Why is the same western media obsessively reheating
five-month-old allegations against Hamas so reluctant to
focus on Israel’s current, horrifying atrocities?
JONATHAN COOK
MAR 15, 2024
[First published by Middle East Eye]
Hostages tortured to death. Parents executed in front of
their children. Doctors beaten. Babies murdered. Sexual
assault weaponised.
No, not Hamas crimes. This is part of an ever-growing
list of documented atrocities committed by Israel in the
five months since 7 October – quite separate from the
carpet bombing of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and a
famine induced by Israel’s obstruction of aid.
Last week, an investigation by the Israeli newspaper
Haaretz disclosed that some 27 Palestinians seized off
Gaza’s streets over the past five months are known to
have died during interrogations inside Israel.
Some were denied medical treatment. But most are likely
to have been tortured to death.
Three months ago, a Haaretz editorial warned that
Israeli jails “must not become execution facilities for
Palestinians”.
Israeli TV channels have been excitedly taking viewers
on tours of detention centres, showing the appalling
conditions Palestinians are kept in, as well as the
psychological and physical abuse they are subjected to.
An Israeli judge recently called the makeshift cages in
which Palestinians are held “unsuitable for humans”.
Remember, a large proportion of the 4,000 or so
Palestinians taken hostage by Israel since 7 October –
probably the vast majority – are civilians, like the men
and boys paraded through Gaza’s streets or held in a
stadium stripped of clothing before being dragged off to
a dark cell in Israel.
Women abused
According to Israeli media, many dozens of Palestinian
women – including pregnant women – have been seized too,
but in their case off camera.
Presumably, Israel has wished to avoid undermining its
careful messaging that only Hamas weaponises violence
against women.
But according to United Nations legal experts,
Palestinian women are suffering the most degrading forms
of abuse at the hands of the Israeli military.
The experts observed that Palestinian women and girls in
detention were reportedly being subjected to “multiple
forms of sexual assault, such as being stripped naked
and searched by male Israeli army officers.
"At least two female Palestinian detainees were
reportedly raped while others were reportedly threatened
with rape and sexual violence."
Soldiers are also believed to have taken photos of
female detainees in degrading circumstances and then
uploaded them online.
Palestinian women and girls in Gaza are also reported by
their families to have gone missing after contact with
the Israeli army.
“There are disturbing reports of at least one female
infant forcibly transferred by the Israeli army into
Israel, and of children being separated from their
parents, whose whereabouts remain unknown,” they said.
Beatings, waterboarding
A separate report by the UN last week revealed that 21
of its staff – humanitarian aid workers – had been
snatched by Israel. They were then tortured to extract
confessions, most likely false, of involvement in Hamas’
7 October attack. Their torture included beatings,
waterboarding and threats to family members.
Those confessions were cited by western allies as the
grounds – in fact, the only known grounds – for cutting
off funding to the UN relief agency UNRWA, the last
lifeline for Gaza’s starving population. It was these
claims, extracted through torture, that helped Israel
rationalise its imposing of a famine on Gaza.
Of the 1,000 detainees subsequently released, 29 were
children, one as young as six, and 80 women. Some were
reported to have cancer and chronic illnesses such as
Alzheimer’s.
According to the UN investigation, Palestinians reported
severe punishment beatings, being caged with attack
dogs, and suffering sexual assault. Physical evidence –
such as broken ribs, dislocated shoulders, bite marks,
and burns – was still visible many weeks later.
Executions, human shields
These horrors, of course, are not just taking place in
cells and interrogation rooms inside Israel. Gaza is
being subjected to astonishing levels of brutality and
sadism from Israeli troops – quite aside from the carpet
bombing and enforced starvation of civilians.
Israeli snipers have fired into Gaza’s hospitals,
killing medical staff and patients there.
The Israeli military has used Palestinians as human
shields, including one man sent into a hospital, his
hands bound, to announce an Israeli order to evacuate
the premises. Israeli forces executed him on his return.
Those trying to follow such evacuation orders, waving
white flags, have been shot at.
Medical facilities have been repeatedly invaded by the
Israeli military in stark violation of international
law. Those who could not be evacuated, such as premature
babies, have been left to die unattended, even while
Israeli soldiers were occupying the building.
This week, the BBC interviewed medical staff who
reported being tortured, savagely beaten and having
attack dogs set on them inside the Nasser hospital in
Khan Younis after Israeli soldiers stormed it.
One, Dr Ahmed Abu Sabha, had his hands broken. He told
the BBC: “They put me on a chair and it was like a
gallows. I heard sounds of ropes, so I thought I was
going to be executed.”
At another stage, he and other detainees were beaten in
the back of a truck, while only in their underwear. They
were taken to a gravel pit, where they were made to
kneel blindfolded. They believed they were about to be
executed.
