Ira Stoll writes for the Washington Free Beacon about the latest journalistic malfeasance from a leading legacy media outlet.
The New York Times used its obituary of the longtime national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, to promote the false narrative that Israel’s own actions in Gaza have worsened antisemitism.
The Times claims that “bigoted attitudes worldwide only mushroomed as a result of Israel’s response to a Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed more than 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers.”
It went on, “The Palestinian death toll of more than 60,000 and videos broadcast worldwide of the destruction of Gaza’s buildings and of starving children set off a shift in American public opinion, with more Americans siding with the Palestinians. There was also an upsurge in antisemitic incidents.”
Blaming Jewish behavior, rather than antisemites, for antisemitic incidents and attitudes is textbook antisemitism. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism includes among its possible examples of antisemitism, “Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible … even for acts committed by non-Jews.” The Times passage meets at least two elements of former Soviet refusenik and former Israeli deputy prime minister Natan Sharansky’s “three Ds” definition of antisemitism—demonization and double standards, if not delegitimization.
In addition, it’s not even accurate that the Israeli self-defense actions, which involved killing Hamas terrorists and imposing pressure that ultimately led to the release of hundreds of live and dead hostages being held by Hamas, created the antisemitism or even any public opinion shift against Israel. The “shift in American public opinion,” overstated though it has been, to the extent that it exists at all, has been driven not by Israeli actions but global trends of secularization, a rise in militant Islam, and by an intense international social media and propaganda campaign by outlets and platforms of foreign governments, individuals, and organizations—Qatar, Turkey, China, Iran.
