Former New York Times Writers Call Out The Paper For Spreading Zionist Propaganda.

150 past New York Times Contributors Called Out The Paper For Pushing Pro-Genocide Propaganda In Gaza.

A group of 300 writers, scholars, and public figures, including 150 New York Times contributors, put out a letter pledging to boycott writing for the paper due to its spreading of Zionist propaganda and manufacturing consent for the genocide in Gaza.

The letter wrote,

There is no U.S. newspaper more influential than The New York Times. Editors and producers in newsrooms across the West take cues from its coverage, it is widely considered the “paper of record” in the United States, and it uniquely shapes elite consensus on U.S. foreign policy. Historically, this consensus has been fatal: Iran, 1953. Iraq, 2003. Libya, 2011. Since Israel began its genocidal war on Gaza, The New York Times has obfuscated, justified, and outright denied the occupier’s war crimes, thus continuing the paper’s decades-long practice of acting as a bullhorn for the Israeli government and military.

The letter went on to call out the paper for spreading Zionist propaganda during the genocide in Gaza, writing:

The paper has reprinted outright lies from Israeli officials, withheld or amended coverage at the behest of the Israeli consulate and pro-Israel lobby groups, and directed its reporters to avoid terms like “slaughter,” “ethnic cleansing,” and “occupied territory.” The paper’s anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian biases also seep into its hiring practices: Top executives, editors, and reporters at the Times maintain material ties to the Israeli occupation and to the Israel lobby in the U.S., while Arab and Muslim employees have been purged from staff or subjected to a “racially targeted witch hunt.” And while claims by Israeli officials are treated as fact in news coverage, genocide is reduced to a matter of debate in the Opinion section.

The letter demanded that the New York Times retract its infamous laundering of the mass rape hoax, repeatedly used to justify the slaughter in Gaza, in its article, “Screams Without Words”, writing, “The newsroom must retract the widely debunked investigation ‘Screams Without Words.’ In 2004 the Times’ public editor acknowledged the paper’s misreporting on alleged but non-existent ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq, which helped drive the disastrous U.S. invasion. ‘Screams Without Words,’ with its unevidenced claims of ‘weaponized sexual assault’ on October 7th, was just as damaging. Its key researcher was fired for liking openly genocidal social media posts, its key witnesses have been discredited, and its subjects have come forward to deny its claims. The reporting failed to meet the Times’ own factchecking standards.”

The letter also demanded that “the newsroom must conduct a review of anti-Palestinian bias and produce new editorial standards for Palestine coverage” and “the Editorial Board must call for a U.S. arms embargo on Israel”.

Indeed, the New York Times played a large role in the Israeli genocide in Gaza by repeatedly publishing propaganda used to justify it.

As the letter wrote, “‘Language makes genocide justifiable. A reason why we are still being bombed after 243 days is because of The New York Times and most Western media,’ the Palestinian journalist Hossam Shabat wrote months before Israel assassinated him.”

The writers against the war on Gaza have previously put out a dossier titled, “The New York War Crimes”, where they note that, “The New York Times is an accomplice to the genocide in Gaza, serving as a mouthpiece for American imperialism and shaping elite consensus around foreign policy”.

The dossier documented the Zionist ties of top figures at the New York Times, including Meredith Kopit Levien, the CEO of The New York Times Company. who the dossier noted, spoke, “at events and served on the advisory council of B’nai B’rith Youth Organization (BBYO), a youth group that fundraises for Israel, sponsors trips to Israel, and partners with the ADL”.

The dossier added, “on its website, BBYO announces that ‘an unwavering commitment to the state of Israel’ is one of the core values it teaches to the young men and women going through its leadership programs. One of BBYO’s former youth leaders wrote in 2012 that within the organization, ‘the message is clear: to be a Jewish youth is to be loyal to the state of Israel.’”

Along with this, the dossier noted that Joe Kahn, the New York Times’ executive editor’s “father, Leo, was serving on the board of the Zionist media watchdog group the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA)”.

The Dossier noted that writers, such as The New York Times Jerusalem correspondent since 2007, Isabel Kershner’s “husband and two sons served in the (Israeli) Occupation’s military”, adding that, “Kershner’s husband, Hirsh Goodman, was director of the ‘Program on Information Strategy’ at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a ‘leading security think tank,’ which is tasked with shaping a positive image of Israel in the media from 2000 to at least 2012”.

