The New York Times Plays Cop of the Internet

 As we and others have shown, the New York Times is not always a dependable news source. Yet the NYT's editors believe they are worthy of helping to police the Internet and it seems that the NYT has singled out certain statements or affirmations as being lies a priori, without investigation. Here is one such lie on the NYT's part that it would have the reader believe are a rejection of others' lies:

And there is no evidence that an "overwhelming amount of fraud" tipped Pennsylvania in 2020  [toward Biden instead of Trump] . . . .  [NYTimes 5 November 2022 --NYT Int'l ed; 8 November 2022; p 8]

Well, Rudolph Giuliani, who was highly respected as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York [chief federal prosecutor for NewYork City and surroundings] and later as a two-term  mayor of New York City, produced eyewitnesses who testified on Fox TV that they had observed election irregularities in Philadelphia, the largest city in Pennsylvania. These people had been Republican election observers and complained of being kept away from the actual counting  by officials working for the city and county of Philadelphia run by a Democratic mayor and other Democrats. Of course, even eyewitnesses can be cross examined and their testimony can be judged. But that requires an impartial investigation. Until there is a proper investigation and the witnesses can testify in court, the NYT has no call to claim "no evidence." 

Meanwhile, there is significant circumstantial evidence pointing to massive voting fraud in Pennsylvania [not only in Philadelphia] in the 2020 presidential election. But before bringing out that evidence, let us quote what the NYT article quoted above writes admitting its efforts to help police the Internet in favor of its own partisan cause in which opposing arguments are called "lies," "falsehoods" having "no evidence" to support them.

Youtube said it had removed a number of videos that The New York Times had flagged for violating its policies on spam and election integrity and it had determined that other content did not violate its policies. [emph. added; NYT 5 November 2022-- NYT Int'l ed; 8 November 2022; p8]

Flagged here means identified and pointed out to others, in  this case to Youtube. The sentence above is the NYT's admission, or perhaps modest boast, that it takes part in policing the Internet.

The circumstantial evidence relating to Pennsylvania is that on the evening of 3 November 2020, after the polls had closed, President Trump was reported as having a lead of more than 600,000 in that state. Now, Pennsylvania had 9,090,962 certified registered [eligible] voters for the presidential election of 2020, with a turnout of 76,5%, adding up to 6,553,695 actual voters [according to official statistics, not necessarily reliable]. So more than 600,000 is no small or narrow margin for a state with a population of 13,002,700 and approximately 6,553,000 actual  voters. Trump's leading margin over Biden on the night of election day was nearly 10% of  actual voters [by official numbers]. That is, nearly 10% of the perhaps fraudulently inflated "final count." And would have been significantly more than 10% of the count on election day after the polls closed.  Yet in a few days of counting newly found mail-in ballots [and the like], the president's margin had been outnumbered by pro-Biden ballots whereas one would think that many of the ballots that came in or were newly found after election day would have gone to Trump and that even if his lead would had been whittled down, he would have remained in the lead with enough votes to win. 

By the way, it was reported on Fox [Evil Fox, we are to believe] a truck carrying Pennsylvania ballots set out from the New York city area and went to Harrisburg [the state capital of PA] and to the city of Lancaster. But somehow that ballots that the truck was carrying were not accepted in either city. All very peculiar. 

Now, there is also circumstantial evidence involving the country as a whole. The vote for the House of Representatives in a presidential election year almost always favors the party of the newly elected president, when the newly elected president is not the incumbent but new to the office of president. Yet in 2020, the newly elected president's party, Biden's party, lost seats to the Republicans. 

A midterm election usually favors the party out of power [that is, the party not occupying the White House]. For example, the Republicans won the 1994 midterm election when Democrat Clinton was president. The Republicans again won a majority in  the House of Representatives in 2010, the midterm elections of Obama's first term. Following the rule, the Democrats won a majority in the midterm elections of Donald Trump's presidency in 2018.

Nevertheless, in the 2020 presidential  election year, Biden's Democrats lost seats in the House. They went from 235 seats in the 2018 midterm election to 222 in the 2020 presidential election year, when  their candidate for president, Biden, presumably won election for president. Yet going by the traditional pattern of elections to the House in years when somebody new becomes president, his party gets a majority in the House of Representatives. So the 2020 anomaly suggests that there may have been much more fraud in the presidential election than in the elections for the House which elect 435 representatives in 435 congressional districts. This anomaly and others suggest the possibility or likelihood of widespread fraud in the presidential election. And for those not familiar with the United States, election fraud has a long history there. Chicago, ruled for many years by the Richard Daley Democratic Party machine, was especially notorious for voting fraud. Indeed, the Daley machine was accused of "voting the cemeteries." Why voting fraud could not also take place in Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Phoenix [Arizona] and so on, is a mystery to me. Yet the NY Times denies an "overwhelming amount of fraud" in the 2020 presidential elections in Pennsylvania. Isn't it comforting to know that the New York Times is policing the Internet to protect us from fake news?

Does the New York Times Make Things Up?

 This blog was the first or one of the few blogs and news outlets that pointed out that the "august" and "respected" NY Times had put a false quote in the mouth of the Pope. The NYT article, supposedly reporting on Mahmud Abbas' visit to Pope Francis in the Vatican, had quoted Francis as calling Abbas "an angel of peace." That did not sound right. So I went into some Italian news sites, La Stampa [which covers the Vatican extensively] and others, and I saw that Francis had said [in Italian, the regular language of the Vatican] to Abbas that "You might be" [or "You could be" -- "Lei possa essere"] an angel of peace if he made peace with Israel. The words are not the same, so how could the NYT journalist have made such a mistake?

Be that as it may, I got the same feeling when reading an article about the reaction of Chinese business men to the recent Chinese Communist Party congress where Xi Jinping had reinforced his control of the Party and the country. This NYT journo claimed that after Xi's speech at the Congress, "the founder of an asset management firm in . . . Shenzhen .. . contacted me hours after the congress ended," saying, "My last,  lingering hope was dashed"

The journo, Li Yuan, went on in the same vein. A "tech entrepreneur in Beijing texted me" that the new situation was "absolutely terrifying," And "China's stocks plunged, and its currency, the renminbi, fell in value. I am hearing it ['political depression'] in the voices and messages of the many businesspeople I  have spoken to in recent weeks . . ."

