After the Washington congresswoman Pramila Jayapal referred to Israel as “a racist state” at a far-left conference last week, Michelle Goldberg—one of the New York Times’s anti-Israel columnists—rushed to her defense. Amidst a flurry of anti-Zionist libels, Goldberg disingenuously described Jayapal’s statement as a “gaffe.” She also expressed the familiar opinion—one shared, inter alia, by her fellow political commentator Nick Fuentes—that, “when it comes to American politics,” Israel is “protected by a thick lattice of taboos.” Abe Greenwald comments:

Israel is defamed in the dominant press, boycotted by politicians, athletes, and celebrities, denounced by global bodies, demonized on campuses, dragged through the social-media mud, and criticized by increasing numbers of Israelis and American Jews, including Zionists. If this is a country protected from criticism, just imagine if critics were free to speak their minds.

The claim of a taboo against criticizing Israel is itself an anti-Semitic trope, the most obscenely common and casual one there is. But think of what it really means: you’re just calling people anti-Semitic because they’re saying things the Jews don’t want you to hear. No one put it more primitively than [Congresswoman Ilhan] Omar, who tweeted “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” (Don’t worry, she “apologized.”) The claim takes as a given that Jews have a stranglehold on media, politics, and money, and can therefore control the national discourse. Michelle Goldberg’s own paper trades in it regularly and has for a long time, even as it throws up headline after headline describing Israel as a racist autocracy.

This is no claim for Israel’s victim status. The Jewish state can take it. Swing away. Give it your best shot. The critics aren’t doing a very good job. Despite all the calumnies and hit jobs, Israel is thriving and building alliances. That’s because it isn’t protected by some invisible mesh of censorship. It’s defended by Iron Dome, the IDF, the faith and innovation of its people, and the workings of its rugged democracy. Joe Biden, having struck out with the scolding approach, has just invited Netanyahu to the United States. Let’s see just how restrained Israel’s critics are about that.

In a recent article, the New York Times Magazine asserts that Benjamin Netanyahu “prolonged the war in Gaza to stay in power.” Niranjan Shankar takes the argument apart piece by piece, showing that for all its careful research, it fails to back up its basic claims. For instance: the article implies that Netanyahu torpedoed a three-point cease-fire proposal supported by the Biden administration in the spring of last year:

First of all, it’s crucial to note that Biden’s supposed “three-point plan” announced in May 2024 was originally an Israeli proposal. Of course, there was some back-and-forth and disagreement over how the Biden administration presented this initially, as Biden failed to emphasize that according to the three-point framework, a permanent cease-fire was conditional on Hamas releasing all of the hostages and stepping down. Regardless, the piece fails to mention that it was Hamas in June 2024 that rejected this framework!

It wasn’t until July 2024 that Hamas made its major concession—dropping its demand that Israel commit up front to a full end to the war, as opposed to doing so at a later stage of cease-fire/negotiations. Even then, U.S. negotiators admitted that both sides were still far from agreeing on a deal.

Even when the Times raises more credible criticisms of Israel—like when it brings up the IDF’s strategy of conducting raids rather than holding territory in the first stage of the war—it offers them in what seems like bad faith:

[W]ould the New York Times prefer that Israel instead started with a massive ground campaign with a “clear-hold-build” strategy from the get-go? Of course, if Israel had done this, there would have been endless criticism, especially under the Biden administration. But when Israel instead tried the “raid-and-clear” strategy, it gets blamed for deliberately dragging the war on.