positive” but said it was seeking some amendments. The official did not elaborate on the changes being sought by the group.
“This response aims to achieve a permanent ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and to ensure the flow of humanitarian aid to our people in the Strip,” Hamas said in a statement.
The proposals would see a 60-day truce and the exchange of 28 of the 58 hostages still held in Gaza for more than 1,200 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, along with the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave.
A Palestinian official familiar with the talks told Reuters that among amendments Hamas is seeking is the release of the hostages in three phases over the 60-day truce and more aid distribution in different areas. Hamas also wants guarantees the deal will lead to a permanent ceasefire, the official said.
There was no immediate response from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office to the Hamas statement.
Israel has previously rejected Hamas’ conditions, instead demanding the complete disarmament of the group and its dismantling as a military and governing force, along with the return of all 58 remaining hostages.
Trump said on Friday he believed a ceasefire agreement was close after the latest proposals, and the White House said on Thursday that Israel had agreed to the terms.
Saying he had received Hamas’ response, Witkoff wrote in a posting on X: “It is totally unacceptable and only takes us backward. Hamas should accept the framework proposal we put forward as the basis for proximity talks, which we can begin immediately this coming week.”
On Saturday, the Israeli military said it had killed Mohammad Sinwar, Hamas’ Gaza chief on May 13, confirming what Netanyahu said earlier this week.
Sinwar, the younger brother of Yahya Sinwar, the group’s deceased leader and mastermind of the October 2023 attack on Israel, was the target of an Israeli strike on a hospital in southern Gaza. Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied his death.
The Israeli military, which relaunched its air and ground campaign in March following a two-month truce, said on Saturday it was continuing to hit targets in Gaza, including sniper posts and had killed what it said was the head of a Hamas weapons manufacturing site.
The campaign has cleared large areas along the boundaries of the Gaza Strip, squeezing the population of more than 2 million into an ever narrower section along the coast and around the southern city of Khan Younis.
Israel imposed a blockade on all supplies entering the enclave at the beginning of March in an effort to weaken Hamas and has found itself under increasing pressure from an international community shocked by the desperate humanitarian situation the blockade has created.
On Saturday, aid groups said dozens of World Food Program trucks carrying flour to Gaza bakeries had been hijacked by armed groups and subsequently looted by people desperate for food after weeks of mounting hunger.
“After nearly 80 days of a total blockade, communities are starving and they are no longer willing to watch food pass them by,” the WFP said in a statement.
‘A MOCKERY’
The incident was the latest in a series that has underscored the shaky security situation hampering the delivery of aid into Gaza, following the easing of a weeks-long Israeli blockade earlier this month.
The United Nations said on Friday the situation in Gaza is the worst since the start of the war 19 months ago, with the entire population facing the risk of famine despite a resumption of limited aid deliveries earlier this month.
“The aid that’s being sent now makes a mockery of the mass tragedy unfolding under our watch,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of the main U.N. relief organization for Palestinians, said in a message on X.
Israel has been allowing a limited number of trucks from the World Food Program and other international groups to bring flour to bakeries in Gaza but deliveries have been hampered by repeated incidents of looting.
A separate system, run by a US-backed group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, has been delivering meals and food packages at three designated distribution sites.
However, aid groups have refused to cooperate with the GHF, which they say is not neutral, and say the amount of aid allowed in falls far short of the needs of a population at risk of famine.
Amjad Al-Shawa, head of an umbrella group representing Palestinian aid groups, said the dire situation was being exploited by armed groups which were attacking some of the aid convoys.
He said hundreds more trucks were needed and accused Israel of a “systematic policy of starvation.”
Israel denies operating a policy of starvation and says it is facilitating aid deliveries, pointing to its endorsement of the new GHF distribution centers and its consent for other aid trucks to enter Gaza.
Instead it accuses Hamas of stealing supplies intended for civilians and using them to entrench its hold on Gaza, which it had been running since 2007.
Hamas denies looting supplies and has executed a number of suspected looters.
The post Hamas Seeks Changes in US Gaza Proposal; Witkoff Calls Response ‘Unacceptable’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.