During his eight days as hostage, Sabha was never
questioned.
Dozens more medics are believed missing, presumed to
still be in Israeli detention.
Photographs published by the BBC also show patients in
the grounds of Nasser hospital in beds with their hands
bound tightly above their heads.
Those who died were left to decompose by Israeli
soldiers. A doctor there, Dr Hatim Rabaa, told the BBC:
“Patients were screaming, ‘Please remove them [the
corpses] from here'. I was telling them, 'It isn't in my
hands'."
Other examples of murderous cruelty are documented
daily. Unarmed Palestinians, including those waving
white flags, have been shot dead by Israeli soldiers.
Palestinian parents have been executed in cold blood in
front of their children. There have been repeated
episodes of Israeli forces gunning down en masse
desperate Palestinians trying to reach aid, as happened
yet again this week.
Even Israeli hostages trying to escape their captors
have been killed by the very Israeli soldiers they were
trying to surrender to.
These are just some of the cases of Israeli sadism and
barbarity that have surfaced briefly in western media
coverage, soon to be forgotten.
Wiping Gaza off the map
The stomach-turning double standards are impossible to
ignore.
The western establishment media has been chock full of
the most lurid allegations of savagery directed against
Hamas, sometimes with little or no supporting evidence.
Claims that Hamas beheaded babies or put them in ovens –
emblazoned on front pages – were later found to be
nonsense.
Accusations against Hamas have been endlessly reheated
to paint a picture of a supremely dangerous and bestial
militant group, in turn rationalising the carpet bombing
and starvation of Gaza’s population to “eradicate” it as
a terrorist organisation.
But equally barbarous atrocities committed by Israel –
not in the heat of battle, but in cold blood – are
treated as unfortunate, isolated incidents that cannot
be connected, that paint no picture, that reveal nothing
of import about the military that carried them out.
If Hamas’ crimes were so savage and sadistic they still
need to be reported months after they took place, why
does the establishment media never feel the need to
express equal horror and indignation at the acts of
cruelty and sadism being inflicted by Israel on Gaza –
not five months ago, but right now?
This is part of a pattern of behaviour by the western
media that leads to only one possible deduction:
Israel’s five-month-long attack on Gaza is not being
reported. Rather, it is being selectively narrated – and
for the most obscene of purposes.
Through consistent and glaring failures in their
coverage, establishment media – including supposedly
liberal outlets, from the BBC and CNN to the Guardian
and New York Times – have smoothed the way for Israel to
carry out mass slaughter in Gaza, what the World Court
has assessed as plausibly a genocide.
The role of the media has not been to keep us, their
audiences, informed about one of the greatest crimes in
living memory. It has been to buy time for US President
Joe Biden to keep arming his most useful of client
states in the oil-rich Middle East, and to do so without
damaging his prospects for re-election in November’s US
presidential vote.
If Russian President Vladimir Putin was a madman and a
barbarous war criminal for invading Ukraine, as every
western media outlet agrees, what does that make Israeli
officials, when every one of them supports far worse
atrocities in Gaza, directed overwhelmingly at
civilians?
And more to the point, what does that make Biden and the
US political class for materially backing Israel to the
hilt: sending bombs, vetoing demands for a ceasefire at
the United Nations, and freezing desperately needed aid?
Worrying about the optics, the president expresses his
discomfort, but he carries on helping Israel regardless.
While western politicians and commentators worry about
some imaginary existential threat those brief events of
five months ago pose to the nuclear-armed state of
Israel, Israel is quite literally wiping Gaza off the
map day by day, quite undisturbed.
Hamas ‘started it’
There have been two, largely implicit defences for this
glaring imbalance in western priorities. Neither stands
up to even the most cursory scrutiny.
One is the argument that Hamas “started it” – insinuated
in the endless claim that, in destroying Gaza, Israel
has been “responding” or “retaliating” to the violence
of 7 October.
This is a justification for killing tens of thousands of
Palestinians and starving two million more that should
never have been let out of the playground. But worse, it
is patent nonsense. Hamas did not initiate anything on 7
October, except for handing Israel a pretext to wreck
Gaza.
The enclave has been under a crushing siege for 17
years, in which its land, sea and air were patrolled
constantly by Israel. Its population was denied the
essentials of life. They had no freedom of movement
apart from inside their cage.
Long before the current Israeli-induced famine, Israel’s
trade restrictions had ensured high levels of
malnutrition among Gaza’s children. Most exhibited too
the scars of deep psychological trauma from constant and
massive attacks by Israel on Gaza.
Biden crows about building a “temporary pier” – weeks or
months down the road – to bring aid into Gaza that is
desperately needed now. But there is a reason the
enclave lacks a seaport and airport. Israel bombed the
only airport back in 2001, long before Hamas took charge
of Gaza. It has been attacking and killing fishermen
trawling just off Gaza's coast for years.
