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]

Dead Arabs Don't Matter to the World -- Unless Israel Killed Them

The hypocrisy of the major world powers, of those who dominate the international mass media, is long known. Khaled Abu Toameh reminds us once again of how cynical the world media, most of it Western, can be. Abu Toameh points out how international journalists and international "human rights" bodies --the ones that are always dragging their halos around-- customarily overlook Arab victims whose sufferings have nothing to do with Israel. The purpose is to smear and hurt Israel... If a particular case of suffering cannot be attributed to Israel then it is hardly worth writing about.
In line with this of course is that the Palestinian Arab suffering that is deemed worthy of attention is only that of Arabs in Judea-Samaria, not that of those in Syria to be sure, since that suffering cannot be blamed on Israel. Nor does the Palestinian Authority --Mahmoud Abbas' statelet on the way-- care about any of this. Even those who speak in the name of the Palestinian Arabs care little about the suffering of Palestinian Arabs that cannt be blamed on Israel.

Here are some highlishts of Abu Toameh's essay:

Nearly 3,500 Palestinians have been killed in Syria since 2011. But because these Palestinians were killed by Arabs, and not Israelis, this fact is not news in the mainstream media or of interest to "human rights" forums.                                                         
• International media outlets regularly report on the "water crisis" in Palestinian towns and villages, especially in the West Bank. This is a story that repeats itself almost every summer, when some foreign journalists set out to search for any story that reflects negatively on Israel. And there is nothing more comfortable than holding Israel responsible for the "water crisis" in the West Bank.                                                          
• But how many Western journalists have cared to inquire about the thirsty Palestinians of Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria? Does anyone in the international community know that this camp has been without water supply for more than 720 days? Or that the camp has been without electricity for the past three years?

• When Western journalists lavish time on Palestinians delayed at Israeli checkpoints, and ignore bombs dropped by the Syrian military on residential areas,  one might start to wonder [what] they are really about.

Since the issue of Israeli water supplies to Arabs in Judea-Samaria became a major topic for international news agencies and "human rights" agencies in the past few years, let's look at Abu Toameh's information. He explains that whether or not Arabs, or Palestinian Arabs specifically, are deprived of water is of little concern to them. Again, the issue is what can be blamed on Israel reasonably, or even unreasonably very often. 

International media outlets regularly report on the "water crisis" in Palestinian towns and villages, especially in the West Bank. This is a story that repeats itself almost every summer, when some foreign journalists set out to search for any story that reflects negatively on Israel. And there is nothing more comfortable than holding Israel responsible for the "water crisis" in the West Bank.

But how many Western journalists have cared to inquire about the thirsty Palestinians of Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria? Does anyone in the international community know that this camp has been without water supply for more than 720 days? Or that the camp has been without electricity for the past three years? Yarmouk, which is located only eight kilometers from the center of Damascus, is the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. That is, it was the largest camp. In June 2002, 112,000 Palestinians lived in Yarmouk. By the end of 2014, the camp population had been decimated to less than 20,000. Medical sources say many of the residents of the camp are suffering from a host of diseases.

Just bear in mind that there is no reason to rely on the international media or the self-styled "human rights" agencies.

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.