Dear New York Times - How Disingenuous Can One Newspaper Be?
All The News That's Fit To Print
All The News That's Fit To Print
Like many others, I receive “The Morning” wrap-up from the NYT in my email every day. It is sometimes boring, sometimes angering, and sometimes informative.
I used to keep a subscription to the NYT digital edition, but their reporting has become so skewed that I finally decided to cut it out. I did not need that reporting to pass over my computer screen, as I could get it anywhere else, especially on X. Besides, there is always another newspaper and another television or YouTube channel.
This morning, December 12, 2023, “The Morning” arrived in my email box. The heading, or the first part of it, to be precise, caught my eye.
“Good morning. We’re covering the debate over speech and safety on college campuses…”
Well, I had to read further, of course. It started benign enough. I may disagree with the writer, David Leonhardt, but it is his prerogative to express his views and my prerogative to agree or disagree. I think that is what democracy and free speech is called.
Until I got to the Newsletter section entitled: “This war is different.” Here is a quote from the section in that newsletter. (The bold and italics are mine.)
The Hamas-Israel war has brought these tensions to the fore because both sides in the debate have large campus constituencies.
Many Jewish students — and conservatives — believe that colleges have hypocritically allowed celebrations of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre and antisemitic calls for future violence. (This belief underpinned the tough questioning of three university presidents last week by Elise Stefanik, a Republican congresswoman, which led to apologies from two of the three and the resignation of one, as my colleague Nicholas Confessore has explained.)
At the same time, many Palestinian students — and their allies, who tend to be on the political left — believe they are at risk of harassment, and the loss of future jobs, for making principled arguments about human suffering and democratic rights.
The problem for universities is that they can’t always make both sides feel safe. Pro-Palestinian students, for instance, may understandably feel unwelcome if they cannot criticize Israel as an occupying power that has seized Palestinian land in the West Bank and has killed thousands of people in Gaza since Oct. 7. These students may advocate a “free Palestine from the river to the sea” or a “right of return” as ways to express support for a single nation that incorporates all of Israel and its occupied territory.
Pro-Israel students, for their part, may understandably hear these statements as calls for the elimination of the world’s only Jewish nation, to be replaced by yet another Muslim-dominated one. They may point out that many college activists seem to care more about the human rights record of Israel than, say, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Hamas.
Let me understand the equivocations made in this piece. Because they really are out there in left field. Or in another universe.
First:
At the same time, many Palestinian students — and their allies, who tend to be on the political left — believe they are at risk of harassment, and the loss of future jobs, for making principled arguments about human suffering and democratic rights.
What harassment are you discussing? What exactly are you referring to?
Could it be you are referring to the right of students to walk around the streets and pull down signs of kidnapped and murdered men, women, and children? Murdered and kidnapped by Hamas- just to be precise. And this, I will add, without any police interference. Without any police intervention. Without any consequences upon those who did such disgusting things.
Could it be that the Jewish community finally decided enough was enough and started to out these people? To name-and-shame them in public, despite most of them trying to hide from the cameras and hiding their faces? Even those who were so sure there would be no consequences to their actions that they just gave the middle finger to the camera and said, “F**K off Jew.” Are those the ones in fear of harassment?
Could it be that the moment these students, professors, lawyers, and doctors are outed, they lose their job offers to institutions that want to have nothing to do with such “Hitler youth” antics? Are those the ones in fear of harassment?
Could it be that these students have the right to do what they did, but the businesses, law firms, doctors’ offices, hospitals, and everything else do not have the same right to express their free choice by choosing not to hire these lovely individuals? Is that harassment? Or is it a legitimate expression of how you pay for the consequences of your actions? Something many of these individuals never had to do until now.
Could it be they have every right to pull down the American Flag in the heart of NYC and all over the US and replace it with the Palestinian Flag? And then, to add insult to injury, burn the American flag as if they came out of a VietNam anti-war protest? (At least those protestors did not put up another flag instead of the Stars and Stripes.)
Could it be that we are talking about chasing Jewish students in fear for their lives into the library at Cooper Union and forcing them to barricade the doors?
Is that the harassment you are referring to?
Let me get this right. So I can understand this POV.
It is ok to harass and terrify Jewish students with such actions. It is perfectly legitimate to walk around the streets pulling down signs of kidnapped children, but it is the left-wing view WOKE crowd who are worried about harassment.
