To NY Times the Truth about Palestinian Pay-to-Slay is a “Far-Right Conspiracy”
The Palestinian Authority pays hundreds of millions to terrorists, but to the New York Times that’s fake news
It’s been documented that the Palestinian Authority, rather than fighting terror, actively encourages it.
This isn’t just done by lionizing terrorists who have killed Jewish men, women, and children, but also by paying a healthy stipend to murderers who are in jail, or to their families if they were killed.
But to The New York Times, this news constitutes “far-right conspiracy programming.”
In an article about how Facebook has brought Campbell Brown aboard to fight fake news, Times reporter Nellie Bowles wrote:
Once those shows get started, Ms. Brown wants to use Facebook’s existing Watch product — a service introduced in 2017 as a premium product with more curation that has nonetheless been flooded with far-right conspiracy programming like “Palestinians Pay $400 million Pensions For Terrorist Families” — to be a breaking news destination. The result would be something akin to an online competitor to cable news.
It’s been more than a day since John Podhoretz and others have pointed out that this propaganda of any sort, but real news.
The NYT describes news that Palestinians pay money to terrorist families as "far right conspiracy" mongering. It's a FACT. This is a humiliating and disgraceful error.
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) April 21, 2018
The disgraceful characterization remains in the article despite the many critics, so this isn’t on just one rogue reporter but on the paper as a whole.
Liel Leibovitz wrote in Tablet:
As those of us who are in the reality based community know, the Palestinian Authority’s financial support of terrorists and their families is very, very far from a conspiracy, far-right or otherwise. Reading Bowles’s report, for example, Lahav Harkov, the Knesset reporter for The Jerusalem Post, took to Twitter to share some of her meticulous reporting on the Palestinian pay-for-slay program with Bowles: Read the real news, and you’ll learn that, in 2017, the PA doled out more than $347 million to families of terrorists who had murdered Jews, increasing the amount to $403 million this year. Between 2013 and 2017, the PA spent $1.12 billion on supporting terrorists and their families, as Yosef Kuperwasser, the former head of the IDF intelligence’s research branch, reported in Tablet last May.
This information, of course, was available to Bowles and to anyone else with Internet access, and only she and her editors may know whether it was malice or sheer incompetence that stopped her from looking up a simple fact before presenting it as an ideologically tainted conspiracy theory. But here’s what we do know: This is how the pernicious notion of fake news takes hold.
Or as David Bernstein summed up the Leibovitz article at Instapundit: NEW YORK TIMES CALLS THE TRUTH “FAR-RIGHT CONSPIRACY PROGRAMMING.”
I’d like to get back to Leibovitz’s observation about “This is how the pernicious notion of fake news takes hold.”
I believe the source for Bowles’ false assertion is The Washington Post’s “fact-checker” Glenn Kessler who, last month, awarded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Two Pinocchios for asserting that the Palestinian Authority paid terrorists $350 million a year.
There was enough wrong with Kessler’s “fact-check,” but he also played word games by seeming to justify Palestinian terror using the cliche, “one man’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.” He also quoted NGOs Hamoked and Addameer, both of which should be highly suspect, unless one believes that any organization that exists to criticize Israel should automatically be trusted. (Kessler subjects neither to any scrutiny suggesting that he subscribes to this belief.)
Sean Durms of CAMERA rebutted Kessler’s “fact-check” in the Washington Examiner.
What this shows is that the mainstream media, especially regarding Israel, but regarding anything it considers “right-wing” or “conservative,” has retreated into a cocoon in which narrative trumps truth.
The story of pay-to-slay is a real news story and no amount of fact-checking can explain that away. Yet it would appear that despite the reporting, Bowles took Kessler’s hit job to heart and used it as an example of fake news.
The mindset was made clear in a thoroughly dishonest defense of The New York Times’ coverage of Israel by a former Times reporter Neil Lewis.
But those groups, with their gentle chiding, became eclipsed by Camera which is regarded by many Times editors as harsh, angry, and usually unreasoning. Camera is run from a nondescript office building overlooking the Massachusetts Turnpike in the Allston section of Boston. Its current director, Andrea Levin, oversees a staff of about 35, 20 of whom work in the Allston office, the rest around the nation and overseas, in Israel and other places. The group has an annual budget of $3.5 million, she said, though it does not disclose the specifics of its donors. At The Times, a mention of Camera frequently induces eye-rolling or shrugs. Editors
have clearly lost patience with the group. Lelyveld said he started out trying to be cooperative, “but it’s just hard to continue to deal with someone who is always saying: ‘you’re a liar’.’’ There are counterparts on the left, media critics of The Times who generally complain the paper is too favorable or even in thrall to Israel. But there is nothing equivalent in size or funding to Camera.