The present political and public atmosphere in China may be as described but why does there seem to be something phoney here? 

China is reputed to be a police state. And a friend who often goes to China on business told me and others that the government of China is relentless and cruel when it wants to obtain some end. Now in such a situation, such a repressive atmosphere, would Chinese businessmen  knowingly contact a NY Times journalist to complain about their own government? Would they not be suspicious that their phones may be tapped? At this point, I would add that wiretapping goes on in many countries, including in the West and in the United States, among Western states. So if they fear their own powers that be, would not well informed Chinese be all the more wary of contacting precisely a journalist for the NY Times which is notorious for being the house organ of the American Establishment, also given that the USA is widely considered an adversary of China?

Hence I doubt that Mr Li Yuan got the quotes that he relays or reports or alleges in the way that he says he did. 

Indeed, towards the end of the article, the NYT journo confirms that Chinese business people are wary of electronic eavesdropping performed by their own government against them. Li Yuan writes: "At social gatherings, hosts are asking friends to surrender their phones [mobile phones in this case] to be kept in a separate place for fear of surveillance." These Chinese business people are afraid of electronic surveillance. They fear that the Chinese authorities might learn how they really feel and think. Or these Chinese authorities might see their frank conversations as conspiracy. Therefore, these people would be most unlikely to simply contact an NYT journo to complain about conditions in their country. Hence Li Yuan indirectly confirms my suspicions that the quotes are made up or came to him in ways other than the ways he claims they reached him. Or perhaps he altered and improved quotes that he received in ways other than what he claims. Or maybe the quotes are wholly made up. In the case of any of these possibilities, this NYT journo makes things up and the NYT publishes them.

[Quotes come from New York Times, "China's Business Elite See the Country that Let Them Thrive Slipping Away," 7 November 2022; "Chinese Business Leaders see country slipping away," NY Times Int'l edition, 10 November 2022, p 9; emphases added]

What Does the New York Times Have in Common with the Pittsburgh & San Diego Murderers?

The offensive cartoon by Antonio Moreira Antunes that the New York Times published last week in its international edition [not in the US edition. I wonder why.] showed a blind President Trump wearing a Jewish skull cap being led around by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, depicted as a guide dog for the blind. The dog wears a collar with a magen David [shield of David] on it. The meaning here is that Netanyahu and/or the State of Israel control American policy.

The Pittsburgh and San Diego murderers, Robert Bowers and John Earnest respectively, both believe or claim that Israel/Jews control the US through Trump. The same message as the cartoon in the NYTimes.

The claim of Jewish control of the US government has long been a theme of neo-Nazis in the United States. They commonly used the abbreviation ZOG, standing for "Zionist occupied government." A similar theme was also found in the notorious forgery and plagiarism produced by the Russian tsarist secret police, the Okhrana, called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Protocols argue that a secret Jewish conspiracy dominates the world, incites wars and all sorts of grave social ills and mass suffering. Considering that most presidents have been hostile to Israel or worked to thwart Israeli policy, such as Obama, this argument is ridiculous. By the way, in the usual practice of politicians to make promises that they cannot or have no intention of keeping, some of the presidents have spoken warmly about Israel. Were they sincere or not, we cannot say since nobody has a sincerometer to measure sincerity. But the ZOG argument is ridiculous. Also consider that President Franklin D Roosevelt --a hero to American Liberals and progressives to this day-- tried hard not to rescue Jews from Hitler's genocide or save Jews or destroy the gas chambers with air power, which was possible by 1943 when American forces were already in Sicily and were bombing areas in Poland near Auschwitz (Oswiecim) -- but not bombing the Auschwitz death camp or the railroad tracks leading up to it.

The theme of Jewish control --or Israeli control in the up to date version-- of the world also popped out of the typing hands of US Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, in her effort on  Twitter several years ago: Israel has hypnotized the world. In Omar's case she was injecting alleged Jewish magic into the discussion. After all, hypnotizing the world could only be done through magic, and hypnotism is perceived as a form of magic. Her claim that American support for Israel is purchased by Benjamins [$100 dollar bills with a picture of Benjamin Franklin] is an insult to both Jews and US congressmen and women. It is saying that Jews control the US Congress and presidents through payments of money, as if there are no good arguments for Americans and their congressmen to support Israel. It says too that the congressmen and presidents can simply be bought by money. Lastly, it endorses the ZOG claim that Jews and/or Israel control US policy. If money could buy everybody in Congress or the White House, then the US would have been supporting the Arab cause since long ago. After all, the money stored up by Qatar [a slave state] and other oil-rich Arab sheikdoms and kingdoms --money probably exceeding Jewish wealth-- would have been able to buy Congress and presidents with ease. Of course, Arab states have been able to hire various US politicians and former State Department and CIA officials. Saudi Arabia, for instance, hired several who had retired from State or the CIA. And the two Bush administrations were noted for their concern with the needs of the Saudis and the palestinian Arabs and Kuwait and so on. But that did not mean Arab control of Washington. So the ZOG claim is ridiculous whether it comes from neo-Nazis, Alt-Right bigots or  Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Now this belief or insinuation or claim that Jews control the world or only the USA also turned up in the rants of the Pittsburgh and San Diego murderers who attacked synagogues, shooting congregants at prayer services. Seth Frantzman has conveniently brought together the rants of Robert Bowers and John Earnest in an article for the Jerusalem Post [JPost 28 April 2019].

Frantzman wrote:
The antisemitic links between the two attacks are clear. Both expressed hatred of Jews, who they accused of destroying or invading the United States. Bowers accused Jews and Jewish groups, such as the non-partisan refugee protection organization HIAS, of being behind “migrant caravans” whom he calls “invaders.” The Poway attacker asked: “Is it worth it for me to live a comfortable life at the cost of international Jewry sealing the doom of my race?”

