New York Times Editorial Lectures: ‘Israelis Should Care More’

By Ira Stoll

The New York Times these days only rarely publishes staff editorials, and it saves the ones it thinks are most important for the Sunday newspaper, which attracts the largest readership.

This past Sunday, which was also the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, the Times unleashed an editorial headlined “Who Killed Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh?” The question is rhetorical, because the Times editorialists have already clearly decided who is to blame. You guessed it, Israel. The Times insists: “Israel needs to ensure the safety of journalists in the country and in areas that it occupies, to ensure the safety of its own democracy.”

Why does the Times care so much? The editorial concedes, “Ms. Abu Akleh’s prominence as a journalist and her American passport have served to focus broad attention on her death. But scores of other journalists lose their lives without public notice. According to a database maintained by the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists, 511 journalists were killed from 1992 to 2022 in crossfire or on dangerous assignments, 347 of them in wars. Journalists are dying in Ukraine, some presumably killed deliberately.”

The Times editorial claims “Israel’s political right does not look kindly on investigating troops.” Actually, the Times itself reported in 2010, while Benjamin Netanyahu was prime minister, “The Israeli military said Tuesday that it had indicted ‘a number of’ officers and soldiers for their actions during Israel’s three-week offensive in Gaza in the winter of 2008-9, including a staff sergeant accused of deliberately shooting at least one Palestinian civilian who was walking with a group of people waving a white flag.” The Times reported in 2022, while Naftali Bennett was prime minister, “Three Israeli military commanders have been disciplined after an investigation into the death of a 78-year-old Palestinian-American man.” Whether the right looks kindly or unkindly on such investigations isn’t so relevant; they do take place, and they sometimes find misconduct and result in disciplinary action or even criminal charges.

The Times editorial makes a big deal that Abu Akleh “wore a helmet and blue body armor marked ‘press’ in large letters.” The Times also says that “Another journalist, Ali Samoudi, who was also wearing a flak jacket marked ‘press,’ was shot in the back and survived.” Recent Times news and opinion coverage has also dwelled on this point. Neither the news coverage nor the editorial, though, has noted the additional relevant fact that Palestinian terrorists frequently pose as journalists. A 2015 Times of Israel report on a stabbing of an Israeli soldier in Hebron, for example, reports, “The Palestinian attacker posed as a photojournalist, and was wearing a yellow “press” vest at the time of the attack, according to the IDF.”

A 2019 report by the Christian news outlet CBN said, “One Palestinian man said he was contacted on Facebook by someone named Muhammad al-‘Arabid, a Hamas operative in the Gaza Strip who posed as a journalist. The young recruit said he though al-‘Arabid’ was a media personnel because he was photographed wearing a ‘Press’ vest at a violent March of Return on the Gaza border. Some Hamas operatives wear “PRESS” vests at the riots to decrease the likelihood of being shot. The IDF is extremely careful to not harm media correspondents who cover the violence.”

A 2020 press release from the Israeli military said a senior Islamic Jihad operative in Gaza had disguised himself as a journalist: “The senior Islamic Jihad operative was targeted while driving a press vehicle. Muhammed Shamalah, commander of Islamic Jihad’s forces in the southern Gaza Strip and head of Islamic Jihad’s militant training programs, was targeted by an Israeli air strike. The strike occurred while he was driving a car clearly labelled ‘TV,’ indicating it to be a press vehicle and abusing the protection afforded to journalists.”

Where’s the Times editorial denouncing Hamas and Islamic Jihad for endangering real journalists by deceitfully using press signs as camouflage?

The Times buys into the mythmaking, lauding, “brave, independent reporters like Ms. Abu Akleh” for “bearing witness to the violence that, in recent weeks, has escalated.” The Times asserts, “Democracies require a free press as a prerequisite for informed self-governance.” How “independent” and “free” really was Abu Akleh? She had worked for Palestinian-Authority owned Voice of Palestine before moving to Al-Jazeera, which is state-owned by non-Abraham-Accord-signer Qatar (or by the ruling Al Thani family that, Sulzberger-style, controls both the country and the media company as family-owned businesses). I guess it’s theoretically possible to perform independent “free” journalism at a state-owned media outlet like the BBC or Radio Free Europe. By not mentioning the government control, though, The Times is misleading its readers about how accurately “independent” or “free press” fits here. Was Abu Akleh functionally “bearing witness” or merely amplifying and publicizing the terrorist cause? As an analogy, think about journalists covering America for the Russian-owned RT media outlet. The Times was outraged about supposed Russian meddling in the 2016 election. If America cracks down on RT, is that interfering with “informed self-governance”? Or is it guarding the country’s democratic integrity and national security from foreign interference?

None of this is a good reason to kill or shoot at Abu Akleh or any other journalist. It is worth figuring out what did happen. But if the Times really cared a whit about Israeli democracy or “self-governance,” it would have written a different editorial and published it on a different day (maybe one when observant Jews are permitted by Jewish law from participating in the online comments, which now are full of Times readers accusing Israel of intentionally murdering the journalist.) Instead of smearing Israel and its citizens as callous murderers, the Times editorialists might have tried harder to better understand, and convey fairly and accurately to readers, the context. The New York Times lectures: “Israelis should care more.” I would say the same thing back to Times journalists. They should care more.

Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post.