Jerome Slater, the scholar of press coverage of Israel in the Times and in Haaretz, had an incisive take on the Times coverage of breaches in the fragile truce between Hamas and Israel:
"The Times may be a-changing, but not that much. Last Thursday a truce
between Israel and the Palestinians went into effect in Gaza. On
Tuesday morning, the Israelis broke the truce, sending a hit team to
kill two Islamic Jihad militants. Later that day, Islamic Jihad
retaliated, feebly, by firing several rockets into Israel, with little
effect.
Here's how the Times played the story, entitled: "Rockets Hit
Israel, Breaking Hamas Truce":
“Three Qassam rockets fired from Gaza on
Tuesday struck the Israeli border town of Sderot and its environs,
causing no serious injuries but constituting the first serious breach of
a five-day-old truce between Israel and Hamas.” Sure, four paragraphs
into the story the Times mentions that Islamic Jihad says it was
retaliating for the Israeli attack, but the clear intention of the story
is to convey the impression that it was Islamic Jihad–or Hamas, who the
Israelis say they will “hold responsible” for what happens in Gaza–that
broke the agreement.
And, of course, in the usual Times fashion, there is not even a mention
of the overwhelmingly most important fact about the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict: that Israel continues to occupy, repress and deliberately
impoverish the Palestinian people, which just conceivably might account
for Palestinian attacks on Israel.
How do you suppose the NY Times justifies to itself this ongoing
dishonesty (to put it mildly, if not too mildly)? I suppose that 20
years from now we’ll get some kind of confession from Times
memoirists–too late to do a bit of good.”