Frantzman's deduction is based on:

The alleged manifesto of the shooter behind the attack on the Chabad of Poway synagogue includes condemnation of US President Donald Trump. The letter, or manifesto, was posted on the popular US-based image board website 8chan. “That Zionist, Jew-loving, anti-White, traitorous [expletive],” John Earnest wrote in a version quoted online.
Similarly, Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers wrote on the mainly far-right website Gab that he opposed Trump, who he claimed was surrounded by Jews. “Trump is a globalist, not a nationalist.” He claimed that Jews, who he used an expletive to describe, were an “infestation” in the White House.

And he quotes more:

Bowers talked about a “Jewish international oligarchy” while Earnest wrote about “international Jewry.”

Here is Frantzman's conclusion:

there is a link between antisemitism on the far Right and anti-Trump views, a link that is also clear on the far Left. It tends to unite around hatred not only of Jews, but also of Israel and of beliefs that the US is controlled by Jews, who in turn are accused of controlling banks or the media

 Note that the two murderers also hate President Trump and believe or claim that he is controlled by Jews. Well, just what was the meaning of the offensive cartoon published by the NYTimes in its international edition? Was it not, among other things, that Trump is controlled by Jews? So here we have a convergence of the San Diego and Pittsburgh murderers with a cartoon published [later removed after widespread condemnation] by the NYT and with Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Muslim whose early education was in Somalia, a fanatic Muslim country which cannot live at peace with itself.

We can conclude that conventional notions of "Right" and "Left" and of a Left-Right spectrum fail to consider or understand or explain the significant convergence of Left and Right and Islamic Judeophobia. The New York Times is running with the rabid dogs infected with Judeophobic notions already standing out in the notorious Protocols, produced around 1900, and can certainly have helped to inspire the San Diego and Pittsburgh murders.
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See other Seth Frantzman articles on the NYT cartoon and the San Diego & Pittsburgh murders listed at this link: here.

Aryeh Stav  has studied Arab anti-Jewish and anti-Israel cartoons in a book and a pamphlet. The book was published in Hebrew with a subsequent English translation, plus a pamphlet in English.
(אריה סתיו, השלום - קריקטורה ערבית (תל אביב: זמורה ביטן  1996
Arieh Stav, Peace, The Arabian Caricature of Antisemitic Imagery (Jerusalem: Gefen Pubs. 1999)

Aryeh Stav, "Arab Antisemiism - After Peace" (Tel Aviv: The Center for Policy Research), Policy Paper 1. This pamphlet is an extensive summary of the book on caricatures listed above. Note that Stav's first name is spelled differently in different places.

How Dare They Deny that the NYT Is Fake News?

If anyone is not yet convinced that the NYT often and deliberately publishes fake news, false pictures of contemporary reality, pictures distorted and twisted beyond all recognition, might take a look at a recent article by  one Megan Specia on Israel. The NYT accuses President Trump of lying. The NYT was lying before Trump was born. With the Specia piece it descends to the level of a simplistic agitprop rag. It is entitled: "What to Know about Gaza's Latest Flare-up." Consider:

"Hamas and other armed groups responded with force, launching rockets and mortar shells into southern Israel. One Palestinian civilian was killed inside Israel on Monday and Israeli airstrikes killed at least seven Palestinians in Gaza on Monday and Tuesday."

The paragraph above makes it look as if Israeli military action had killed the man. He was actually living in the Jewish city of Ashkelon and had permits from the Israeli govt to work and live inside the Green Line, inside pre-1967 Israel [according to the JPost]. The sentence says that seven "palestinians" were killled by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza but we are not told how the Arab was killed "inside Israel". One might reasonably infer that it was Israeli military action that killed him. However, a rocket from Gaza killed him. Here the NYT uses the passive voice ["One Palestinian civilian was killed"] to becloud what happened 

Then there are these lines:

"The border fence, which critics say virtually turns Gaza into an open-air prison, has been a source of friction ever since. So have the blockades imposed by both Israel and Egypt since Hamas seized power 11 years ago."

The NYT scribbler insinuates that Israel is imprisoning Gazans. However, she should explicitly say that since Gaza is ruled by Hamas --"Hamas seized power 11 years ago"-- it is Hamas that is jailing the population there not Israel or Egypt [Both Israel & Egypt border on the Gaza Strip and have border crossings with it]. Hamas and allied pro-Iranian terrorist organizations such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad regularly harass Israelis living around the Gaza Strip perimeter, sending incendiary kites and bombs that have burned thousands of dunams of farmland and forest, forcing these people to stay inside and keep their children there or send them away from the area. These incendiary kites and bomb-carrying balloons plus grenades and attacks on the perimeter fence have been going on since the end of March of this year. Not only has land been burnt but farm equipment has been destroyed. Miraculously only one soldier has been killed at the fence over those long months and no civilians, although many have been injured. In the attack by some 460 rockets earlier this week, one civilian was killed on the Israeli side. Ironically he was an Arab.

Finally, the very title of the piece, "What to Know about Gaza's Latest Flare-up" , is very patronizing toward the reader. It really means what the NYT wants the reader to know or believe. Which may be false.
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Here is Ira Stoll's commentary on the latest NYT anti-Israel blood libel or would-be blood libel. You can be the judge. [added 1-1-2019]

The New York Times Lies by Commission & by Omission -- even about seemingly trivial things

Everybody knows that the NY Times often lies. But some may think that the NYT does this only by commission, by crude and blatant untruths. But it is easier to get away with a lie by omission  and it too can have a desired effect on public opinion, whereas much of the press/media usually aims to influence public opinion rather than to have intelligent, factual debates and discussions.

