Thank you for Gary Rosenblatt’s important article, “The Cartoon Heard ’Round the World” (May 3). Unfortunately, The New York Times’ bias against Israel is longstanding, pervasive and institutional, and it isn’t limited to a single political cartoon.
Consider the following recent example. On May 4, during the Hamas rocket-barrage assault on Israel, a rocket struck a home in Gaza and killed a pregnant Palestinian woman and a baby girl. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry immediately accused Israel of firing the rocket that killed them; an Arabic-language Israel Defense Forces spokesman countered that it was a Palestinian rocket, while Israel’s chief military spokesman initially withheld comment pending an investigation. The Times reported that “a pregnant woman and her young daughter were killed in Israeli strikes on Saturday, according to Gaza Health Ministry officials.” There was no mention that Israeli officials were disputing or investigating the claim.
Later that night, Israel completed its investigation. Israel’s chief military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis, categorically denied Israeli responsibility and announced the finding that a Palestinian rocket had killed the mother and baby. The Times’ next-day story mentioned Israel’s denial, but whereas the original Hamas accusation appeared prominently on the front page in the second paragraph, the denial was buried deep in the article’s 29th paragraph. It was followed by: “Gaza officials continued to accuse Israel of what they called a war crime.”
Islamic Jihad subsequently admitted in a published report that it had fired the rocket that killed the pregnant woman and her baby. (Yet even a week later, the Times had yet to acknowledge this.
Where does Israel go to redeem its good name from this malicious — and irresponsibly reported — blood libel?
San Francisco
