NY Times goes to idiotic lengths to take a poke at Israel

by Leo Rennert

In monitoring New York Times coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I've served up numerous examples of how its correspondents spin, distort, bend and ignore the truth so as to paint Israel in a bad light.

But there are no polite adjectives for the idiotic lengths to which Times correspondent Isabel Kershner goes to take a poke at Israel in her Oct. 18 article about resumption of mediation efforts to negotiate release of Sgt. Gilad Shalit from his lengthy Hamas captivity in Gaza ("Israel Renews Bid to Free Soldier Held by Hamas" page A4). This bit of poisonous anti-Israel propaganda is sui generis.

Kershner starts her piece with a straightforward report on new efforts by a German mediator to arrange a prisoner swap that might end Shalit's four-year stint as a Hamas hostage. So far, so good.

But objectivity goers out the window when she injects the following paragraph, which I cite in full:

"Some Israeli commentators," she writes, "have made unfavorable comparisons in recent days between the Israeli government's efforts to win Sergeant Shalit's release and the more successful efforts of the Chilean government to rescue the 33 miners stuck underground."

Huh?

Where is there even the remotest basis to draw such a parallel?

Were the Chilean miners held captive by a terrorist group? Did their rescuers have to push into an area under terrorist control? Was the underground location of the miners kept secret by their captors?

I don't question the fact that among the Israeli commentariat, there is no lack of self-hating Jews to come up with such a baseless, nonsensical comparison. But what obliges a New York Times correspondent to regurgitate such idiocy, except her predisposition to seize on anything and everything that can be converted into an anti-Israel poison pill?

And where are the editors who are supposed to scrutinize her copy for accuracy and fairness before it gets into print?

This is not just a solitary reporter's mindless anti-Israel behavior. This is an institutional bias at the New York Times that allows such sophomoric anti-Israel games and inventions to infiltrate its news columns.

Leo Rennert

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