Israel has refused to allow Gaza to connect to the world
– and break free of Israeli control – ever since.
Hamas started nothing on 7 October. It was simply a new,
and particularly gruesome phase in what has been decades
of Palestinian resistance to Israel’s belligerent
occupation of Gaza.
Bogus narrative
The other implicit defence of western establishments
constantly stressing Hamas’ barbarism over Israel’s is
that the nature of those atrocities is said to be
categorically different – in the apples and pears sense.
Hamas supposedly demonstrated a degree of sadism in its
killing spree on 7 October inside Israel that marks it
out from Israel’s far larger killing spree in Gaza.
That has been the basis for every media interview that
requires guests to “condemn” Hamas before they are
allowed to express concern about the slaughter of
Palestinians in Gaza. No one is asked to condemn Israel.
It is the basis too for permitting Israeli spokespeople
to claim unchallenged that Israel targets only Hamas,
not civilians, even while some three-quarters of Gaza’s
dead are women and children.
On the BBC’s evening news last weekend, presenter Clive
Myrie made precisely this preposterous assertion as he
intoned that since 7 October, “Israel launched a
relentless bombing campaign targeting members of Hamas.”
But the latest revelations of the 27 reported deaths in
Israeli torture centres and the testimonies of beaten
medics from Nasser Hospital confirm how bogus this
entire narrative framing by the western media is – one
intended to mislead and misinform audiences.
Israel claims it is targeting Hamas, but its actions
tell an entirely different story. Famine will kill off
the sick and vulnerable long before it does Hamas
fighters.
The truth is, Israel is not primarily eradicating Hamas.
It is eradicating Gaza. Its crimes are at least as cruel
and savage as anything Hamas did on 7 October – and its
atrocities have been carried out on a far larger scale
and for far longer.
Western establishments and their media have been waging
a giant campaign of misdirection for the past five
months, as they have against Palestinians over previous
years and decades. Western publics have been encouraged
to look in the wrong direction
Until that changes, the men, women and children of Gaza
will continue to pay the heaviest of prices at the hands
of a vengeful, sadistic Israeli military.
[Many thanks to Dr Matthew Alford for the audio reading
of this article.]
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FEBRUARY 1, 2024
Leading Papers Skewed Gaza Debate Toward Israeli and Government
Perspectives
JULIE HOLLAR
Guests Essayists on Gaza Crisis by National Affiliations
At the New York Times and Washington Post, despite efforts to include
Palestinian voices, opinion editors have skewed the Gaza debate toward an
Israel-centered perspective, dominated by men and, among guest writers,
government officials.
In the first two months of the current Gaza crisis, the Times featured the
crisis on its op-ed pages almost twice as many times as the Post (122 to 63).
But while both papers did include a few strong pro-Palestinian voices—and
both seemed to make an effort to bring Palestinian voices close to parity with
Israeli voices—their pages leaned heavily toward a conversation
dominated by Israeli interests and concerns.
That was due in large part due to their stables of regular columnists, who
tend to write from a perspective aligned with Israel, if not always in alignment
with its right-wing government. As a result, the viewpoints readers were most
likely to encounter on the opinion pages of the two papers were sympathetic
to, but not necessarily uncritical of, Israel.
Many opinion pieces at the Times, for instance, mentioned the word
“occupation,” offering some context for the current crisis. However, very few
at either paper went so far as to use the word “apartheid”—a term used by
prominent human rights groups to describe Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
Clear calls for an unconditional ceasefire, while widespread in the real world,
were vanishingly rare at the papers: two at the Times and at the Post only
one, which itself was part of a collection of short responses to the question,
“Should Israel agree to a ceasefire?,” which included strong opposition as
well.
For guest perspectives, both papers turned most frequently to government
officials, whether current or former, US or foreign. And the two papers
continued the longstanding media bias toward male voices on issues of war
and international affairs: the Times with roughly three male-penned opinions
for every female-written one, and the Post at nearly 7-to-1.
Gaza Crisis Opinion Pieces, by Gender
Opinion pieces on the Gaza crisis with male vs. female bylines, New York
Times and Washington Post, Oct.7-Dec 6, 2023
20
40
60
80
100
87%13%
88%12%
73%27%
77%23%
Post Guest EssaysPost Regular ColumnistsTimes Guest EssaysTimes Regular
Columnists
MaleFemale
Percentages of 17 guest essays and 46 regular columns at the Post, and of
48 guest essays and 74 regular columnists at the Times.