Dear NYT, What BS are you trying to feed us?
Second:
Pro-Palestinian students, for instance, may understandably feel unwelcome if they cannot criticize Israel as an occupying power that has seized Palestinian land in the West Bank and has killed thousands of people in Gaza since Oct. 7.
Just what happened on October 7th? I see the term “killed thousands,” which is blatantly incorrect unless you are counting Hamas. If you are counting Hamas, then I hope you are correct, but I doubt it. The more Hamas dead - the better. Not only for Israel but for you sitting in your ivory tower in NYC as well. Cause guess what? You are next on the Hamas hit list. You are an infidel. Don’t believe me? Just ask ISIS, Hamas, or Bin Laden’s buddies.
BUT:
Did you mention the number of civilians killed by Hamas (who are Gazans) on October 7th? (God forbid I should talk about soldiers, police, or emergency personnel.)
Did you mention the number of people killed at the peace concert-rave in Re’im?
Did you mention the number of missiles lobbed into Israel, which is now way over 12,000?
And indeed, the West Bank argument does not hold water with everyone. I know that you know that we all know this.
Oh, let us not forget. Did you mention how many times the NYT and others had to backtrack on their reporting of the war? For instance, the supposed missile we fired at the hospital and killed no more and no less than 500 people!
Once you had visual, inconvertible proof that it was a Hamas rocket that hit that hospital, you just issued a retraction and went on your happy way.
I know, you know, your war correspondents know that there is not a chance that one missile could kill 500 people. An airplane crashing into the Twin Towers will do it. But not a small missile. In short, you knew it was a lie before you published it. Yet you still published it.
So, let us figure out the equivocation here, shall we? “Thousands” are dead in Gaza. But not one mention of the exact number of dead, wounded, and kidnapped from October 7th.
That is some balanced reporting. Did you go to journalism school to produce that piece of Pulitzer-prize reporting? Or did you figure it out on the toilet?
Third:
Now, let us get to the doozy!!!!!! And boy, is this one a doozy!
These students may advocate a “free Palestine from the river to the sea” or a “right of return” as ways to express support for a single nation that incorporates all of Israel and its occupied territory.
Pro-Israel students, for their part, may understandably hear these statements as calls for the elimination of the world’s only Jewish nation, to be replaced by yet another Muslim-dominated one
I am sure, having grown up in a time and period when the NYT was considered the “holy of holies” in our home, that the use of “Language” is at the top of your list.
Language is funny. Move one word, change a comma, move one word to a different place, and it denotes something else. The whole connotation is changed.
So let us deal with this, as well.
The chant is not, I repeat not:
“free Palestine from the river to the sea”
It is rather:
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Same thing, right?
NOPE. Not on your life.
First off, that wonderful chant originated with Osama Bin Laden. Did you tell your readers that piece of history? Just print his “Letter to America” if you don’t believe me. I mean, it is already out on X, Instagram, and TikTok. So why not? Oh, let me remind you, in case you WOKE up due to the letter. Osama and his buddies were responsible, planned, and pulled off - 9/11.
Second, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” is a clear call to genocide. It has no other meaning. There is no lexicon on this earth besides in Rashida Tlaib’s warped mind, where that means anything else. And she claims it is a freedom call to keep her seat in Congress. She knows damn well what it means and wants to kill every single Israeli and Jew she can get her hands on. Indeed, I am willing to bet she is the only one in her “squad” who can tell you what river and what sea that chant refers to.
So now the NYT calls the chant for genocide an expression of support? Is this how the NYT perceives this chant?
Did you bother mentioning the chants of “Gas the Jews”? Does “Gas the Jews” fit in with your “expression of support”?
Or the calls for Intifada? And maybe your readers would like to know exactly what the call for Intifada means! Explain it to them without using Wikipedia. Explain exactly what the connotation of Intifada means - just for the west. Don’t bother with Israel - we already know.
I do not believe that the writer of this piece is dumb or ignorant, far from it.
He is intelligent, devious, and duplicitous and knows how to phrase his writing. In an ordinary world, one would call for him to retract. But he is not Tucker Carlson; he is on the left. He has “woken up.”
This was done intentionally. It was done insidiously so that one’s eyes flew over the writing. It was purposeful, disingenuous, and actually just plain false.
