When the Evidence Fails, the “New York Times” Libels Israel by Insinuation

During one of the episodes of rioting at the Gaza border fence, which have occurred every Friday since last March, a Palestinian medic was killed. Last Sunday, the New York Times featured a lengthy front-page story on the subject, with elaborate graphics, produced by ten journalists and one photographer. The article concludes, with certainty, that the medic, Rouzan al-Najjar, was killed by a ricocheting bullet fragment. Ira Stoll comments:

The problems with the article begin with the front-page subtitle: “Israel Killed a Medic. Was It an Accident?” . . . Usually [a question mark in a] headline is a veil for journalism that falls short of reaching a conclusion. In this case, the Times wants to accuse Israel of murdering this woman, but it can’t prove its case. . . .

The Times poses as evenhanded. “Each side is locked into an unending and insolvable cycle of violence,” the Times claims, using a cliché of moral equivalence. It adopts an above-the-fray pose, like the umpire at a tennis match: “To the Palestinians, [Najjar] was an innocent martyr killed in cold blood. . . . To the Israelis, she was part of a violent protest aimed at destroying their country.”

But a closer examination shows the Times isn’t really evenhanded at all. [For instance, it] describes the conflict as “insolvable,” but it also complains that Israel “continues to focus on containment rather than finding a solution.” It seems unfair to criticize Israel for failing to solve a problem that the Times itself concedes is “insolvable.” [Likewise], the Times reports that “rocket attacks and bombings after the second intifada erupted in 2000 prompted Israel to cordon off the strip and eventually abandon its settlements there.” . . . The rocket attacks and bombings just “erupted” on their own, to hear the Times tell it, rather than being launched or perpetrated by Palestinians with violent, murderous intent. The Times doesn’t tell us about the victims of those rocket attacks and bombings. . . .

For whatever reason, [however], the Times has decided that this Gaza death is worth the time of ten journalists and three pages of the Sunday newspaper, while it didn’t deem the death of an Israeli American, Ari Fuld, [murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in September], fit to print at all.

Read more at Algemeiner

More about: Israel & Zionism, Journalism, Media, New York Times

American Middle East Policy Should Focus Less on Stability and More on Weakening Enemies

Feb. 10 2025

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.

Read more at Foreign Affairs

More about: Iran, Middle East, U.S. Foreign policy