We all know that the Times hates Israel which was expressed a few years ago when the NYT falsely quoted Pope Francis calling Mahmoud Abbas [Abu Mazen] "an  angel of peace." Maybe they thought that they could get away with it but that did not occur. But here's a case of lying by omission and the Times was caught by Greer Faye Cashman, who writes a sort of society and diplomatic formality column for the Jerusalem Post [August 29, 2018]. The NYT published an article, a feel-good piece, about Spanish opera singer, Placido Domingo. He is now 77 and still performing [up to 120 years!!!]. The article outlined Domingo's life and career. Timesman Joshua Barone tells the reader that Domingo's parents took him from Spain to Mexico and it was there that he made his debut in Verdi's Rigoletto in 1959. But it skips from there to his performing with the New York Metropolitan Opera ten years later. The NY Times skips over the three years that he spent in Israel --1962-1965-- with the Israel National Opera in Tel Aviv in the decade before rising to the very prestigious New York Met Opera. Domingo must have liked working in Israel because he at first signed a six-month contract in 1962 but then extended his stay in Tel Aviv for two more years. None of that gets even a passing mention in the Times article, as Greer Faye Cashman complains.

She points out in her short item in the Jerusalem Post that Domingo himself has often mentioned his stay in Israel. ".. .  possibly not in Barone's hearing," she adds. Another link of Domingo to Israel was his being awarded the prestigious Wolf Prize here in 2012, the first vocal artist to be awarded that prize. Good for Ms Cashman for pointing out this subtle omission.

What seems to have gone on at the NYT was a deliberate attempt to avoid reporting something favorable about Israel in a feel-good story. Mustn't be nice to Israel, children!

The New York Times indeed furnishes a plentiful supply of fake news.

Was Ben Rhodes the Anonymous Author of the Notorious NY Times Op Ed, supposedly written by a high administration official?

Expanded on 9-12-2018

The anonymous, hostile to Pres. Trump, op ed in the NYTimes the other day is shallow, superficial, full of platitudes, generalities and cliches, lacks specifics, and contains stock phrases and stupid hyperbole. It also lacks policy discussion, except on the shallowest, most simplistic level. Instead, it appeals to the emotions. For instance, the title of the piece starts out: "I am part of the Resistance . . ."
In both English and French this word resistance evokes  the romantic mystique of liberation. For educated Americans of the older generations, it evokes the real-life hero, Jean Moulin, of the French WW2 Resistance, or the fictional hero Rick [played by Humphrey Bogart] and the French police captain [played by Claude Rains] in the romantic WW2 film Casablanca. The use of the term resistance is thus an appeal to the emotions. [To be sure, Jean Moulin was executed cruelly by the Nazi German forces. No such fate awaits the author of the NY Times anonymous op ed.]

All these features of the piece lead me to think that the author was likely NOT a Trump administration official. Maybe, it was suggested to me, the anonymous author was one Ben Rhodes, a speechwriter for ex-president Obama. It contains certain stock phrases that Obama used to use in his speeches [written by Rhodes]. These phrases include "Don't get me wrong" and "To be clear." It also has "Take . . . " used to introduce an example.

Furthermore, it sounds as if it were written to be a speech. To be sure, the sentences are well-constructed --as if for a speech. Of course, speeches were and are Ben Rhodes' stock in trade.

What does the NY Times say? "The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration." Yes, so they say. But is the NYT above lying? The Times lies by commission and omission. The NYT falsified a quote from even the Pope. The Times had the Pope saying to suit-wearing terrorist, Mahmoud Abbas, "You are an angel of peace." Of course the Pope has made many mistakes, but to call Abbas "an angel of peace"? Instead the Pope said, "You could be an angel of peace if " you reached an agreement with Israel. But the Times preferred its own inaccurate translation. When this was pointed out to the NYT editors, they quietly changed the on-line text without acknowledging the mistake. So yes, the NYT has lied and does lie and no doubt will lie.

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I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration

I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

Sept. 5, 2018

President Trump at an event in August at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J.Tom Brenner for The New York Times

The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.

---

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.

Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.

But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.

From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.

“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.

The result is a two-track presidency.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.

Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.

On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.

This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.

There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.

The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration

The New York Times Gets into Serious Falsification Again -- Altering Quotes about Israel

We at Emet m'Tsiyon have already covered several cases where the overrated New York Times distorted facts. We showed how once the NYT changed the meaning of what Pope Francis said to Mahmoud Abbas [= Abu Mazen]. That was a serious falsification because it had the Pope declaring that Abbas was "an angel of peace." What the Pope actually said was that Abu Mazen "could be an angel of peace" [Lei possa essere un angelo della pace].That is, he could be one if he made peace with Israel.

The present case of falsifying a quote does not involve false translation but rather deliberately leaving out several words from a statement by President Trump. Here I thank CAMERA, the media monitor, for bringing this notable NYT falsehood to light.

Trump made a statement on 2 February of this year about Israeli settlements in Judea-Samaria:

While we don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal. (Emphasis added.)

Now a video on the NYT website produced by its Jerusalem-based journalists Ian Fisher and Camilla Schick, narrated by Fisher, left out the words in boldface which means that they were significantly altering the meaning of Trump's statement. Instead of what Trump said Fisher and Schick give us this truncated and therefore distorted and misleading version:

The White House had this to say back in February. "While we do not believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements [the missing words belong here] may not be helpful in achieving that goal." Trump publicly asked Mr. Netanyahu to exercise restraint on settlement building. . .

Tamar Sternthal of CAMERA explains the problems of distortion, done for what I see as clearly political partisan reasons [here]. That is, the Jerusalem-based journalists and the NY Times itself on the whole are partisans in favor of the PLO.

Basically, what Trump's actual statement said that it would be all right for Israel to expand the existing settlements, in terms of numbers of housing units, if that expansion did not go beyond the current boundaries of these settlements. Serious politically motivated distortion.
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Also see the links below for more on NYTimes hatred of Jews and Israel:
1-- defense of Nazi sympathizer, Linda Sarsour [here]
2-- five NYT anti-Israel op eds -- hatred of Israel intensifies at the NYT [here]

New York Times Blows Winds of Putsch for Israel & How President Truman Got Rid of an Insubordinate War Hero General

The New York Times has long been the mouthpiece of the US foreign policy Establishment. That the NYT is so hostile to Israel up to the point of crude lies demonstrates the deep rancor towards Israel of that Establishment.