Chart: Fairness and Accuracy in ReportingCreated with Datawrapper
For this study, FAIR identified and analyzed all opinion pieces published by
the two papers from October 7 through December 6 that mentioned Israel or
Gaza, using Nexis and ProQuest. Excluding editorials, web-only op-eds,
letters to the editor and pieces with only passing mentions of Israel/Palestine,
we tallied 122 pieces at the Times and 63 at the Post.
New York Times writers
During the first two months of the Gaza crisis, the New York Times published
48 related guest essays, along with 74 pieces by regular columnists,
contributing writers (who write less frequently than columnists) and editorial
board members (who occasionally publish bylined opinion pieces).
Of the 48 guest essays, the greatest concentration (16, or 33%) were written
by Israelis or those with stated family or ancestral ties to Israel. Another 13
(27%) were written by Palestinians or people who declared ties to Palestine.
Most of the rest (12, or 25%) were written by US writers with no identified
family or ancestral ties to either Israel or Palestine.
The occupational category the Times turned to most frequently for guest
opinions was government official, with current or former officials from the US
or abroad accounting for 11 (23%) of the guest essays. (US officials
outnumbered foreign officials, 6 to 5.) Journalists came in a close second,
with nine (19%), followed by seven academics (15%). Six represented
advocacy groups or activists (13%); four of these were Israeli and two
Palestinian.
Guest Essayists on Gaza Crisis, by Occupation
Oct.7-Dec.6, 2023.
Gaza Crisis Guest Essayists by Occupation, NYT and WaPo
New York TimesWashington Post
Government Official
23%
30%
Journalist
19%
24%
Academic
15%
12%
Advocacy Group or Activist
13%
12%
Think Tank
8%
12%
Family Member of Hostage
6%
6%
Military
6%
6%
Lawyer
6%
0%
Author
4%
0%
Humanitarian Group
4%
0%
Pollster
4%
0%
Medical
2%
6%
Religious Leader
2%
0%
Out of 48 guest opinion essays published at the Times and 17 published at
the Post. Some guests were identified with more than one occupation, so
sum totals exceed total number of guest essayists.
Source: Fairness & Accuracy In ReportingCreated with Datawrapper
The paper also relied heavily on the opinions of men rather than women.
Ninety-two of the Times opinion pieces were written by men (75%), while 30
were written by women (25%), an imbalance of more than 3-to-1.
Of the 17 pieces written by the Times‘ regular female columnists, eight came
from Michelle Goldberg, and the preponderance were about domestic
implications of the crisis. Examples of these include Goldberg’s “The
Massacre in Israel and the Need for a Decent Left” (10/12/23) and Pamela
Paul‘s “The War Comes to Stanford” (10/13/23), both of which decried the
response to the Gaza crisis by the US pro-Palestinian left.
Washington Post writers
The Post published 46 pieces by regular columnists and only 17 by guest
writers. Even given that the Post typically publishes fewer opinion pieces
than the Times, that’s a strikingly small number of guest op-eds—roughly
one every four days.
Unlike at the Times, the Post guest op-eds were dominated by US writers (7,
or 41%), with only four by Israelis (24%) and three by Palestinians (18%). The
Israeli-bylined op-eds expressed varied viewpoints, from hard-line support
(“Every innocent Palestinian killed in this conflagration is the victim of
Hamas”—10/10/23) to a call for “concrete steps to de-escalate the immediate
conflict and to sow seeds for peace and reconciliation” (10/20/23). Two of
the Palestinian-bylined pieces came from the same writer, journalist Daoud
Kuttab (10/10/23, 11/28/23), who both times argued that Biden must
recognize a Palestinian state as the only way forward.
Guest Essayists on Gaza Crisis, by National Affiliation
Oct. 7-Dec 6, 2023.
Guest Essayist National Affiliations
New York TimesWashington Post
Israel
33%
24%
Palestine
27%
18%
US
25%
41%
Other
15%
17%
Out of 48 guest opinion essays published at the Times and 17 published at
the Post. FAIR classified a writer as affiliated with Israel or Palestine if they
were from one of those nations or had self-identified family or ancestral
connections to them. The US affiliation excludes writers with self-identified
family ties to either nation.
Source: Fairness & Accuracy In ReportingCreated with Datawrapper
It’s useful to compare the papers’ current representation of Palestinian
voices to their historical record. In +972 Magazine (10/2/20), Palestinian-
American historian Maha Nasser counted opinion pieces (including editorials,
columns and guest essays) that mentioned the word “Palestinian” at the Post
and Times from 1970 through 2019. Of the thousands of pieces published,
fewer than 2% were written by Palestinians at either paper (1.8% at the
Times, 1.0% at the Post). In the most recent decade (2010–19), the numbers
were only slightly higher, up to 2.8% at the Times and 1.6% at the Post.
