مايو: نيويورك تايمز تراجع تاريخ الصهيونية، هيئة تحرير صحيفة وول ستريت جورنال تشيد بالإبادة الجماعية

Editor's Note: This article is part of the Press on Palestine series, an initiative by Palestine Square. It includes selections from May 2024. Press on Palestine highlights bias in mainstream American reporting on Palestinian and Arab-Israeli affairs.

1. The Washington Post, May 3, 2024 
What is Zionism? The movement college protesters oppose, explained. By Michelle Boorstein and Annie Gowen

The premise of this article is fundamentally flawed, casting doubt on the meaning of Zionism and thus fueling the trope that the Israeli Occupation of Palestine is a ‘complex’ issue. This is not an explainer. It’s rather presented as a survey of ‘opinions’ on what the word means, leaning heavily toward the anti-Palestinian ‘opinion.’ The reporters present Zionism, an ideology that has driven the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians for 76 years, as a word that simply means different things for different people. This presentation deflates the very brutal impact of Zionism and its defenders against the native Palestinian people. 

The article begins with a deliberately obtuse understanding of the term Zionist, citing Jewish leaders and students who allege the term is a moniker for Jew. In the first few lines it attributes these students and leaders’ understanding of Zionism as opposition to Israel because “it has a Jewish character.” This is not challenged right away but is left sitting with the reader for several paragraphs before a member of the pro-Palestine movement names Israel’s aggression. And, even if such an individual wasn’t interviewed to clear the false accusation — no attributions are needed to identify the crimes of a regime or military against innocent people, especially within the timeframe of this article's publication during the genocide in Gaza. 

This trope of conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism continues, with more quotes claiming hatred for Jews because they believe in Zionism. The Washington Post fails to intervene or make a distinction between the religion and the political ideology. Especially as, for example, the Christian Zionist movement in the U.S. continues to finance illegal settlements in the West Bank. Instead, every time a quote by a Palestinian or a pro-Palestine source appears, it is immediately followed by a quote from one Israeli source who denies it.

The authors introduce Herzl and the partition of Palestine, framing it ahistorically, presenting the Occupation of Palestine as a direct consequence of the Holocaust of Jews and other marginalized groups in Europe. The Balfour Declaration in which Britain promised Palestine as a Jewish national home, and is considered one of the most influential political documents of the 20th century is strikingly absent from the reporters 'explanation of how Israel came to be. A lazy neglect of history, or perhaps, an omission. The Balfour Declaration also precedes the Holocaust. 

In their scurried attempt to gloss over the history of Israel’s creation, the newspaper commits to painting Arabs as ‘bad’ actors.

First, they explain how Jews of Europe escaped Hitler’s reign by immigrating to Palestine “causing clashes with Arabs,” later they write “Israel declared itself a state, kicking off an attack by multiple Arab nations.” It seems to the Washington Post, that the Arabs are violent, their resistance unwarranted, and unjustified. Worse still, the article quotes an Israeli source claiming that the expulsion of the Palestinians was an “anti-colonialist movement” to grant “self-determination to the natives who were banished from this land many years ago.” An absurd statement left unchallenged, and rather contradicts the reporters' initial introduction of “Jewish immigration” supposedly causing clashes with “Arabs there.” Keyword: there. 

If the paper’s goal was indeed to depict the situation in Palestine as ‘complex,’ they’ve somewhat succeeded, except they’ve presented it as ‘confusing’ and ‘contradictory,’ finding a way to rewrite history by omitting it or quickly countering it when brought up by credible sources they sought.  

2. The Wall Street Journal, May 6, 2024 
Why Israel Must Take Rafah By The Editorial Board 

The subheading of the article describes Rafah as “the last sanctuary for Hamas’s military battalions in Gaza,” a false claim that rationalizes the Israeli military’s onslaught on an area they defined as a “safe zone” for displaced Palestinians. 

The opening paragraph defines the indiscriminate carpet bombing of Rafah as an “essential part of Israel’s war of self-defense against Hamas.” The language throughout only reveals further bias that is rooted in a profoundly anti-Palestinian perspective. Claiming Hamas has “dragged out” ceasefire negotiations, even when Netanyahu is on record disregarding them can only be understood as a deliberate sabotage of any possible negotiation. They claim that Biden has “shielded their stronghold” when any of the slim protections once offered to people in Rafah was because it was meant to be a “safe zone” people could evacuate to. 

The piece is riddled with unsupported claims of Hamas using “human shields,” and alleges UNRWA’s anti-Israel ideology “jeopardizes Palestinian safety.” This all comes down to a clear bias that offers readers a version of reality that erases the culprit of Palestinian suffering, the ongoing Israeli occupation. While maligning the entire city of Rafah as a “crucial city for the terrorist group’s future.” Justifying whatever terror Israel would then subject the people living and displaced there to.

Like in other editorials published by the paper, the sentiment is clear. The editors of the paper drop the burden of morality and ethical journalism and call for the mass murder of the Palestinians, enthusiastically and consistently. 

3. The New York Times, May 16, 2024 
The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel By Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti

In May, these were the headlines published by The New York Times: Fighting Flares Anew in Gaza as Hamas Regroups and Isolated and Defiant, Israel Vows to ‘Stand Alone’ in War on Hamas. These are some examples of how the media organization emphasizes Hamas’ influence to minimize Israel’s war crimes; maintaining the myth that Israel is simply after Hamas, and not all of Palestine. 

As a “liberal” outlet, The New York Times also does this by depicting settler violence as “extreme” and out of the ordinary for Israeli society. This deliberately obscures the role of settlers within the Occupation, and the consistent support they receive to carry out attacks and pogroms on Palestinians throughout the West Bank. By creating this distance, the authors attempt to isolate settlers as extremists and religious zealots, when in fact they receive the support of Israel’s military, government, and even lobby groups from the United States. Settlers are not simply a fringe group that “has been allowed to operate with impunity and gradually move from the fringes to the mainstream of Israeli society.”  They are a critical part of Israel’s society and body politic, they are Israel, as proven time and time again in the calls made by settler leaders like Smotrich to annihilate Gaza or in the scenes of Israeli soldiers protecting settlers as they commit pogroms in the West Bank.