Last week, new information continued to come out about how the New York Times distorted the events of the Gaza war to portray the IDF as killers of children. Although the newspaper’s record of hostility toward Zionism predates even the founding of the Jewish state, such distortions are also the result of the Faustian bargain reporters make with Hamas, which allows journalists to operate in its territory so long as they only report what the regime allows them too. This, too, is a familiar story, writes Laurel Leff—examining the tale of the Times’s Nazi-sympathizing Berlin bureau chief Guido Enderis:

All American newspapers found reporting in Nazi Germany difficult. The government tightly controlled information and harangued and threatened reporters who managed to publish what it didn’t like. The Nazi regime also didn’t hesitate to use its strongest weapons—banning a newspaper from distribution in Germany, kicking a reporter out of the country, or denying a reporter’s reentry. As a putatively “Jewish-owned” newspaper, the New York Times considered itself a special target. . . . Enderis’s job therefore was “administering reasonably soothing syrup” to Nazi officials, as another Times reporter put it.

Yet, Enderis’s actions weren’t purely strategic and their consequences were grave. Throughout the 1930s, Enderis helped steer Times coverage to play down Jewish persecution and play up Germany’s peaceful intentions. He kowtowed to Nazi officials, wrote stories presenting solely the Nazi point of view, and reined in Times reporters whose criticism he thought went too far, shaping the news in favor of a genocidal regime bent on establishing a “Thousand Year Reich.”

To be clear, the Times had no agenda to bolster Nazism. In fact, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the Times publisher during most of the Nazi era, detested Hitler and advocated U.S. intervention to stop German aggression. Nor was Enderis a Nazi collaborator.

Instead, what crippled the Times coverage of Hitler and the Nazis was a timidity and deference to authority born of being an institution controlled by Jews who desperately wanted to fit into WASP society. Rather than run the slightest risk of being tossed out of Nazi Germany and causing a ruckus over its Jewish ownership, the Times let a figure like Enderis—a pitiful ally of some of history’s greatest villains—lead its Berlin bureau during its most consequential decade.

Last Wednesday, Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu met for the first time since the former’s inauguration. Since then, Haim Katz, Israel’s tourism minister, became the first Israeli cabinet member to visit Saudi Arabia publicly, and Washington announced that it will include the Jewish state in its visa-waiver program. Richard Kemp, writing shortly after last week’s meeting, comments:

Finally, a full nine months into Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest government, President Joe Biden deigned to allow him into his presence. Historically, American presidents have invited newly installed Israeli prime ministers to the White House shortly after taking office. Even this meeting on Wednesday, however, was not in Washington but in New York, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

Such pointed lack of respect is not the way to treat one of America’s most valuable allies, and perhaps the staunchest of them all. It is all about petty political point-scoring and interfering in Israel’s internal democratic processes. But despite his short-sighted rebuke to the state of Israel and its prime minister, Biden actually needs at least as much from Netanyahu as Netanyahu needs from him. With the 2024 election looming, Biden is desperate for a foreign-policy success among a sea of abject failures.

In his meeting with Netanyahu, Biden no doubt played the Palestinian issue up as some kind of Saudi red line and the White House has probably been pushing [Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman] in that direction. But while the Saudis would no doubt want some kind of pro-forma undertaking by Israel for the sake of appearances, [a nuclear program and military support] are what they really want. The Saudis’ under-the-table backing for the original Abraham Accords in the face of stiff Palestinian rejection shows us where its priorities lie.

Israel remains alone in countering Iran’s nuclear threat, albeit with Saudi and other Arab countries cheering behind the scenes. This meeting won’t have changed that. We must hope, however, that Netanyahu has been able to persuade Biden of the electoral benefit to him of settling for a historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia rather than holding out for the unobtainable jackpot of a two-state solution.