While the comparison is not exact—because FAIR used different search
terms (“Israel” or “Gaza”) and excluded editorials—in our two-month study
period, 11% of bylined opinions were written by Palestinians at the Times,
and 5% at the Post. Including editorials that mention Israel or Gaza (6 at the
Post, 4 at the Times), those percentages drop slightly to 10% and 4%.
Like the Times, the Post leaned on government officials to shape the public
debate; five of its guest op-eds were by current or former US or foreign
officials (30%), four by journalists (24%), and only two by representatives of
advocacy groups or activists (12%). As at the Times, US officials slightly
edged foreign officials, 3 to 2.
The Post had an even more lopsided gender imbalance than the Times, at
nearly 7–1. Only eight of its opinion pieces were by women: two guest essays
(12%) and six columns (13%).
New York Times columnists
Several New York Times columnists wrote repeatedly about the Gaza crisis.
The Times‘ foreign affairs columnist, Thomas Friedman, often writes about
Middle East politics; during the study period, he wrote about nothing else,
outpacing all of his colleagues with 13 columns about Gaza. Though
Friedman is not known for pacifism or expressing sympathy for Palestinians
(see FAIR.org, 7/13/20), he typically writes from a reliably centrist pro-Israel
position, and his takes on the right-wing Netanyahu government have been
generally critical.
New York Times: The Israeli Officials I Speak With Tell Me They Know Two
Things for Sure
The headline of this Thomas Friedman column (New York Times, 10/29/23)
reflected his Israel-centric perspective.
During the first two months of the war, Friedman repeatedly wrote columns
(e.g., 10/10/23, 10/16/23, 10/19/23, 11/9/23) criticizing Netanyahu and his
military strategy, discouraging a ground invasion and pushing for a
diplomatic solution. His columns heavily focused on Israel and Israeli
perspectives and interests, rather than Palestine and Palestinians; all but one
of his headlines took “Israel” or “Israeli officials” as their subject, while two
also mentioned “Hamas”; none mentioned “Gaza,” “Palestine” or
“Palestinians.”
His last column (12/1/23) in the study period advocated for Israel to abandon
its mission of destroying Hamas, and instead negotiate a ceasefire and
withdrawal in exchange for a return of all hostages. Yet at the same time, he
managed to project his habitual Orientalism and a distinct lack of empathy
for the Palestinian humanitarian crisis. Even if it abandons its stated goal of
eliminating Hamas, Israel will have succeeded, Friedman argued, because it
will
have sent a powerful message of deterrence to Hamas and to Hezbollah in
Lebanon: You destroy our villages, we will destroy yours 10 times more. This
is ugly stuff, but the Middle East is a Hobbesian jungle. It is not Scandinavia.
“With Israel out,” he continued,
the humanitarian crisis created by this war in Gaza would become [Hamas
leader Yahya] Sinwar’s and Hamas’s problem—as it should be. Every problem
in Gaza would be Sinwar’s fault, starting with jobs.
These arguments—first, that people in the Middle East must be educated
through violence, and next, that Israel ought to withdraw and take no
responsibility for the crushing humanitarian disaster they have wrought—
make clear the underlying callousness of the Times‘ most prolific Middle East
columnist.
Fellow long-time columnist Nicholas Kristof also wrote repeatedly about
Gaza (10 times), with more attention to the civilian casualties of the conflict.
In one column (10/25/23), Kristof highlighted the voices of several Israelis
who, despite the trauma they have experienced, have been able to “muster
the clarity to understand that relentless bombardment and a ground invasion
may not help.” Another column (10/28/23) concluded with the line: “I think
someday we will look back in horror at both the Hamas butchery in Israel and
at the worsening tableau of suffering in Gaza in which we are complicit.”
Yet Kristof was hardly a voice for the pro-Palestinian left, and twice made
clear his position against a ceasefire. For instance, he wrote on December 6:
By pulverizing entire neighborhoods and killing huge numbers of civilians
instead of using smaller bombs and taking a much more surgical approach,
as American officials have urged, Israel has provoked growing demands for
an extended ceasefire that would arguably amount to a Hamas victory.
NYT: Hamas Bears the Blame for Every Death in This War
The contrary opinion to the Bret Stephens column (New York Times,
10/15/23)—that Israel is responsible for killing the people it kills—was rarely
stated so forthrightly on the Times op-ed page.
While the Times‘ prominent centrists favored Israel yet counseled restraint,
the paper’s conservative columnists offered even more hawkish takes. Most
prominently, conservative columnist Bret Stephens, who serves as a
consistently pro-Israel voice on the Times opinion pages, wrote about the
issue 11 times during the two-month period.
Earlier in his career, Stephens left the Wall Street Journal to take the helm at
the Jerusalem Post “because he believed Israel was getting an unfair hearing
in the press.” As he said at the time (Haaretz, 4/20/17): “I do not think Israel is
the aggressor here. Insofar as getting the story right helps Israel, I guess you
could say I’m trying to help Israel.”
