A Miscarriage of Journalism at 'The New York Times'

[mopinko]

personally, i take most everything published about gaza w a big grain of salt. imho, oct 7 was part of a plan to defeat joe biden. the protests that broke out looked orchestrated to me from the jump. it is a fact that qatar has poured million into u.s. universities, leading to hiring of many profs sympathetic, to say the least, to the palestinian cause. oct 7 was the start of their ‘sleeper cell’ activation.
i think the kristoff opinion piece was sloppy journalism that even the now quite corrupt nyt wd not have published in it’s news section.
they have had to walk back quite a few things, esp their use of kids w degenerative diseases as ‘famine victims’. if the ‘famine’ was so bad, shouldnt they have had their pick of hundreds of emaciated kids to choose from?
i cd go on, but…
anyway, here is a point by point refutation of what i believe is flat out libel.

Let’s start with fairness. One of the fundamental rules of our justice system is that a man should be permitted to confront his accuser. Whether in civil or criminal cases, we have for hundreds of years rejected the English Star Chamber’s technique of allowing anonymous witnesses to advance salacious claims in secret. This principle is so essential to any basic system of fairness that it appears repeatedly throughout our laws—from the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause and its guarantee of public trials to our hearsay rules, which preclude out-of-court statements the accused never had an opportunity to cross-examine. But Kristof’s article relies mostly on anonymous sources whose credibility—much less their political or ideological affiliations—cannot be tested and thus cannot be known.

Two, any cursory review of Israeli legal databases would reveal that Israeli prisons allow Palestinian prisoners to file complaints about the conditions of their confinement—and that these complaints do get filed. Indeed, since 2023, Israel has received 182 such complaints filed by Israel Prison Service detainees from the Gaza Strip. Of those, 83 were filed by the prisoners’ attorneys, 85 were reported by Israeli officials themselves, and four involved allegations of sex offenses—a tiny fraction among a prison population that includes some 10,000 Palestinians. But the point is that Kristof offers not a single shred of evidence that any of the Palestinian prisoners who filed complaints has ever been subjected to retribution—much less that this speculation about retribution has ever been a feature of the Israeli prison system.

Three, Kristof’s reliance on anonymity ensures that no one—most especially the Israelis—can ever prove him wrong. That’s because he not only tells us very little about the accusers, he tells us nothing about the offenses. No locations. No dates. No perpetrators. Israeli prisons, like many of our own, are often videotaped, and those recordings are reviewed not just by prison guards but by prison officials and lawyers. If Kristof had conducted anything resembling a fair analysis, we would have expected him to have asked to review some of this footage. But there’s no indication that he ever did. Nor can anyone else do so now because Kristof gave us no details to check against his claims. There’s an old adage that says it’s impossible to prove a negative—all the more so when there are no facts to investigate.

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-new-york-times-miscarriage-of-journalism?utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawR4J-tleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFCSFoyOVdrZTk1bjZ5UGZ2c3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHo0mNGgWkFRW0nIgndZaG5Zinshxkj44ftbsMFmaxLS70knggg-rOinpQ3V7_aem_14QHlOjYnwHuUVpce9y-kw

[AloeVera]

1. From Bari Weiss' The Free Press, "anti-woke" and Israel's mouthpiece.

Uh huh.


Such irony.

People who read that rag or only Israeli sources will fall for all kinds of CT and also refuse to believe a word said by Palestinians. I would advise such people to maybe broaden their horizons.

[mopinko]

2. my purpose is to present the other side.

the palestian pov gets plenty of play here. i mostly get the other side of the story from ppl i follow on fb. i do my best to track that stuff back to as reliable a source as i can find.

and like i said- i DO take it all w a grain of salt.

[AloeVera]

3. I see. Thanks for explaining.

We got plenty from the other side for 2 years. In the end, as I always say, truth will out. We all want the unvarnished truth I imagine. You can't get there by limiting your sources to fit confirmation bias. I read Israeli papers of all stripes. Not just the rare ones like Ha'aretz or +972 Mag that are left or don't tow the right-wing Israeli government's hard line. Facebook's algorhythm will direct you to extreme pro-Israel content while censoring Palestinian voices. It's much the same on all social media now. What freedom of expression?

Palestinian childten were starving. Period. How do I know this with certainty? I tracked very closely the number of aid trucks allowed in. (Not just food but medicine and shelter etc were obstructed). It was a fraction of pre-war levels. I watched in horror as Israel's barbaric siege tightened ever more brutally and fumed ad it came up wirh more illogical and absurd "explanations". As people risked their very LIVES to score just one bag of flour to feed their kids. Flour. Imagine. I can't recall how many exactly were shot and KILLED by the IDF for that precious bag of flour. I believe its upwards of 2,000. Imagine.

The focus on the pictures is so like Israel and its PR tactics. Casting doubt, shooting the messenger, smearing Palestinian sources and voice, honing in on ONE irrelevant detail to discredit the entire picture ezc. I beieve the word here is gaslighting. It all worked or there would not be 50,000 dead women and children in Gaza today.

And the truth? Gets ignored or trampled. Those kids were publicized because they were the canary in the coalmine. The disabled, sick, weak with pre-existing conditions and no access to medicine will show the signs of starvation first. Succumb first. But Israel's defenders could not or would not admit to that and instead worked to undermine the legitimate claims of starvation, thus enabling it while denying it. I have a few choice words for that.

157 children have been recorded as having died from starvation or acute malnutrition as of December 2025. Hundreds more adults. UNICEF and Save the Children say the number is likely higher mainly because people who died at "home" in their tents without making it to hospital are not counted. Given that Gaza's hospitals were destroyed to the point only a few were even semi-functional, I fear the human suffering due to the deprivation of food by Israel was more immense than we know.

My point is if you only focus on "pictures" without understanding what you are seeing and why, and not knowing the real facts and reality as reported by many aid agencies on the ground - and listening to or reading only one side - you are susceptible to Israel's tactics to obstruct the truth and carry on its wars and genocide. There is a high cost to that for real people.

[mopinko]

4. what makes u think i only see 1 side?

i only see 1 side here, fersher.