A Masterclass in Journalistic Deception
The lies about Israel from the mainstream press have gone into overdrive since October 7; a new piece in the New York Times exemplifies this despicable trend.
Since the war in Gaza began after the terrorist atrocities of October 7, the Western media has been egregiously bad at covering the conflict. It has deliberately overlooked its root causes – 75 years of Palestinian intransigence and support for violent terrorism – while blaming Israel for the predicament in Gaza, despite the fact that no Jew has lived there since Israel forcibly evacuated its citizens in 2005. Press outlets from the BBC and the New York Times to the Washington Post and Al Jazeera have chronically blamed Israel for mass civilian deaths without interrogating the reality of Hamas’s use of human shields. We have seen pro-Hamas rallies rife with antisemitism and disruptive tactics excused as mere trifles, while every potentially-inflammatory statement by Israeli politicians or civilians is presented as the official policy of the Israeli government. Israel and its allies are warned against widening the conflict, while Iran and its proxies – the groups actually broadening the fighting – are seen as actors lacking entirely in agency. Israel is accused of morally repugnant actions up to and including the disgusting genocide smear, but Palestinian genocidal ideology is ignored entirely.
And now, the New York Times has one-upped much of this horrible coverage with a masterclass in journalistic deception and malicious framing. The article could be used to teach a course in how the media lies, dissembles, and misinforms, especially around this topic in particular. So, let’s start up today’s session of Anti-Journalism 101.
The Times news article was posted under the Global Health topic and titled “Looming Starvation in Gaza Shows Resurgence of Civilian Sieges in Warfare.” It describes the growth of famine-like conditions in Gaza, blaming them entirely on Israel and outright accusing the Jewish state of a deliberate policy of starving Palestinian civilians. The biggest problem with the piece is that these allegations are total nonsense. And the author does everything she can to avoid describing that reality. In that way, this ‘news’ article is closer to an opinion piece. Even then, however, the issues with the article should be disqualifying for publication at the so-called Paper of Record.
The problems start at, well, the start. The headline itself describes Israel’s war in Gaza as a “civilian siege,” but fails to mention the fact that the civilians are being held in place for besiegement by Hamas and refused temporary accommodation in all Arab nations. Not only that, the supposedly besieging power, Israel, is allowing – nay, facilitating and providing – humanitarian aid to Gazan civilians. As someone who has long studied military history, this is quite uncommonly kind behavior for a belligerent during war! The headline is followed by a problematic subhead, which reads: “A U.N.-affiliated panel said the territory could tip into famine very soon.” What’s wrong with this? Well, the fact that this entire piece is based on a “UN-affiliated panel” makes it deeply suspect; as I’ve written before, the UN is a dumpster fire of antisemitism and has been for decades. I doubt they’d be unbiased here.
Now let’s delve into the actual article, shall we?
You don’t need to read very far to get to the first instance of blatant journalistic sleight of hand, as it comes in the initial sentence. It reads: “The number of people facing possible starvation in the Gaza Strip in the coming weeks is the largest share of a population at risk of famine identified anywhere since a United Nations-affiliated panel created the current global food-insecurity assessment 20 years ago.” There are several issues here. The most obvious is that this is entirely about “possible starvation” and “risk of famine,” not actual famine or starvation. At the same time, the magnitude of the hunger in Gaza is not about raw numbers, but instead “the largest share of a population at risk of famine.” This description is meant to hide the fact that the raw numbers pale in comparison to other such events. It is also not all that useful. To see how, let’s use a more relatable example. If I were to forget to feed my dog her breakfast, 100% of our household pets would be “at risk of famine.” Of course, her dinner would solve this problem, but it sure looks bad at 4pm!
The next few paragraphs are even more absurd. They describe the situational context in Gaza thusly:
After Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Israel responded with air and ground assaults and a sealing of the territory, which have left the 2.2 million people who live there deprived of sufficient food, water and supplies. The U.N. has concluded that without significant intervention, Gaza could reach the level of famine as soon as early February.
Limited amounts of food and other aid are entering Gaza from Israel and Egypt at border points with rigorous inspections; the ongoing bombardment and ground fighting make distribution of that aid extremely difficult.
Notice how the barbaric events of October 7 – which, recall, included the torture, rape, kidnapping, maiming, and murder of thousands of innocent Israeli civilians – are cast as a mere “surprise attack on Israel.” At the same time, Israel’s military response to said atrocities is described as “air and ground assaults and a sealing of the territory” which has deprived millions of necessities for survival. Without any other context, which of these sounds worse to you? Also fascinating is the failure to explain why there are rigorous inspections of aid deliveries – hint: they have often been used to smuggle in weaponry for Hamas – and to ascribe the “ongoing bombardment and ground fighting” to the terrorists who refuse to surrender their arms and hostages.
The piece goes on to compare the situation in Gaza to other recent conflict-related humanitarian disasters in Syria, Yemen, and Ethiopia’s Tigray region (failing to mention the similar catastrophes in Sudan and Myanmar, oddly enough). According to “experts” – a dead giveaway for handpicked academics who invariably support the thesis of the piece – “Gaza is unique … because the people who live there are sealed in the territory with no recourse to seek food elsewhere.” This is not at all a unique Gazan situation. Do the author and her experts truly believe that Tigrayans and Yemenis can just up and leave to find food in some nebulous “elsewhere?” Generally, people trapped by such awful war-related crises cannot simply remove themselves from the situation; if they could, none of these problems would exist. It is similarly bizarre that the author fails to acknowledge the fact that the Arab nations which ostensibly support the Palestinian cause are refusing to accommodate Gazan refugees at all. In fact, Egypt has fortified its border with Gaza to prevent such temporary humanitarian transfers. Unless they are promoting a specific anti-Israel narrative, why would a journalist ignore this critical fact?