After October 7, Stephens used his Times column to absolve Israel of any
responsibility for Gaza casualties (“Hamas Bears the Blame for Every Death
in This War,” 10/15/23), attack calls for a ceasefire (“The ‘Ceasefire Now’
Imposture,” 11/21/23) and vilify the pro-Palestinian US left (“The Anti-Israel
Left Needs to Take a Hard Look at Itself,” 10/10/23; “The Left Is Dooming Any
Hope for a Palestinian State,” 11/28/23).
Fellow conservatives Ross Douthat and David French offered fewer Gaza
takes (five each) and, while less strident than Stephens, still took pro-Israel
positions. French, for instance, argued in one column (10/15/23):
The challenge of fighting a pitched battle amid the civilian population would
both render Israel’s attack more difficult and take more civilian lives. But
refusing to attack and leaving Hamas in control of Gaza would create its own
moral crisis.
He later (11/16/23) argued against a ceasefire, which would “block Israel’s
exercise of its inherent right to self-defense.”
Douthat, in a column (10/18/23) musing about the lessons of the US “War on
Terror” for Israel, included such nuggets of wisdom as “if invasion is your
only option, America’s post-9/11 experience also counsels for a certain
degree of maximalism in the numbers committed and the plans for
occupation.”
As mentioned above, columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote eight Gaza-related
columns, but primarily about domestic repercussions of the crisis—which is
unsurprising, given her column beat is identified as “politics, gender, religion,
ideology.” Goldberg paid particular attention to the debates over protest,
speech and antisemitism, arguing against censorship, as well as against the
idea that anti-Zionism could be equated with antisemitism (e.g., 11/20/23,
12/4/23)—though not without frequent barbs at the US left, such as when
she blamed “the left” (10/23/23) for supposedly establishing the rules of
censorship on campus that she decried: “privileging sensitivity to
traumatized communities ahead of the robust exchange of ideas.”
No other regular columnist wrote more than three pieces touching on the
Middle East crisis.
Washington Post columnists
WaPo: An inside look at what’s ahead in Israel’s shattering war in Gaza
Post columnist David Ignatius’ “inside looks” almost always came from inside
Israel, not Gaza.
At the Washington Post, foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius was by far
the most prolific writer on Gaza. Like Friedman, he penned 13 columns on the
crisis, but because the Post published far fewer Gaza opinions than the
Times, Ignatius’ views represented fully 20% of the Post‘s bylined opinions
on the crisis. And, as Ignatius acknowledged in one of those columns
(11/19/23), he “sees this terrible conflict largely through Israeli eyes.”
That’s in large part due to his sources. Ignatius, a former reporter (and
Mideast correspondent from 1980–83), often includes original reporting in
his columns. Four of his columns from the two months were filed from the
Middle East: one from Doha (11/10/23), two from Tel Aviv (11/14/23, 11/19/23)
and one from “Gaza City” (11/13/23)—though that last described his brief
visit to Gaza “in an Israeli armored personnel carrier,” during which time “we
could not interview any of the Gazan civilians” they saw fleeing along a
“humanitarian corridor.”
Many of Ignatius’ columns were filled with quotes from Israelis he
interviewed, but not from Palestinians. While not uncritical of Israel, Ignatius
offered a largely one-sided view of the crisis to readers.
Conservative Post columnists Jason Willick (who wrote four columns) and
Max Boot (who wrote three) were no counterbalance to Ignatius’ pro-Israel
tilt. Willick used two of his columns (10/19/23, 12/6/23) to blame leftist
“identity politics” for antisemitism in the US. In the other two, he blamed
Hamas for Palestinian deaths (“Gazans Pay for Hamas’s Guerrilla Tactics,”
11/15/23) and encouraged “a tight embrace rather than a cold shoulder” for
Netanyahu (“Benjamin Netanyahu, Moderate,” 11/26/23).
Boot offered mostly bloodless, academic assessments—such as “mass-
casualty attacks are counterproductive” (10/18/23) and “tyrants and
terrorists often underestimate the fighting capacity of liberal democracies”
(10/13/23). His first Gaza-related offering (10/9/23), though, observed that
“responsible Israelis—who are largely missing from Netanyahu’s far-right
cabinet—know that Palestinians’ lives have to improve to prevent more
eruptions of violence in the future.”
WaPo: If Hamas really cared about Palestinian lives, it would surrender
“Israel tries to minimize harm to civilians,” Charles Lane (Washington Post,
11/16/23) asserted—linking to a report on an Israeli government video of its
forces dropping off 79 gallons of fuel at a hospital that they later destroyed.
