New York Times Whitewash of Nasrallah Draws Bipartisan Backlash
Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah addresses his supporters through a screen during a rally commemorating the annual Hezbollah Martyrs’ Day, in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Photo: Reuters/Aziz Taher
A New York Times obituary of Hezbollah terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah that falsely claimed he favored “equality for Muslims, Jews, and Christians” has drawn fierce condemnation from members of the US Congress from both political parties.
Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Democrat from New York, posted a screenshot of the Times article. “Reading The NY Times, one would think that Nasrallah was not a terrorist doing the bidding of theocrats in Tehran but a civil rights leader, marching for the equality of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Attempting the mass murder of Jews in Israel, as Hezbollah has done, is a strange way of fighting for equality,” Torres wrote.
Rep. Brad Sherman, a Democrat from California, posted, “Nasrallah was responsible for terror attacks against Jewish community institutions, including the bombing of Argentina’s AMIA Jewish center which killed 83 civilians. Publishing the absurd lie that he ‘wanted equality’ undermines @NYTimes credibility if not swiftly retracted.”
Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York, wrote, “The moral depravity of failed mainstream media outlets is on full display in their disgustingly glorifying eulogies of Hezbollah terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah.” Stefanik called it “beyond comprehension” that the Times and other publications “would idolize Nasrallah’s reign of terror, which was responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Americans, Israelis, and innocents around the world including Muslims.”
The Times has not appended a correction to its article, but, in a tacit concession that the original language was off-base, it stealth-edited the passage screenshotted by Torres and Sherman.
The original, inaccurate, passage said, “Mr. Nasrallah was opposed to Israel, which he called ‘the Zionist entity,’ and maintained that there should be one Palestine with equality for Muslims, Jews, and Christians.” As stealth-edited by the Times, it now reads, “He often referred to Israel as ‘the Zionist entity’ and maintained that Jewish people who arrived from other countries over decades should return to their nations of origin, and said that Israel should be replaced by the state of Palestine, with equality for all residents.”
Even that is too kind, ignoring Nasrallah’s statement that if the Jews “all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them world-wide.”
It’s the word “equality” that really grates, with its false implication that what Nasrallah was campaigning for was some extension of the American Declaration of Independence’s idea that “all men are created equal,” rather than the imposition of Iran-style Islamist extremist clerical rule.
While the Times is busy posthumously buffing and polishing Nasrallah’s reputation, it’s simultaneously tarring Israel by likening members of its governing coalition to the Hezbollah terrorist group. “The struggle between the world of inclusion and the world of resistance comes down to many things, but none more — today — than [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s willingness to follow up his blow to the ‘Party of God’ in Lebanon [Hezbollah] by dealing a similar political blow to the ‘Party of God’ in Israel,” Thomas Friedman writes, describing the Israeli “Party of God” as “the coalition of far-right Jewish settler supremacists and messianists who want Israel to permanently control all the territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, with no border lines in between.”
Leave it to the New York Times to admiringly portray an actual Hezbollah leader as favoring “one Palestine with equality for Muslims, Jews, and Christians,” while a Times columnist advocates the obliteration of Israel’s “far-right Jewish settler supremacists and messianists who want Israel to permanently control all the territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, with no border lines in between.”
You don’t have to be an Israeli far-right settler or even a sympathizer to see the double standard, just a Times reader with more skepticism and independent-mindedness than the people running that newspaper these days. Even the politicians can see it.
Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.
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