We all know that the US and the other major WW2 allies were of little help to the victimized Jews during the Shoah, that is, during WW2. Whereas US warplanes bombed military targets near Auschwitz (Oswiecim) by 1944 --but not the gas chambers at Auschwitz nor the railroad tracks leading there-- the United Kingdom prevented Jews from finding refuge in the internationally designated Jewish National Home, the Land of Israel.

During the 1967 Six Day War, the intelligence ship, USS Liberty, spied electronically on Israeli military moves and sent the information to Jordan and Egypt. A US army signal corps truck-mounted electronic intelligence station did the same on a smaller scale from the Jordanian-controlled "West Bank." The truck had to pull back across the Jordan River with Jordan's Arab Legion when Israel took the "West Bank."

Now, the Establishment mouthpiece, the NYT, fans the flames of putsch, of a possible coup d'etat in Israel, publishing an article praising insubordinate Israeli senior army and intelligence officers for being "pro-peace" and "pro-human rights." The author, Ronen Bergman, has excellent sources in Israeli intel, according to his own writings, and the NYT describes him as "a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine." He is not a free-lancer but "a contributing writer." That is a more permanent arrangement. Here are some putschist samples:

IN most countries, the political class supervises the defense establishment and restrains its leaders from violating human rights or pursuing dangerous, aggressive policies. In Israel, the opposite is happening. Here, politicians blatantly trample the state’s values and laws and seek belligerent solutions, while the chiefs of the Israel Defense Forces and the heads of the intelligence agencies try to calm and restrain them. [NYT 21 May 2016]

Now right here we have what would be seen in the USA as justification for a putsch against the democratically elected government of PM Netanyahu. The politicians violate "human rights." See that buzz term, human rights? Now to another gem:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s offer last week of the post of defense minister to Avigdor Lieberman, a pugnacious ultranationalist politician, is the latest act in the war between Mr. Netanyahu and the military and intelligence leaders, a conflict that has no end in sight but could further erode the rule of law and human rights, or lead to a dangerous, superfluous military campaign.

Lieberman is a pugnacious ultranationalist. Obama is not a pugnacious ultranationalist. He only wants to give The Bomb to a pugnacious religiously fanatic regime in Iran that believes that it has the right to The Bomb, despite Iran being a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty. And we are warned of the further erosion of "the rule of law and human rights" as well as being threatened with "superfluous war." Obama incidentally seems to be moving closer to sending ground troops to Syria on the pretext of fighting ISIL which Obama has tried hard not to interfere with over the past two years. Of course, for Bergman, the generals and intelligence honchos who have made mistake after mistake, especially starting with Oslo, are the good guys, whereas PM Netanyahu and his government are the bad guys.

An I.D.F. general told me that the top brass saw the telephone call [by Netanyahu to the father of a soldier who had violated army rules and was being investigated and charged, which treatment Netanyahu did not cancel] as a gross defiance of the military’s authority. The deputy chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Yair Golan, chose one of the most sensitive dates on the Israeli calendar, Holocaust Memorial Eve, to react: He suggested that Israel today in some ways resembles Germany in the 1930s.

So the army has legitimate authority which the prime minister lacks, indeed its authority is superior to that of the elected leaders. Apparently the military is not supposed to be subordinate to the civilian government. And Israeli supposedly resembles Nazi Germany in some ways. I would say that Israel is more in the position of France in the 1930s pre-Vichyite period when "peace movements" in France and Britain were calling on their governments to make peace with Hitler, giving him what he wanted which also conformed to the principle of "self-determination", some said, especially Communists. 

Caroline Glick is one of the few to have seen this coming:

Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon is openly supporting the growing insubordination of IDF generals. In a speech last night, he urged senior officers to publicly air their opposition to government policies. In so doing, he brought Israeli democracy into an unprecedented crisis.. . .  a regime where civilians are free to act in accordance with their conscience even when doing so places them in opposition to the government is a democracy.
A regime where military commanders are free to act in accordance with their conscience even when doing so places them in opposition of the government is a military dictatorship. [Caroline's facebook page, 16 May 2016]

Also see her as follows:

For the Obama administration, Israel’s security brass is an alternative government. . . . , for the [US] administration, “Israeli democracy” means the Left is in charge [link here]

In other words, the Obama administration might not be averse to a military coup d'etat taking place in Israel, provided that the ensuing military government will follow Obama's demands on Israel for concessions to the Nazi-like "Palestinian Authority." Mahmoud Abbas is obviously, in the NY Times lexicon, not a pugnacious nationalist.
         Defense Minister Yaalon's public statements over the past year have too often been dishonest, if hesitant, attempts to smear Jewish inhabitants of Judea-Samaria and the Jewish public in general for crimes against Arabs, for violations of human rights, and so on. This appears to be a coordinated effort, what with the deputy chief of staff Yair Golan comparing Israel with Germany in the 1930s and other lies, totally overlooking the often Nazi nature of the content of Palestine Authority TV and radio programming, mosque preaching, newspaper articles, and so on. DM Yaalon's first dishonest and improper transgression was to accuse Jews of firebombing last summer an Arab home in the village of Duma near the Shiloh and `Eli settlements in which three Dawabsha family members died. Certainly, this was a terrible act but it is hardly certain who did it and the evidence for Jewish participation is weak, just some Hebrew grafitti. But Arabs too can write Hebrew and even do Hebrew grafitti. The more likely explanation of the crime is that it was part of a family feud or clan vendetta, a common enough event in Arab society. Indeed, houses were attacked with firebombs in that village both before and after the  one that killed three persons.
      Another one of Yaalon's offenses was to intervene in the case of a soldier who killed an already disabled terrorist in Hebron. This was a violation of army rules for opening fire. However, it should be handled by the military justice system. It would have been one thing for Yaalon to say that such events are regrettable and against orders and the case must be investigated and prosecuted. However, it was wrong of Yaalon to accuse the soldier of murder. There is such a thing as due process, even in the army. 