Charles Lane, who occupies a more center–right position on the paper’s op-
ed page, used three of his columns to talk about the crisis, each time to
emphasize Hamas’s atrocities while denying Israel’s own. For instance, in
“The Best Thing Hamas Can Do for Palestinians Is to Surrender” (11/16/23),
Lane argued that “Israel does not intentionally kill civilians” and that “to save
Palestinian lives,” Hamas ought to surrender, rather than placing “the burden
on Israel to end the war.”
Two members of the paper’s center-right editorial board who also write
bylined columns for the Post—Egyptian-American Shadi Hamid and Colbert
King—published three opinions each related to the crisis during the first two
months, columns that in general offered arguably the most balanced
perspectives.
Hamid found room, alongside his rebukes of Hamas and the US left, to
criticize “the devaluing of Palestinian lives” (11/30/23) and to argue that “now
and not later, a ceasefire is necessary” (11/9/23)—even if he added the
precondition that Hamas first agree to release hostages, with no
preconditions for Israel.
King wrote more about the repercussions of the crisis, including repression
of speech (11/18/23) and rising antisemitism and Islamophobia (11/11/23); he
also wrote a plea for “full self-government [for Palestinians] and a land they
can call their own” (10/21/23).
‘Ceasefire’ mentions
During the study period, more than 16,000 Palestinians were killed, including
more than 7,000 children (OCHA, 12/5/23). From the very early days of the
crisis, as Palestinian civilian casualties quickly mounted, calls for a ceasefire
grew louder and more prominent. International leaders, human rights and
humanitarian groups, and protesters worldwide demanded a halt to Israel’s
relentless bombing (and, later, ground campaign) in order to stop the civilian
casualties, allow desperately needed humanitarian aid to enter the blockaded
strip of land, and work toward a diplomatic resolution to the conflict. (See
FAIR.org, 10/24/23.)
A majority of the US public has supported a ceasefire since the early days of
the crisis, and one poll found support increasing over time. Yet in the
country’s two most prominent papers, the ceasefire debate was either mostly
ignored (at the Post) or presented in a way that came nowhere close to
reflecting public opinion (at the Times).
NYT: The ‘Cease-Fire Now’ Imposture
Bret Stephens (New York Times, 11/21/23) wrote that the call for a ceasefire
in Gaza was a “lie” because it was Hamas that broke the existing ceasefire on
October 7—ignoring the 214 Palestinians killed in the Occupied Territories in
2023 before that date.
In the Times, the word “ceasefire” in relationship to the current crisis
appeared in 31 op-eds during the two months, representing 25% of all Gaza-
related op-eds. (Four additional mentions referred to the ceasefire that was
in place prior to October 7.) Many (11) were simply descriptive. For example,
a guest op-ed (11/22/23) noted that “The hostage release deal outlined on
Tuesday would include a ceasefire of at least four days.”
Of the remaining 21 that could be classified as advocating a position, 11 were
clearly critical of calls for a ceasefire, such as Stephens’ “The Ceasefire Now
Imposture” (11/21/23), in which he wrote, “Instead of Ceasefire Now, we need
Hamas’ Defeat Now.” Nine of the anti-ceasefire columns were penned by
Times regular columnists, four of them by Stephens.
Another two opinions focused on the plight of the Israeli hostages and
insisted that a ceasefire should only be possible after all of them were freed.
The brother of an Israeli hostage, for instance, made a case (11/15/23) for
“the urgent need to prioritize the release of all the hostages as a condition for
any humanitarian pause or ceasefire.”
Only seven Times opinions voiced any form of support for a ceasefire; most
were mild or indirect exhortations. Former US ambassador to Israel Daniel
Kurtzer, for example, wrote (10/20/23) that Biden “needs to plan now for
meeting Gaza’s immediate needs—which might require an early call on Israel
for a humanitarian ceasefire—but must also develop a plan for the day after.”
Gershon Baskin, who negotiated previous hostage deals between Israel and
Hamas, suggested (10/21/23) that the US press Qatar to issue an ultimatum
to Hamas, but that Qatar was unlikely to agree to that, and “certainly not
without an Israeli ceasefire.”
Three Times op-eds in the study period (less than 3% of all bylined opinion
pieces) made clear and direct calls for an unconditional ceasefire. Two were
written by Palestinians (10/19/23, 10/29/23), and one by Times contributing
writer Megan Stack (10/30/23), a former war correspondent who has
emerged as a rare strong voice for Palestine on the op-ed page. In the six
weeks since the study period ended, Stack published two more essays on
the crisis: “For Palestinians, the Future Is Being Bulldozed” (12/9/23) and
“Don’t Turn Away From the Charges of Genocide Against Israel” (1/12/24).
WaPo: A cease-fire in Gaza isn’t a fantasy. Here’s how it could work.
