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Why Does The New York Times Love Hamas?
The paper of record refuses to call them terrorists, extols the group’s humanitarian efforts, and whitewashes its behavior during the now-broken cease-fire.
In the past week, the Fourth Estate’s Hamas cheerleaders have stripped away any pretense of being honest or neutral, with The New York Times continuing to take the side of the terrorist group in one of the most shameful journalistic episodes I have ever seen. In following The Times' coverage for the past six months and checking external sources of information, one can see a clear pattern of propagandistic reporting favoring Hamas that selectively suppressed or willfully misrepresented information.
Even The Times knows it has a bias problem. Readers who detected it got a chilling confirmation of their suspicions in the December 13 column by Ombudsman Clark Hoyt. Addressing a public outcry over the paper’s failure to use the term “terrorist” for the attackers who executed some 170 people in Mumbai, India, in late November (and mutilated the six Jews killed in the Chabad House—a fact never reported by The Times), Hoyt quoted several reporters and editors making extraordinary admissions that shed some light on the newspaper’s most recent dispatches from Gaza.
The next installment should be on Hezbollah’s eHarmony-style dating service for those terrorists too shy to walk up to a female mujahid and ask her if she likes his AK-47.
Addressing the general guidelines for using the T-word, Ethan Bronner, the Jerusalem bureau chief, said, “Our general view is that the word terrorist is politically loaded and overused.” But he said that sometimes, “when a person’s act has been examined and its intent and result clearly understood, we call him a terrorist.” (Never mind that Lashkar e-Taiba, the group behind the Mumbai attacks, has committed hundreds of terrorist attacks since 1996. How much more “studying” needs to be done?)
As for Hamas, the organization that controls Gaza, it has been sponsoring suicide bombers and launching rockets into Israel since 1987, killing and wounding thousands of Israelis (and Americans). But The Times has refused to call it a terrorist group because, according to deputy news editor Phil Corbett, the paper does not want to get into a situation where it might label a worker at a Hamas hospital a terrorist. So instead, it has given a blanket amnesty to all of Hamas—including its Izz ad-Din al-Qassam military wing, which openly claims responsibility for carrying out terrorist atrocities.
This is a familiar ruse by Islamic terrorist groups (including the nonprofit Islamic charities in the United States, which were shut down after 9/11): create humanitarian branches to distract from the true nature of their organizations. But has Ethan Bronner ever stepped inside one of these Hamas hospitals or schools? I have, several years ago, in Gaza, where I saw murals on the wall of Palestinians stabbing Israelis to death.
In the stories filed this past week, Gaza-based Times reporter Taghreed El-Khodary has also fallen for another classic tactic of terrorist groups: embedding their fighters and facilities in residential areas to incur more civilian casualties. El-Khodary’s dispatches have decried the “shocking” nature of the Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians, sidestepping the fact that Hamas purposely locates its infrastructure among civilians—in effect holding them hostage.
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You know, this title of "terrorists" does begin to wear very thin...why is someone a terrorist just because they choose to defend people in their own country!!!!
I don't hear anyone calling Israel "terrorists" in what they are doing and they are doing a darn sight worse...invading Gaza and stopping media getting in..where is the justice in all this?
It is shameful that our Govt condone these barbaric attacks and occupation of the Palestinian people by Israel...the world is outraged and we should be too..
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Cajola is a perfect example of the ignorance exploited by Hamas and others. Israel left Gaza in 2005. What did the terror groups do? Instead of buiilding their own prosperous and peaceful mini-state they spent all their efforts on building tunnels for weapons, smuggling in tons and tons of munitions and building rockets to start a war - aiming thousands of rockets indiscriminately at Israeli citizens.What would Cajola do? The Israelis warned and warned they could not expose their people for ever to this random murder. The true barbarism is Hamas - terrrorists, get it? They hide among the civilian population. They want to exploit the propaganda value of dead Palestinians so that people like Cajola will, as usual blame it all on the Israelis. What passes for humanitarian concern is limited to nonJews.
The longer I read about the Israel/Palestine conflict, the more I become convinced of 2 things:
1) Most people who are knowledgeable about this conflict are biased towards one side or the other, and
2) This conflict will never end peacefully. Its very frustrating to see that in this little, discordant corner of the world is likely festering World War III, a possible nuclear holocaust, and the raw materials for the destruction of civilization, and we as the spectators can do little to curb its inevitable trajectory.
What unmitigated crap. Hamas is not a 'terrorist' outfit. It is a grassroots political organisation that has university professors, doctors etc among its members. If Israel really wants a settlement it will end the seige of Gaza, which has lasted for years, and let its people breath. Then the rockets will certainly stop. But a vibrant, honest popular political party on its doorstep is, of course, far from what Israel wants.
what do you call an intentional attack on a properly identified U.N. school serving as shelter for civilians? humanitarian relief? come on.
Again, we all must ask the oft forgotten question, who's supplying the weapons? Frequently the answer to this question will help answer the bigger question. Although these 2 groups would be killing each other anyway and always will be. They just would be less efficient at it without the arms manufacturers of the US and Russia readily supplying them with the killing apparatus.