The difference between CAMERA and its “counterparts on the left,” is that CAMERA cites facts and figures. I would also argue that on the editorial and op-ed pages, left-wing critics of Israel get a disproportionate platform, meaning that Lewis’ distinction is meaningless. The Times gives many more left-wing critics of a voice on their own pages. For Lewis to argue that left-wing counterparts to CAMERA are not as organized or big, is meaningless when they are given a disproportionate voice by the paper.
(Side note: The Lewis article prompted a great column from the late Barry Rubin debunking the current understanding of Nakba.)
In any case, a throwaway line in a technology story shows the deep corruption plaguing America’s major newspapers when it comes to reporting on the Middle East.
UPDATE: Three days later The New York Times finally issued a correction.
Correction of the Year. @nytimes #paytoslay pic.twitter.com/xjCIY1Rz7q
— Dani Dayan (@AmbDaniDayan) April 24, 2018
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Comments
I appreciate the content, Mr. Gerstman.
But you could benefit by some editing, as with…
“I believe the source for Bowles’ false assertion is The Washington Post’s “fact-checker” Glenn Kessler who, last month, awarded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Two Pinocchios for asserting that the Palestinian Authority.”
Thank you, it’s been corrected.
“Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not.”
— Jer. 5:21
“There are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know.”
— Jonathan Swift (and several others)
“Nothing to see here. Move along.”
— New York Times
LibRules will only see things which impact THEM. the BDS agenda must be pushed and anti western values adored.
the only solution is to continually proclaim the truth and also complain to the advertisers who keep these Fake Nudes Outlets profitable. I am NOT calling for boycotts but I am calling for having these advertisers explain how they expect to stay in business.
most Arab leaders realize the danger to themselves posed by the Balestinians. it is long past time that the Euros and Arab countries stop having any contact with Abbas and his agenda of attempted genocide. ‘Arbeit macht NICHT Frei’.
what i can’t square the circle is that Israel provides food, water, hospitalization for (mostly) free to the scum that wants to kill them and by extension all Jews (and Christians for that matter).
enlightenment would be appreciated!
Liel Leibovitz wrote in Tablet:
As those of us who are in the reality based community know, the Palestinian Authority’s financial support of terrorists and their families is very, very far from a conspiracy
A curious phrase. Only a few years ago, there was a deliberate effort by leftoids to substitute it for the deceptive label “liberal” and/or the cryptic “progressive”. That effort doesn’t seem to have caught on. But the phrase is still “code” and perhaps best avoided.
I think he was using it ironically, meaning that the progressives, who tried to co-opt the term really are delusional. From what I’ve read of Leibovitz, he’s no conservative. He’s also no leftist.
Of course they are “terrorists!” What else would you call someone who is fighting to regain their land and country? And they get paid for doing that – is that a surprise? No, all “terrorists” and members of armies get paid. That’s just normal. But the real question is… Do you want to stop the fighting and negotiate in good faith. If so you might not get everything you want or think you deserve.
1. Even people legitimately fighting to regain their land and country are bound by the laws of war.
2. Even being a legitimate soldier engaged in war does not give one the right to commit whatever crimes one feels like committing. On the contrary, soldiers who commit crimes are often hanged when civilian justice might be more lenient. Murdering families in their beds is a crime no matter who one is or what else one is doing.
3. The “Palestinian” Arabs never had a land and country so they can’t be fighting to regain it. They have no legitimate cause; in fact they have no cause at all except antisemitism. Their goal is simply to finish the job their ally Hitler started.
And your views are exactly why the conflict will continue when you make such blatantly false and insidious statements that they have no cause except antisemitism (always that!) and that they never had a land or country. You somehow imagine that the jewish theocracy has superior rights because you imagine they are the chosen people. You make the case for an everlasting battle, forgetting or ignoring history and the forces that eventually prevail. Your views are an existential threat to Israel.
1. That their only cause is antisemitism, and that they never had a land or country, is the exact truth.
2. Israel is not a theocracy. Quite the opposite.
3. The Jews are God’s chosen people, whether you like it or not.
4. The battle will not last forever. The moment Israel gets serious about it and drops its suicidal commitment to a thoroughly unJewish ideal of “purity of arms” that no other army in the world follows, it will win.
I would expect nothing else of that “Mexico City Times” tabloid.
I assume this is meant as a claim that Carlos Slim owns and/or has any sort of editorial control on the NYT. Neither of these is true. (1) Slim owns only 1/6 of the NYT’s Class B shares; (2) even if he owned 100% of them, he still wouldn’t control the paper because the Sulzberger family own all the Class A shares, and therefore have absolute control of the board.
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