‘Bigoted attitudes worldwide only mushroomed as a result of Israel’s response,’ the Times claims
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. The timing predated Israel’s post-October 7 actions in Gaza, as evidenced by a former editor of The New Republic, Peter Beinart, publicly abandoning Zionism in July of 2020, by the Harvard Crimson in 2022 editorially endorsing a boycott of Israel, by the Harvard student organizations that came out with their letter on October 7, 2023, stating, “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” and “the apartheid regime is the only one to blame.”
The videos and pictures of “starving children,” including in the Times, were fake, orchestrated by Hamas, and frequently failed to disclose that the “starving” children suffered from pre-existing underlying medical conditions that distorted their appearance. As the American ambassador in Israel, Mike Huckabee, and the Israeli government pointed out with their use of the term “blood libel,” these images tapped into classic antisemitic myths of Jews as baby-killers. As the ADL, the organization Foxman once led, puts it, “reports indicate that Hamas has stockpiled months-worth supplies of food, water and fuel for their own use, and has been stealing truckloads of international aid that has entered Gaza since the fighting began.” If anything the images of hungry Gazans should therefore have fueled a shift of worldwide public opinion against Hamas.
Were Foxman still alive, he might have written a letter to the editor of the Times pointing out some of that, noting that bigotry is fundamentally irrational, and that attempting to blame the government of Israel for the actions or beliefs of the bigots is a fool’s project.
Foxman publicly canceled his New York Times subscription in May 2021 over what he called “blood libel of Israel and the Jewish people on the front page.” That, too, can’t be chalked up to Israel’s response to October 7, 2023, because it predates it. The Times did not include that in the obituary of Foxman, either.
The author of the Times obituary, Joe Berger, who officially retired from the New York Times in 2014 and is 81 years old, did not respond to my email asking him about the story.