New York Times ‘Investigation’ of Israel’s 2,000-Pound Bombs Shows Blatant Bias

A recurring theme in recent criticism of the New York Times by former longstanding employees such as James Bennet and Judith Miller has been that the newspaper has become more ideologically tilted to meet the demands of left-leaning staff and paying digital readers.

The anti-Israel slant goes along with that. One recent glaring example is a Times “visual investigation” that accuses Israel of using 2,000-pound bombs to attack civilians in Gaza. The mere use of the word “investigation” carries with it an implication that Israel is up to something sinister. Why publish an “investigation” if nothing wrong was done?

Let’s investigate some of the tactics the Times “investigation” uses to make Israel look guilty.

Subtly inaccurate translation by the Times distorts the reality. Early in the eight minute, 34 second video that is the “investigation,” the Times shows a man speaking excitedly in Arabic. The subtitles for English-speaking Times readers say, “Dead? Is she dead?” But the words the man is saying are “shaheeda, shaheeda?” That could be a proper name, but it also carries the meaning, “a martyr for the Islamic cause.” It might give Times readers a somewhat different impression about what is happening in Gaza if, instead of portraying the civilians as running around asking “Dead? Is she dead?” the civilians are asking “Martyr? Has she been martyred for the Islamic cause?” Arabic has other, more neutral words for death, but those aren’t the words the person in the video used.

The “investigation” claims, “When the war started, Israel completely sealed off Gaza’s borders.” That’s inaccurate. The war actually started on Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists broke through Gaza’s borders into Israel and went on a killing, raping, and beheading spree. Israel eventually, along with Egypt, restored control over Gaza’s borders, but the Times frequently omits Egypt when talking about Gaza’s borders, as it does here. One possible reason for the omission is that it complicates the Times-favored narrative of blaming all of Gaza’s problems on Israel.

The “video investigation” format allows the Times to be more blatant in displaying its bias. Ominous sound effects play in the background while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is speaking. The transcript gives more clues: “[somber music playing] [explosions and glass shattering].”

The Times uses a video clip of a scared looking child, presumably a Palestinian in Gaza, but it doesn’t say who the image is of or where and when the video was taken. There are unhappy children in Israel, too — their parents called up for reserve duty or killed fighting the Hamas terrorists, or their grandparents hustling them into shelters at the sounds of alerts for missiles or drones coming from Iran-backed terrorists. But the Times doesn’t show the Israeli children. This “visual investigation” doesn’t appear to be an attempt at a balanced look at the cost of armed conflict, but rather seems to be a prosecutorial-style indictment of only one side, Israel.

The policy goal is clear: to cut off Israel’s arms supply. “But the US has not stopped supplying weapons to Israel,” the Times narrator says at one point, implying that is what the US should do. A former Israeli diplomat, Lenny Ben-David, in an analysis for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, writes that the Times focused its analysis “on the wrong bomb, a Mark-84,” rather than the bunkerbusting BLU-109. Ben-David also makes the connection to policy in Washington: “The consequences of the fraud are Members of Congress calling to cut military aid to Israel, encouraged by Israel detractors.”

Videos like the Times “visual investigation” are designed to be shared by Israel-haters on social media. For example, a Buffalo News cartoonist, Adam Zyglis, posted on social media about the Times 2,000-pound bomb investigation shortly before he posted his own cartoon of a sink with Star-of-David-shaped faucets leaking blood while US President Joe Biden rests in bed.

Adam Nagourney’s recent book The Times reports that in 1981, the newspaper’s executive editor, A.M. Rosenthal, complained to the publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, about a “harsh and denunciatory” editorial about Israel’s attack on an Iraqi nuclear reactor. The editor responsible for the editorial, Max Frankel, later called it one of his “major mistakes.” It was such a terrible editorial that people are still writing about it in books 42 years after it was published, when the Times is being published by Sulzberger’s grandson.

It may be that two generations from now people look back at Times coverage of this war, at the flawed and accusatory, harsh and denunciatory coverage such as the “visual investigation,” and see it, too, as a major mistake. At least Frankel had the decency, eventually, to admit it publicly.

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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