Teh NYt is parltly responsible for the recent dowbnfall of Israel, and uit has nothing to do with them supporting Hamas..The NYT is in fact a proxy Zionist paper.
they have supported Israel regardless, allowing them to annex another's land, and commit genocide among the Palestinian people. It's pretty simple. Look at teh masthead.
The idea taht they support Hamas is as dumb as the guy who wrote this article.
The thing is that the NYT suport for Israel has done them no good. Israel is on the brink of dissolution, an illogical biblical entity in a modern world.
If the Times had had more balanced coverage over the years, Isreal would not be decaptitating baby's in the streets.
Israel is the New Nazis, driven by the Old Testament, literally trying to wiope out the heathens. And my tax dollars support this?
Something tells me that Mr. Emerson has failed to read any Edward Said. I wonder, why is it the barbarities of Israel and US tactics have never been qualified as terrorism?
Isreal- "we need to blow up schools and decapitate children in the street for our security purposes."
Maybe Hitler was right. .
cajola: What Israel refused to do was to wait until one of Hamas' rockets hit a school ( as it did yesterday) and killed a large number of children to attack.
Look at the tunnels that Hamas built to smuggle arms, rockets, grenades etc. If they cared about their people, why didnt they use those tunnels to bring in food & medicine for the people? Israelis had built a series of sophisticated farms in gaza that was immensely successful. It left these farms, buildings and homes intact when it left Gaza. Hamas destroyed all of it rather than allow the arabs in Gaza a place to live and work. Check it out for yourself.
This is my definition of a terrorist.
robertell: While both sides have plenty of fault, nothing sways my opinion more in Israel's direction than when knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers pull out whoppers like "Maybe Hitler was right."
There's no such thing as a "terrorist". One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. A terrorist act is labeled so only if the people who perpetrate it have incompetent publicists and or bad aim.
Jews wanted that land and they won. Now it just remains to settle things up with the survivors.
The model for all this is how the US dealt with the American Indians.
Bottom line: Gaza and the West Bank should become casinos.
There. Problem solved!
Just like the US did with the natives in the 1800's. Eventually we'll all feel much better about it in the next century. There will be movies made a
Thank you for calling out the Times on its bad behavior. The Times likes to "bend over backwards," contorting itself to deflect or head off criticism. They bent over backwards to lend comfort to the Bush administration. They bend over backwards to prove that they are not the "liberal press" they are accused of being. And they have been bending over backwards (maybe forwards, too) in favor of Islam since, oh, about 9/12/01. Odd, isn't it?
loebster-
typical Jewish thinking.....
you support Isreal because I'm pissed at them for being genocidal and threatening my children with their Biblical land grab? Isreal has no right to exist. They are the new Nazis.
we wiped out the Nazi's, it time to wipe out Isreal.
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Seems to me that Hamas thrives on Jihad more than anything else, like civility. Even if Israel is totally wrong and always has been, Hamas could stand to learn some lessons from Martin Luther King, Jr. By completely and permanently trading in terrorism for peaceful, civic disobedience, they would win the hearts and minds of the world. Israel would be forced, and I believe willing to open all their doors and land to the Palestinians. Unfortunately, like I said before, Hamas seems to thrive on violence and incapable of reason.
'Israelis had built a series of sophisticated farms in gaza that was immensely successful. It left these farms, buildings and homes intact when it left Gaza'
and there you have it. Israel was building farms on another's man's land.
what would you do if your neighbor came over and annexed your land? Cuz his Bible said to. In fact, it said that you should be killed for worshiping wrong. The Holy Bible. A bloody screed.
get teh NYTimes today. There is a picture of three dead Arab babies. Yahweh says they should be dead. I say Israel has no right to exist.
You pick, the new nazi's, or the freedom fighters.
robertell: I don't believe for a second that you pay taxes. How could someone with your lack of understanding of basic grammar, spelling, logic, or reality possibly earn a paycheck?
Dear Steve:
What do you want the Times to do?
Say this, every time it mentions Hamas:
"Hamas, whose charter says that Israel shall exist until Islam destroys it, and in whose territory no Jews are allowed to live"
and this, every time it mentions Israel:
"Israel, whose constitution guarantees full citizenship to its Arab population, and where Arabs serve in the Knesset."
Yes. The NYTimes is biased and its reputation has eroded to the point where anyone reading it for content is, well, innocent. Hamas is a terror organization--professionals at terror not at building a state-- men who have taken Gaza as hostage to wage war on Israel for reasons too involved to go into here. marcyhdg and johnnorth above are absolutely right--reread their post. And by the way pangloss, Israelis are not German Jews. The majority is made up of Jews expelled from Arab lands who had been living a precarious existence under Muslim dhimmi laws before and after 1948, that is before the Jews organized themselves and returned to the land of their ancestors. The large majority of Jews in Israel today are Sephardic Jews.
Why does every other news organization, including this website, love Israel and treat them as some perfect entity? Hamas isn't perfect, and is classified as "terrorist" by the common definition, but constantly portraying it as nothing short of Al Qaeda Part Deux doesn't sit right.
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