Deputy Chief of General Staff Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan compared Israeli society  to the Nazis on Holocaust Remembrance Day. This was a direct assault on the government’s policy of fighting, rather than joining, Israel-bashers who deny the right of the Jewish state to exist. And his comrades in the General Staff and in the Left praised him for his appalling behavior. [Caroline Glick, here]

Then there is the late Maj.-Gen. Meir Dagan, the retired director of the Mossad. Last Thursday Channel 2’s investigative news program Uvda broadcast an interview with Dagan, conducted shortly before his death. Dagan told the host Ilana Dayan that in 2010, he committed espionage. Dagan revealed that in 2010, he went behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s back and informed then-CIA director Leon Panetta that Netanyahu

and then-defense minister Ehud Barak were about to order the security services to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. [Caroline Glick, here]

The US of course does not tolerate insubordination by high ranking officers. We will take up the case of war hero General Douglas MacArthur below. Now back to the NYT's taste for a putsch in Israel, Ronen Bergman fills out the picture:

In some conversations I’ve had recently with high-ranking officers about Mr. Lieberman’s appointment as defense minister, the possibility of a military coup has been raised — but only with a smile. It remains unlikely.

So Bergman tells the NYT and its readers that the subject of a possible coup has been raised. But it is "unlikely." It's cute that the ever so democratic NYT is so interested in hearing about a possible coup in Israel that they publish a piece that transparently and implicitly justifies just that, if not going so far as to advocate a coup. But why is the NYT  pushing a putsch in Israel? The motive is obvious. They want Israel to bend to Washington's dictates, which under Obama are more blatantly anti-Jewish than under previous presidents. That means Israel surrendering territory to fanatically hate ridden pan-Arabist and Islamist Arabs, obsessed with hatred for the Jews who have stepped out of the humiliated place of the dhimmi as decreed by Islamic law.

The NY Times continues with its buttering up of the army to the detriment of the elected civilian government. A piece by Isabel Kershner [NYT, 29 May 2016] makes ex-Defense Minister Ya`alon look good, democratic, whereas Netanyahu and Lieberman look bigoted and narrow, etc: "the generals . . . have spoken out against manifestations of extremism in the ranks and in broader society," "shrill segment of the public," "an aggressive segment of the public."  The people who are fed up with murder and mass murder efforts are "aggressive," "shrill," "extremist," etc. On the other hand, "Other Israelis want the military to remain a moderating force and a bulwark against extremism." Are these "Other Israelis" the supposedly good folk who would welcome a military coup against "extremism"?

General Yair Golan, deputy chief of staff, sanctimoniously declaimed on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day:

"if there is one thing that is scary in remembering the Holocaust, it is noticing horrific processes which developed in Europe – particularly in Germany – 70, 80, and 90 years ago, and finding remnants of that here among us in the year 2016." [here]

This is a Judeophobic accusation. An implicit assertion that the Israeli people are Nazi-like. That is another justification for a coup. After all, he is saying that the people are immoral. Their elected government is perforce immoral. No comment from Golan about the profound Nazi-like hatred of Jews and Israel fostered by the Palestinian Authority, by Hamas, by the press in various Arab countries, and in Western lands where the media habitually misrepresent what happens in Israel as well as the relevant history of Arab-Jewish relations. 
The prime minister perceived the threat in Golan's remarks: "Mr. Netanyahu rebuked General Golan, criticizing his remarks as outrageous, and said, “The I.D.F. is the people’s army and must remain out of political debates.”" [here]
On the other hand: 

"While the controversial comments drew fire from many within the nationalist camp, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon defended Golan, arguing that criticism aimed at him was part of a larger “campaign to harm the IDF and its officers politically.”“The responsibilities of an army officer, especially a senior commander, are not limited to leading soldiers out to war, but also include charting out a path and ethical standards with the help of [his] moral compass,” said Yaalon." [here]

Yaalon is speaking out of what he claims is higher morality. But since Golan's comparison to Germany in the 1930s was false and ignorant at best, Ya`alon's defense was also out of place. And the implicit support in his words for insubordination and possibly a putsch was obviously wrong. 
Netanyahu properly rebuked Ya`alon:

Netanyahu reportedly called Yaalon, sharply criticizing him for defending Golan’s comments [here]

Looking back to 20th century history, we can see that the USA, both before and after WW2, rather often supported generals who overthrew legitimate governments abroad. In some cases this was justified as opposition to corrupt and tyrannical regimes, as in Egypt in 1952 and Iran/Persia in 1979. The problem is that corrupt and tyrannical regimes have often enough been replaced by regimes that were even worse by every measure. As in Egypt and Iran (Persia). Ask yourself if the present Islamic fanatic Khomeini regime of the ayatollahs in Iran now is any better than the Shah's regime that it replaced, with the aid of the Carter Administration. Or is it even worse?

In any event, the powers that be in the United States do not like insubordinate generals who dispute the civilian leadership openly. 
Douglas MacArthur was a hero in both world wars, I & II. He was the commander of American forces in the Korean War, starting in 1950. His brilliant Inchon landing behind North Korean Communist troops opened the way for American and allied forces to reach the Yalu River between North Korea and China. After China entered the war in late 1950, MacArthur 

"wished to bomb Chinese bases in Manchuria and was prepared to risk a full-scale war with communist China. President Truman sought to hold him in check but MacArthur made public his advocacy of carrying the war into China. This defiance of official government policy led the President peremptorily to relieve him of his commands on 11 April 1952." [Alan Palmer, The Penguin Dictionary of Twentieth Century History (New York: Penguin 1979), p242]

