The Gray Lady’s Latest Anti-Israel Hit Job

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Lest ‘The New York Times’ be accused of basing its entire screed on anonymous sources, it made sure to include a quote from—you guessed it—a Gazan.

By Ruthie Blum, JNS

It’s hard to imagine The New York Times stooping any lower than usual in its coverage of Israel’s defensive war in Gaza. Yet the Gray Lady seems to have managed to outdo itself on this score once again.

Its latest hit job took the form of a lengthy news feature on Thursday, titled “Israel Loosened Its Rules to Bomb Hamas Fighters, Killing Many More Civilians.”

The article, marked by as many bylines as anonymous sources, attempted to lull readers with a neat trick: using the Israel Defense Forces’ self-imposed “purity of arms” doctrine, a stricter code of ethics than that of any other military in history, to highlight the Jewish state’s allegedly unacceptable behavior on the battlefield.

The subhead perfectly encapsulated the chutzpah: “Surprised by Oct. 7 and fearful of another attack, Israel weakened safeguards meant to protect noncombatants, allowing officers to endanger up to 20 people in each airstrike,” it read. “One of the deadliest bombardments of the 21st century followed.”

The piece began with mention of an order that was issued on the day of the Hamas massacre, which “granted mid-ranking Israeli officers the authority to strike thousands of militants and military sites that had never been a priority in previous wars in Gaza.”

This directive, which the NYT took credit for revealing, gave the IDF more leeway to “pursue not only the senior Hamas commanders, arms depots and rocket launchers that were the focus of earlier campaigns, but also the lowest-ranking fighters.”

Sounds reasonable, considering the magnitude of Hamas atrocities and terrorist infrastructure in the Strip. Yet, the Times didn’t see or present it that way.

No, it gasped that IDF officers were now provided the authority, in each strike, “to risk killing up to 20 civilians.” This, said the Times, meant that Israeli troops “could target rank-and-file militants as they were at home surrounded by relatives and neighbors, instead of only when they were alone outside.”

Militants. That’s a nice euphemism for the thousands of Gazans, both terrorists and “civilians,” who infiltrated southern Israel, raping, burning, beheading, abducting and slaughtering innocent men, women and children in the name of Allah.

The Times hastened to explain what it referred to as a change in IDF rules of engagement by citing a “senior military officer” saying that the army “believed that Israel faced an existential threat.”

Believed. Lucky the authors found a nameless, faceless source to confirm the IDF’s “belief” that the country was in particular danger on that Black Sabbath nearly 15 months ago.

Not to hold this against the journalists, however, who assured us that they’d reviewed “dozens of military records,” and interviewed “more than 100 soldiers and officials, including more than 25 people who helped vet, approve or strike targets.”

That most of said interviewees weren’t at liberty to reveal their identities wasn’t the fault of the NYT; it was due to the “sensitivity” of the subject.

This delicacy didn’t prevent the Times from declaring its findings: “that Israel severely weakened its system of safeguards meant to protect civilians; adopted flawed methods to find targets and assess the risk of civilian casualties; routinely failed to conduct post-strike reviews of civilian harm or punish officers for wrongdoing; and ignored warnings from within its own ranks and from senior U.S. military officials about these failings.”

Never mind that this list could have been written by Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry and honed by the United Nations for the purpose of depicting Israel as the culprit in the ongoing, multi-front effort to wipe the Jewish state off the map. It also happens to be false, as a multitude of IDF soldiers and officers can and do testify—at least those who are still alive to tell the tales of what they’ve been enduring on the battlefield.

Ditto for many military experts from abroad. Take Col. Richard Kemp, for instance.

Criticizing what he called the “slanted” nature of the NYT piece, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan told Israel National News, “In my experience of observing the IDF in action, they scrupulously stick to the laws of war in their targeting policies and actions. Of course, errors will be made and lessons learnt and procedures modified accordingly, … and I know that no other army has had such sophisticated or effective means of mitigating harm to civilians.”

John Spencer, chairman of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, has repeatedly made similar points. As he reiterated at a recent Zionist Federation of Australia event in Melbourne, “There’s never been a war in the history of war … where any nation has been asked, ‘But what’s your civilian-to-combat ratio?’ Because that’s not how war works—just not how the law of war works.”

Meanwhile, lest the Times be accused of basing its entire screed on nameless individuals, it made sure to include a quote from—you guessed it—a Gazan.

“Blood was splattered all over the neighbor’s wall—as though some sheep had just been slaughtered,” said the brother of Shaldan al-Najjar, “a senior commander in a militia allied with Hamas that joined the Oct. 7 attacks,” whose family members “were among the first casualties of Israel’s loosened standards.”

To explain why anyone should care, let alone be appalled, the story clarified, “When the military struck his home in a war nine years earlier, it took several precautions to avoid civilian harm—and no one was killed, including Mr. al-Najjar. When it targeted him in this war, it killed not just him but also 20 members of his extended family, including a 2-month-old baby. … Some relatives were blown from the building. His niece’s severed hand was found in the rubble.”

The piece ended with an abrupt indictment.

“The military said that a panel appointed by the military chief of staff was investigating the circumstances of hundreds of strikes,” it concluded. “No one has been charged.”

It’s a wonder that the Times hasn’t been charged with changing its banner to depict the drivel in its pages as “All the news that’s unfit to print.”