Ronen Bergman’s profile of Mossad agent Sylvia Rafael is breathtaking in its immorality and dishonesty.

The New York Times barely mentions that the latest settler rampage in Huwwara was a state-sponsored pogrom, presided over by the Israeli army. They don’t want to destroy the two-state illusion.

As violence rises in the occupied West Bank, the New York Times struggles to frame the news.

Patrick Kingsley’s irresponsible reporting from Jerusalem signals how the New York Times will frame the rising violence in occupied Palestine.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently said that the two-state solution in Israel/Palestine is, if not already dead, “in hospice.” Now it’s time for news reporters at his paper and other mainstream U.S. media, to look squarely at how and why two states is no longer possible. Instead, the two-state solution is supposedly still the ideal — for the U.S. government, among others. The headline after the U.S. Secretary of State’s arrival in Israel yesterday was, predictably: “Blinken reaffirms need for two-state solution after talks with Netanyahu.”

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Jewish supremacist who serves as police minister in the new Jewish supremacist government of Israel, today made a provocative visit to the “Temple Mount” — the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem — that ought to alarm the world. Some Jewish Israeli extremists, including some in Ben-Gvir’s camp, actually want to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock shrine. These extremist views are not typically represented in the western media.

“The New York Times” realized it had to report the year-end casualty statistics for Palestinians in the West Bank, the highest toll since 2005.
So it looked for a way to shift attention away from the major perpetrators — the Israeli military and Jewish settler/colonists — and put it on the Palestinians.

The New York Times appears to be tired of cheerleading for Israel, witness two opinion pieces this weekend: a long report by Thomas Friedman in which the columnist admitted at the start that “the prospect for a two-state solution has all but vanished;” then, a full page offering by the entire Editorial Board headlined that says that Benjamin Netanyahu’s likely next coalition government “is a significant threat to the future of Israel.” Neither article mentions apartheid.

Racist rightwinger Itamar Ben-Gvir gets the security portfolio in Netanyahu’s next government and promises to visit the Al-Aqsa mosque in a provocation to Palestinians reminiscent of Ariel Sharon’s deadly visit there in 2000. But this is not news for the New York Times, which blinds its readers to the frightening developments in Israel.

Once again the “New York Times” launders the dark forces gaining power in Israeli politics. Tensions in the occupied Palestinian West Bank are already at their highest level in years, and yet Israel’s security policy is now in the hands of a fascist who was considered so extreme that he wasn’t even allowed to serve as a foot soldier in the Israeli army when he was younger.