The only clear and direct call for a ceasefire in the Washington Post came
from Shadi Hamid (11/9/23), who insisted that Hamas must first release its
hostages.
At the Post, we found 16 mentions of “ceasefire” during the two-month study
period—far less total attention than at the Times, but a similar proportion of
its Gaza opinion (25%). Half of these were simply descriptive. Of the
remaining eight, four expressed criticism, three expressed support, and one
(11/3/23) was the previously mentioned collection of expert opinion on both
sides of the ceasefire question that appeared scrupulously balanced
between those in support and those opposed.
Two of the supportive op-eds (11/5/23, 11/28/23) were indirect; the only clear
and direct call for a ceasefire, outside of the collection, came from Shadi
Hamid, who put preconditions on Hamas but not Israel (11/9/23).
It’s noteworthy that Hamid’s opinion came just three days after the editorial
board of which he is a member published an editorial (11/6/23) arguing
against a ceasefire, except in the sense of “pauses in the fighting for
humanitarian relief,” and even then only on the condition that Hamas release
all hostages first. (Israel and Hamas agreed to a series of such pauses on
November 9.)
The Times also published an editorial (11/3/23) around the same time calling
for a “humanitarian pause,” but not a ceasefire. As the Times explained,
“Israel has warned that a blanket ceasefire would accomplish little at this
point other than allowing Hamas time to regroup.”
Other significant terms
Key Words Mentioned in Gaza Crisis Opinion Pieces
Percentage of in-house and guest bylined opinion pieces that mentioned the
given search terms in the New York Times and Washington Post, Oct. 7-Dec.
6, 2023.
New York TimesWashington Post
Ceasefire
25%
25%
Genocide
11%
13%
Apartheid
6%
2%
Occupy/Occupation
48%
14%
Terrorist/Terrorism
57%
63%
Self-Defense/Right to Defend
19%
16%
Percentages of 122 total opinion pieces published at the Times and 63
published at the Post that address the Gaza crisis during the study period.
Chart: Fairness and Accuracy In ReportingCreated with Datawrapper
“Genocide” (or “genocidal”) is another term that has been used to describe
both the actions of Hamas and those of Israel. At the Times, the word
appeared in 13 op-eds (11%) and at the Post, eight (13%).
In the Post, the word was used three times to describe Hamas and five to
describe Israel. Two of the three Hamas mentions (10/18/23, 10/25/23)
applied the word in the author’s own voice; the third (10/29/23) was quoted
approvingly.
Four of the Post‘s five mentions of genocide in relation to Israel were quotes
or paraphrases from another person, either offered neutrally or
disapprovingly, as when protester signs or chants were described (11/1/23,
11/18/23). The fifth was in the Post‘s collection of opinions about a ceasefire,
in which one Palestinian described the recent bombing death of his extended
family:
Today, the word “genocide” is being widely used. I can’t think of another
word that captures the magnitude of what Israel, a nuclear-armed military
power, continues to unleash on a captive population of children and
refugees. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the quiet part out loud:
“Gaza won’t return to what it was before,” he said. “We will eliminate
everything.”
NYT: What I Believe as a Historian of Genocide
The New York Times (11/10/23) brought in an Israeli historian to argue that
“there is no proof that genocide is currently taking place in Gaza.”
At the Times, the use of “genocide” was more varied, with many of the
references used in a more historical way (about the Jews historically being a
target of genocide, for instance) or to discuss the domestic debates about
the language used by protesters. It was used once to characterize Hamas
(10/26/23), twice to quote leftists characterizing Israel (10/25/23, 11/17/23),
and twice to characterize Israel’s assault as either “the specter of genocide”
(11/3/23) or what “may be…an ethnic cleansing operation that could quickly
devolve into genocide” (11/10/23).
The broader context of the conflict was often missing in the papers’ opinion
pages, particularly at the Post. The word “occupation” (or “occupy”)
appeared in 58 Times opinion pieces (48%) but only nine at the Post (14%).
The word “apartheid,” which multiple prominent human rights organizations
have used to describe the crimes committed against Palestinians by the
Israeli state prior to October 7 (FAIR.org, 7/21/23), rarely appeared in either of
the papers’ op-eds pages: seven times at the Times (6%) and once at the
Post (2%).
Meanwhile, “terrorism” or “terrorist” appeared 70 times in the Times (57%)
and 40 times in the Post (63%). “Self-defense” or “right to defend” made 23
appearances in the Times (19%) and 10 in the Post (16%).
Research assistance: Xenia Gonikberg, Phillip HoSang, Pai Liu
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Filed under: Israel/Palestine, New York Times, Washington Post
Julie Hollar
Julie Hollar is FAIR’s senior analyst and managing editor. Julie has a Ph.D. in
Political Science from the Graduate Center of the City University of New
York.
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