Indeed, the New York Times repeated every propaganda claim used to justify the genocide in Gaza.

As the open letter notes, the New York Times laundered the fabricated Israeli claim that Hamas raped Israelis on October 7th through its article, “Screams without Words”.

The article claimed that two young girls were raped at the Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7th, prompting a spokesman for the kibbutz to come out and clarify that they “were not subjected to sexual abuse”, and the article claimed that Gal Abdush was a victim of rape by Hamas on October 7th, prompting multiple members of her family to come out and say she was not raped on October 7th.

The United Nations documented that the false claims of mass rape on Ocotber 7th were used, “to mobilize support for the ISF military operations in the Gaza Strip and continue the war, referring to Hamas as ‘a rapist regime’” and caused a “sharp increase in sexual violence against Palestinian women and men, seemingly fueled by similar desire to retaliate.”

While spreading false claims of mass rape, the New York Times refused to report on the well-documented fact that Israel ordered the “Hannibal Directive” on Ocotber 7th and killed hundreds of their own people to prevent them from being taken hostage, even after then Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant admitted to ordering the Hannibal directive, “to shoot and kill when there is a vehicle containing Israeli hostages”.

The New York Times also spread the fabricated Israeli claim that the Al Shifa hospital- Gaza’s largest hospital- was a Hamas command centre, justifying the Israeli attacks on the hospital.

But as the UN noted, “the IDF has not released sufficient evidence to enable independent verification of these claims (of Al Shifa being a Hamas command centre), and in some cases, statements from the IDF have not been supported by information it subsequently released. For example, before the operation between 3 and 24 November on Al Shifa hospital, the IDF published animations and infographics claiming to show extensive tunnels and other infrastructure under the hospital as justification for the operation, but the two videos it released in January 2024 did not confirm these statements and instead showed much more limited tunnels in the grounds and vicinity of the hospital.”

As the Channel 4 documentary in the UK, “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack”, noted, Israel “failed to provide sufficient evidence showing the existence of a key Hamas command centre (In Al Shifa), and Israel has continuously prevented access for an independent investigation”.

The false claims of the Al Shifa Hospital being a Hamas command centre were used to justify an Israeli attack on the hospital, which was then repeated on every hospital across Gaza, which always included:

(a) airstrikes or shelling on the hospitals and/or in the hospital’s vicinity, often resulting in serious damage to the hospitals’ premises and equipment;

(b) besieging the hospitals with ground troops, preventing Palestinians from accessing the hospital and blocking medical supplies;

(c) raiding the hospital with the assistance of heavy machinery, including tanks and bulldozers;

(d) detaining medical staff, patients and their companions, as well as the IDPs sheltering inside the hospital;

(e) forcing remaining patients, IDPs and others to leave the hospital; and finally;

(f) withdrawing troops from the hospital, leaving in their wake severe damage to the structures, buildings and equipment inside, effectively rendering the hospital non-functional.

The New York Times also repeated the fabricated Israeli claim that Hamas looted humanitarian aid.

In reality, as the Financial Times reported, the aid looting was actually done by the IDF armed gang led by Yasser Abu Shabab with support from Israel, and Israel and the United States later admitted they had no evidence that Hamas looted aid.

The lie that Hamas looted aid was used to justify the establishment of the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)” sites funded by the United States and Israel, which were death traps used to massacre starving Palestinians trying to get food aid.

As the United Nations Inquiry into Israel’s Genocide in Gaza documented, “several doctors have told the Commissioners that many Palestinians, including children, were shot at when they were at GHF sites. An emergency doctor in Gaza told the Commission that Nasser Medical Complex had received mass casualties from a GHF distribution point in Rafah. According to the doctor, victims, including children, from the GHF distribution site suffered from gunshot, shrapnel, and quadcopter wounds. He told the Commission that among the child victims were a one-and-a-half-year-old girl who suffered from a single shot to the chest while she was in her mother’s arms and, on a different day, a 13-year-old girl who was also shot in the chest. Another doctor who was also at Nasser Medical Complex told the Commission that he had received many child victims who came from two GHF sites, all of whom suffered from gunshot wounds”.

From the mass rape hoax to covering up the Hannibal Directive, to spreading the Al-Shifa lie, to spreading the lie that Hamas looted aid, the New York Times laundered every key talking point used to slaughter Palestinians.

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