"When President Truman would not agree to his plan for an attack upon  Communist China, MacArthur made his opinions public and Truman responded by relieving the General of his command. . . . his action represented a challenge to civilian authority which the President did not hesitate to meet." [Walter Laqueur et al., A Dictionary of Politics (rev ed; New York: The Free Press 1974), p307]

So we see that MacArthur openly defied the president of the time and his policy. He was insubordinate and was dismissed. The US government does not tolerate defiance of its policy by its own generals. But somehow such insubordination is OK when practiced against other governments and may even be encouraged by US government mouthpieces like the New York Times.
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Also Read:
JNi.Media in Jewish Press, 6 May 2016 "Netanyahu Confronts Yaalon over Call to IDF to Speak Their Minds," [here]
Amnon Lord, 6 May 2016: "Meir Dagan's Private Putsch" [in Hebrew] [הפוטש הפרטי של מאיר דגן] [פה]
Shmuel Rosner, "Israel defense forces against people of Israel" Jewish Journal, 16 May 2016 [here]
Bret Stephens, "Netanyahu against the Generals," Wall Street Journal 23 May 2016 [here]
7-17-2016 Joel Fishman explains the anti-democratic nature of those who want the generals to rule Israel as generals rule in other, less enlightened countries throughout the world. Fishman specifically criticizes the anti-national Israeli journalist Amir Tibbon [here]

Why the New York Times Is Now a Yellow Journal, A Gutter Rag -- Gilead Ini Removes Its Pretentious Veil

It's now too obvious for any decent and intelligent person to deny. The New York Times is now a gutter rag, a yellow journal, full of sensationalism and lies and libels, happily distorting facts, omitting crucial facts and directly lying. The NYT habitually smears its designated enemies and, given the way Israel is treated in the Times, Israel must be its chief enemy.

Gilead Ini explains the sins of the Times:

This week began as the last one ended — with more Palestinian stabbing attacks against Israeli Jews, and more dead. And yet, this information might surprise readers of The New York Times.

On Sunday, a 20-year-old Israeli woman was stabbed to death, another Israeli was rammed by a car and attacked with a knife and a third was assaulted by a knife-wielding teen affiliated with the Islamic Jihad terror group.

All three assailants were killed in the course of their attacks.

But the headline to the Times’ story about Sunday’s attacks did away with cause and effect, muddled victim and aggressor: “1 Israeli, 3 Palestinians Killed in Attacks in West Bank.” The online headline was later changed, but the print headline Monday morning was equally obtuse: “West Bank Faces Spate of Assaults That Kill 4.” The “West Bank” faced nothing. It was Israelis who faced assaults.

This was par for the course — and in some ways, even mild — for how the Times has covered the so-called “stabbing intifada,” the recent spate of Arab-on-Jewish murder.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently called on his people to protect Jerusalem holy sites from the “filthy feet” of Israeli Jews [emphasis added], and terrorists have heeded the call, taking to the streets to thrust knives into any Israeli they encounter — other recent stabbing victims include an 80-year-old woman and a 13-year-old boy on a bike [two female Arab terrorists attacked an Arab man in his seventies whom they mistook for a Jew--Eliyahu].

But even this incitement, and even this terror, is no match for the creativity of The New York Times. When a Palestinian assailant was caught on film last month wielding a knife and rushing at Israelis, before quickly being neutralized by Israeli security personnel, Times reporters simply avoided telling readers about the video.

And instead of mentioning this incriminating piece of evidence, they repeatedly cited false Palestinian allegations that Israelis planted the knife next to the “innocent” attacker. Creatively, and unethically, they turned an empirical fact into an unknowable case of police vs. “witness.”

When Israel released a photo of the butterfly knife held by the attacker, the Times’ bureau chief in Jerusalem absurdly called it a “Boy Scout” knife. Again, it was a masterstroke of creativity. Butterfly knives are infamous for being flipped back and forth by ’80s movie villains, and are illegal in several US states and in countries around the world. To confuse a butterfly knife with a Boy Scout knife is to confuse nunchucks with a nun’s ruler.

Similarly, after Palestinians stoned a Jewish car, resulting in the death of the driver, a reporter insisted they weren’t attacking the Israeli but merely pelting “the road he was driving on.” The death, reporters insisted, was an “accident.” Attacking the asphalt? A Boy Scout knife? Such verbal ingenuity might be commendable in creative writing. In journalism, it’s an embarrassment.

And so was the newspaper’s recent suggestion that there might never have been a temple on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, despite unanimity among serious scholars to the contrary.     [Read more here].                                                                                                                      - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  -                           

Gilead Ini shows some of the tricks that the Times uses: avoiding or deemphasizing facts that don't fit the pro-PLO/PA narrative, distorting little facts, direct lies little and big, omitting crucial facts that don't fit the narrative, and so on. You do remember that the NYT's motto is: All the news that's fit to print. What is not fit to print is what does not fit the narrative, the sob story that the Palestinian Arab leadership and their Western psywar, cogwar, and PR advisors have concocted to make the Palestinian Arabs look innocent and put upon by those inherently mean Jews or Zionists. The Times even put words into the mouth of a famous public figure, the pope, so as to support the usual NYT pro- Arab, pro-PLO/PA prejudice. And we can go on. 

Meanwhile, see these two previous posts on Emet m'Tsiyon, here and here. These posts both deal with the NYT falsifying what the pope said to PLO/PA chief Mahmud Abbas (his nom de guerre is Abu Mazen). They somewhat changed their story when several sites on the Web --including yours truly-- pointed out their error. And they made a half-way, insincere apology for their deliberate lie.                                                                                                  It is foolish to see the Times as a reliable news site. It is worse than unreliable. It is a gutter journal, full of hatred and venom, and false, hypocritical morality. 

Pope Acknowledges He Was Misquoted/Mistranslated by MSM Press

This piece from Times of Israel reports that the Pope is personally acknowledging that he was misquoted/mistranslated by press agencies and publications such as New York Times, Associated Press (AP), Reuters and Agence France Presse (AFP) [also see: here & here&here].

