The New York Times has perfected the art of downplaying or outright ignoring Palestinian Arab incitement and the glorification of violence. The Times ignores the celebrations at the funerals of Palestinian Arab murderers, and the public squares named after them. The Times ignores the ongoing incitement documented by Palestinian Media Watch and MEMRI. In September, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that “Every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem is pure, every shahid [martyr] will reach paradise, and every injured person will be rewarded by God. . . . The Al-Aqsa Mosque is ours. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is ours as well. They have no right to desecrate the mosque with their dirty feet, we won’t allow them to do that.” The Times ran the headline “Amid Jerusalem Clashes, Israeli and Palestinian Leaders Try to Make Their Case,” and omitted from his quote the language about blood and martyrs.
But when I saw this morning’s headline, “A Window Into the West Bank’s ‘Wildest, Most Violent’ Areas,” I thought that perhaps the Times for once was showing the truth about Palestinian incitement.
Boy was that dumb!
According to the Times, the West Bank’s “wildest, most violent areas” do not include Nabi Saleh, the home of the Tamimi family Pallywood stars and professional agitators. Nor do they include the hideouts of newest Iranian-backed jihadis Harakat al-Sabireen. Or the small towns like Qabatiya, from which multiple assailants come. No, according to the Times, the West Bank’s most violent areas are those where the hilltop youth live.
With antisemitism on the rise, the Times chooses to consistently ignore, downplay or rationalize Arab extremism and violence directed at Israeli Jews while highlighting the Jewish radical fringe. This is clear, unequivocal bias, and the Times is complicit in the increase in antisemitism we are seeing in both the Democratic and the Republican parties, as well as on college campuses around the country. Of course, this is nothing new for this paper.
