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.
The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman condemns the incoming Israeli government, with “outright racist, anti-Arab Jewish extremists” set to become cabinet ministers.
Itamar Ben-Gvir will probably be the kingmaker in Israel’s next government. So why do the New York Times and National Public Radio downplay his racism?
The racist Israeli politician Itamar Ben Gvir could be the lynchpin for Netanyahu’s comeback. But the “New York Times” is keeping that news from its readers. Even as Israel supporters in the Congress, Robert Menendez and Brad Sherman, express concern about what Ben Gvir would do for Israel’s image in the west.
Hosam Salem, a Palestinian photographer who freelanced for the New York Times for four years in Gaza, reports that the newspaper dismissed him after a pro-Israel organization alerted the paper to Facebook posts in which he had expressed support for Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation.
Former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy told the U.N. Security Council this week that the two-state solution is over. “75 years ago, this United Nations offered partition as the political paradigm for the Holy Land. Today that land is de facto united under one dominion.” And it’s apartheid. And influential Jewish organizations who denounce such allegations as antisemitic are a “threat to freedom,” Peter Beinart writes in the New York Times.
So far, the mainstream media is almost totally quiet about AIPAC’s interference in the NY 10 primary race between corporate Democrat Dan Goldman and progressive Yuh-Line Niou. But AIPAC’s dark-money intervention is likely to energize thousands of voters who ordinarily don’t pay much attention to Israel/Palestine.
It is no surprise that Israel, and particularly BDS, has become a hot-button issue in the Democratic primary for New York’s 10th district.