A few paragraphs later comes one of the most dishonest faulty comparisons I’ve seen in a news article. Here are the offending passages:
The World Food Program said that before the war, about 500 trucks a day carried supplies including food to Gaza, which has been under a partial blockade by Israel and Egypt since Hamas took control there in 2007. Last week, the organization said an average of 127 trucks were permitted to cross the main Israeli checkpoint each day. Distributing that limited aid is nearly impossible because of the destruction of communications, shortages in fuel and ongoing Israeli bombardment, the World Food Program and other agencies say.
“Our staff does not feel safe distributing, and people don’t feel safe going to the distributions,” Shaza Moghraby, a spokeswoman for the program, said. “They are lining up for food praying not to be bombed.”
The handful of entry points operate intermittently because of bombing, Ms. Moghraby said, and the Israeli military’s inspection and bureaucratic process means that only a limited number of aid deliveries are cleared each day.
Do you see the flawed comparison here? Look at how the before and after numbers are calculated and described. The “500 trucks a day” figure from before the conflict counts all supplies entering Gaza, while the reduced “127 trucks” figure relates only to supplies passing “the main Israeli checkpoint.” We have no idea how many of the 500 trucks were passing through that particular checkpoint before the war, nor are we told how many are entering Gaza altogether now. This is a purposeful choice to falsely compare apples to oranges – a classic violation of professional ethics.
And with regards to the excuses given by the World Food Program employees – not feeling “safe” distributing aid in a warzone – I would have to ask what in the world they were expecting to deal with when they signed up to render humanitarian assistance in dire situations like war. If the WFP folks felt “safe,” they wouldn’t be needed in the first place. Again, we see blame cast on “the Israeli military’s inspection and bureaucratic process” without any attempt at explaining why those processes are necessary. By studiously avoiding this topic, the author presents – falsely, of course – the Israeli inspections as unnecessary and meant to exacerbate conditions in Gaza.
The quotes in the piece from “experts” in the field show an unbelievable level of anti-Israel bias, but are presented as entirely neutral and above any suspicion. One such academic expert is the Irish professor Cormac Ó Gráda, who outright gives the game away with his contributions to this piece. (And don’t get me started on the long history of Irish antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment.) Ó Gráda states that the official use of the “F-word,” famine, will hopefully “spur significant intervention” to force Israel to halt its justified retaliation against Hamas in Gaza. He makes the plan to tar Israel as a human rights abuser and deliberate withholder of food as clear as day, saying:
If a famine happens, somebody is to blame — and if you can get some international body, which is seen as scientific and objective, admitting that there is a famine, then it is very, very serious for the people who are seen to have caused the famine. So the Israelis certainly would not want the U.N. or somebody like the U.N. to declare that there is a famine in Gaza.
This is about as straightforward a quote as you can get. In it, we see a transparent attempt at laundering a version of the genocide smear through “some international body, which is seen as scientific and objective,” causing repercussions for “the people who are seen to have caused the famine.” That a respected academic is pushing such obvious anti-Israel propaganda is an indictment of the academy as a whole. The final sentence here even reads like a veiled threat; basically, “if you don’t want to be seen as akin to the Nazis, you need to allow Hamas to thrive in Gaza.”
Another academic quoted later in the piece, Rhoda Howard-Hassmann, argued that “famine is normally caused by people, by the decisions of political elites,” and claimed that “reports from Gaza suggest a deliberate decision in Israel to restrict food.” None of these supposed Gazan reports are interrogated as to their accuracy – recall the unquestioned parroting of Gaza Health Ministry (read: Hamas) casualty statistics throughout the war – nor are the political elites in Hamas, most of whom live cushy lives as billionaires in Qatar, blamed for their decisions. In what may be the greatest on-record quote in living memory, Howard-Hassmann states:
“It’s a political decision or it’s a military decision,” she said, but added, “I’m prepared to accept that possibly there are other factors involved, such as Hamas corruption, Hamas diverting food and so on.”
Oh, is the high-and-mighty professorial arbiter of international human rights “prepared to accept” the widely-documented reality of Hamas perfidy? How magnanimous of her! I’m sure the Israelis she just accused of willful mass starvation will feel so much better that she mentioned “other factors” like Hamas’s decades-long theft of humanitarian aid. What a grand gesture. (I hope you can feel my eyes rolling through your screen.)
By the way, that is the only mention of Hamas stealing humanitarian aid in the entire piece. And it comes in the twenty-fifth paragraph. I’ll repeat that: the lone reference to Hamas redirection of international aid, meant as a throwaway line, does not come up until the TWENTY-FIFTH PARAGRAPH. Talk about burying the lede!
This obnoxious, misleading, hot mess of an article ends on the same anti-Israel theme that it has repeated for thousands of words. In discussing how Israel can be held accountable for this nonexistent famine, the author argues that current international institutions have failed to appropriately punish prior atrocities. Thankfully, she says, “International justice organizations can gather evidence from Gaza now for consideration in a potential prosecution later, when international institutions are more functional.” It is quite interesting that her definition of “functional” revolves solely around the ability and choice to push a clearly antisemitic blood libel against the world’s lone Jewish state. I say it is interesting because if that’s her criterion, today’s crop of international institutions seems to be quite functional indeed!
From the start of this abhorrent and idiotic ‘news’ article through its belated conclusion, the unashamed, barefaced anti-Israel sentiment just leaps off the page. The author never misses an opportunity to mislead, decontextualize, lie by omission and commission, or ignore contrary evidence. In this, the piece is a masterclass in journalistic malpractice. It’s a crying shame that such a dereliction of professional duty and ethics – not to mention rank anti-Israel bias – is now par for the course in the world’s leading media outlets. Let the reader understand and adjust his perception accordingly.
Class dismissed.