Jodi Rudoren’s latest article from Israel for the New York Times is another promotion of Israel’s fortress mentality: a loving profile of an artist who emigrated from the U.S. and produces pieces about Iran building nuclear weapons to attack Israel. The artist, Andi Arnovitz, is obsessed with the alleged threat from Iran.
There is “Fordow’s Underground,” a reference to the secret uranium-enrichment plant whose fate has been among the sticking points in negotiations between Iran and six world powers, rendered here from bits of images of Persian carpets as flowers atop machinery operated by men in turbans. . .
Some of the titles could be agenda items from the nuclear negotiations: “The Centrifuges Are Spinning,” “Fission and Fusion,” “Isfahan Is Very Quiet,” “Making Uranium Ore Concentrate.”
And we learn that Arnovitz combs Hali magazine, an art magazine for the Islamic world, and finds “disturbing things” there.
The message of the story is: our very existence is at risk here, the Iranians could be dropping bombs on us and I’m doing art about it.
With this piece, Rudoren shows her hand yet again. This article was contrived: There’s no reason to go out and write about an artist depicting a theoretical Iranian attack when Rudoren could easily find Palestinian kids who are having bombs dropped on their heads right now and who have made art about that. (See the painful drawing above.) So the story selection is clearly designed to support Israel.
The Times editors have made a contract with pro-Israel readers. There’s a special meaning to the term, “contract pieces;” the late publisher A.O. Sulzberger Sr. used to have things he wanted covered in the paper, say, changes to Central Park, or another of his hobbyhorses. And a reporter was sent out cover it. The “contract pieces” were mostly innocuous and didn’t appear every day.
But Rudoren’s latest piece of propaganda shows that the Times has abdicated any responsibility as far as Israel/Palestine is concerned to publish all the news that’s fit to print. The paper has an ideological agenda to build support for Israel.
I say this as someone who doesn’t automatically object to the Times’s foreign coverage. Its Cairo correspondent, David Kirkpatrick, does an excellent job of reporting on a complicated situation; they should let him write more. The Times’ coverage of China over the years has been excellent. I don’t criticize the Times just because it’s an establishment paper.
But the Israel coverage is something different. The paper relentlessly promotes the Israeli view of the world: from sanctifying an Israeli soldier who lost his life in 1973, to characterizing the boycott movement of Israel as anti-Semitic, to enshrining Israelis who got tattoos in memory of the Holocaust, to praising Israel’s “glorious” film festival, to spotlighting a book that prints the word “Jew” 6 million times to commemorate the Holocaust, to Rudoren’s papering over of genocidal statements by Israeli officials, to her claim that only a “small strain” in Israeli society believes that the West Bank should stay in Israeli hands.
There is just nothing to compare with this slavish coverage when it comes to conveying Palestinian life to Americans.
And the danger here is that while there are lots of online sources for people who don’t subscribe to this view of Israel — and many of Times’ own readers are challenging the mainstream narrative in the comment section — the Times is our leading newspaper and it is setting the agenda even more than it used to because other papers don’t have foreign correspondents anymore. What goes into the Times very much affects the debate.
The Times is now a pro-Israel weapon. Who’s decided that? I don’t know.
Its function reminds me of that British diplomat who was later quoted about the runup to the Iraq war; Washington has decided that it is going to invade, and the task now was to collect the intelligence to justify the attack. The New York Times has decided it is going to support Israel; the task now is to write stories that make readers agree this is the wise course.
Thanks for stating it so eloquently and without reservation, James. I appreciate all of the great and hard work that you have done in coming to this dismal and dismaying conclusion.
Just as Israel continues to delegitimize itself, so does the NYT. Who is the leader, who is the follower? It’s hard to tell sometimes. You’d think that after the Judy Miller/Iraq war propaganda fiasco, they would have tried to redeem themselves!
Instead, they continue along the same warpath paved with lies so that ever more innocents die.
I think there is a tacit policy at the NYT that they will criticize Israel in mild ways, but that’s it. It doesn’t matter how badly they act, the NYT will never criticize them the way they will criticize, say, Hamas.
And now that the influence of the Lobby on our politicians is out in the open, and Netanyahu’s arrogance and racism is front page news and helped him win the election, they are acting very protective.
In other words, I don’t think it is a change in policy so much as a change in circumstances. Israel badly needs PR support right now and the NYT is there to provide it.
“The New York Times is now a pro-Israel weapon.”
And North is only just now realizing this?
The NYT has been little more than a propaganda rag for decades. They support, without shame or question, the corporate agenda as well as the Zionist agenda. They lied us into war with Iraq and they are in the process of lying us into war with Iran and possibly even war with Russia. If you read their absurd “coverage” of the situation in the Ukraine, it is clear that the Times is our version of Pravda.
Maybe, just maybe, writers like North will finally accept this fact and quit referring to the Times as an actual journalistic outlet. It is not. The only time it should be mentioned or quoted is with the clear qualification that it is a propaganda tool, not a nesw outlet.
Sorry to be so smug. But a whole lot of us have been trying to point this out for a very long time. No one seems to want to hear it.
It’s sort of the same thing as how so many people keep pretending the U.S. is a functional democracy. It is not and has not been for a very long time now.
Perhaps the NYT “traditionally” merely covered up the truth about Israel, but lately has been ramping up to overt lying for Israel. If so, why the change?
Perhaps the Times’ recent financial difficulties left it vulnerable to pressure from the big banks.
And perhaps the war profiteering oligarchy is getting more desperate. Much information remains to come out about how the Iraq war was manufactured, who did it, and how. Some people may be nervous about serious criminal investigations and charges. There is no statute of limitations on killing thousands of people.
JM: Agreed. The oligarchy (not democracy) is in full control. Also of NYT of course.
Thus the president’s outrageous hewing to the TPP line, including “fast track”. The whole thing is a by-global-business, for-global-business, maybe even “of” — global-business enrichment tool disguised as a trade (or “free” trade!) treaty. The oligarchs hire the congress, hire the president, and get the treaty they want, not a treaty the people should want. FAST TRACK passed the senate today. The up-down vote to follow soon I’d guess.
And our progressive (so he hinted once) president is OKing oil-drilling in the most fragile environment — the arctic. And slow-walking on climate change.
Don’t have kids.