In comments made to veteran Portuguese-Israeli journalist Henrique Cymerman Thursday, Francis was quoted as saying that “anyone who does not recognize the Jewish people and the State of Israel — and their right to exist — is guilty of anti-Semitism.” 

Francis was also said to have backtracked on statements he was reportedly heard making earlier this month designating the visiting Abbas “a bit an angel of peace.”
The pope recalled telling Abbas in Italian that he hopes the Palestinian chief might one day become an angel of peace in the future, according to Cymerman — although ostensibly he has not yet reached that level.

Jewish-Portuguese journalist Henrique Cymerman, August 03, 2013. (Moshe Shai/FLASH90)

The comments were sent by the Pope in writing to Cymerman along with Argentine Rabbi Abraham Skorka, one of Francis’s close interfaith colleagues, after the duo approached him following his meeting with Abbas, Channel 2 reported.

The New York Times Once Again Shamelessly Displays Its Partisanship & Contempt for Facts

No doubt that the New York Times lies or omits vital information on all sorts of matters and issues. But when Israel is concerned, the NYT can be relied upon  to both be partisan and to falsify almost always. This carries over of course to Arab affairs. The officials and operatives of the PLO, known to be bloodthirsty enemies of Israel, need to be protected from their own records of mass murder and Big Lies.
Therefore, Rashid Khalidi, now an American professor, must have his reputation protected and his personal record sanitized. He is a scion of the al-Khalidi family, long prominent in the Jerusalem area with some of its sons taken into the imperial service by the Ottoman Empire and given high imperial rank. His relative Walid Khalidi worked with British political agents to make propaganda for the Palestinian Arab cause --also a British cause-- in the UK and the USA.  Rashid is American-born, yet served the PLO as one of its leading PR agents, that is, leading liars, for several years in Beirut. Now that Rashid is a prof at the Ivy League Columbia University, it might embarrass not only him but Columbia and his friend B Hussein Obama if it became common knowledge that he was a leading PLO liar in Beirut when the PLO and its member groups made no attempt to conceal their terrorist bloodthirst.
 So the NYT must cover up for its pet "moderate" Arab terrorist mouthpiece. Here is the essence of Prof Martin Kramer's devastating refutation of  the lies about Khalidi in and by the NYT:
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. . .  I do care how the New York Times reported one aspect of the story this morning: “Critics have accused the professor of having had ties to the Palestine Liberation Organization, which he has denied.” The reference here is to the activities of Khalidi when he resided in Beirut in the 1970s and up until Israel’s 1982 invasion. In those days, the PLO ran an exterritorial gangland, and was neck-deep in terrorism planned by Arafat and his mob.
Note this phrase: “Critics have accused…” Today’s article thus repeats a trope that appeared back in 2008, when the Times ran a piece on Khalidi prompted by his past association with Barack Obama:

He taught at universities in Lebanon until the mid-’80s, and some critics accuse him of having been a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Mr. Khalidi has denied working for the group, and says he was consulted as an expert by reporters seeking to understand it.

Again, it’s the “critics” who “accuse him.”
Well, I’m a critic, but we critics didn’t just imagine Khalidi’s PLO affiliation. We were alerted to it by a parade of highly regarded journalists, including two from the New York Times. So here are the “critics” who first leveled the “accusation” (still more sourcing here):
• Joe Alex Morris Jr., reporting from Beirut for the Los Angeles Times on September 5, 1976, quoted Khalidi and described him as “a PLO spokesman.”
• James M. Markham, reporting from Beirut in the New York Times on February 19, 1978, quoted Khalidi and described him as “an American-educated Palestinian who teaches political science at the American University of Beirut and also works for the P.L.O.”
• A Pacifica Radio documentary, reporting in 1979 from Beirut, interviewed Khalidi “at the headquarters of the PLO in Beirut,” and described him as “an official spokesperson for the Palestinian news service Wafa,” “PLO spokesperson,” “official spokesperson for the PLO,” and “the leading spokesperson for the PLO news agency, Wafa.”
• Thomas Friedman, reporting from Beirut in the New York Times on June 9, 1982, quoted Khalidi and described him as “a director of the Palestinian press agency, Wafa.”
• Doyle McManus, reporting on rumored American-PLO contacts in the Los Angeles Times on February 20, 1984, quoted Khalidi and described him as “a former PLO official.”
• James Rainey, reporting on Khalidi’s connection to Obama for the Los Angeles Times on October 30, 2008, described him as “a renowned scholar on the Palestinians who in the 1970s had acted as a spokesman for Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization.” (As I noted at the time, the Los Angeles Times thus honorably stood by the 1976 reportage of its legendary, long-dead Beirut correspondent, Joe Alex Morris Jr.)
• Thomas W. Lippman, for thirty years a diplomatic, national security, and Middle East correspondent for the Washington Post, in a letter published in that paper on November 1, 2008, wrote that “Khalidi was indeed ‘a PLO spokesman.’ In the early years of the Lebanese civil war, Mr. Khalidi was the Beirut-based spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization, and his office was a stop on the daily rounds of journalists covering that conflict. As we used to say in the pre-electronic newspaper business: Check the clips.”
None of these people were or are “critics” of Rashid Khalidi, and two of them were reporting for the New York Times itself. So why does the Times repeatedly inform us that it is only Khalidi’s “critics” who have “accused” him, when in fact a raft of esteemed journalists who interviewed him in Beirut identified him as a PLO spokesman, as a fact? This is not another he-said she-said (or Jew-says Arab-says) question. As Thomas Lippman said: Check the clips.
This is another opportunity to urge the New York Times to get off its derriere and get to the bottom of the Khalidi story. It is unthinkable that a Brooklyn-born, Yale-educated U.S. citizen operated in PLO headquarters in Beirut in the late 1970s, and wasn’t known to the personnel of the U.S. embassy and the CIA station. That was over thirty years ago, so some documents must have been declassified. Can we get some investigative reporting here? Instead all we’ve ever read about Khalidi in the Times is the puff piece.
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For full article by Martin Kramer, go here.