Afrasianet - A new dossier reveals the close ties between 20 senior editors, executives and journalists at the New York Times who covered the events in Gaza,  Israel and Zionism.

Mondoweiss publishes an article about the collusive role of the New York Times in justifying Israel's genocide against Palestinians, institutional collusion with Zionism through its editorial bias, and its staff's links to the Israeli occupation.

The following is the text of the article translated into Arabic:

The New York Times enabled Israel to continue its genocide. 

A new dossier reveals the close ties between 20 of the paper's top editors, executives, and journalists who covered the events in Gaza, and their ties to Israel and Zionism.

Since the beginning of the Zionist genocide in Gaza more than twenty months ago, the New York Times has covered Israeli war crimes. We have witnessed the Zionist entity drop 2,000-pound bombs on displaced Palestinians who have been forced to stay in tents, massacre hungry Palestinians in relief centers, arrest and torture Palestinians accused of fighting or providing care, destroy Gaza's entire health care system, destroy almost all of its schools and universities, and damage more than 90 percent of residential buildings, and the entry of food and supplies into the besieged Gaza Strip is prohibited. But the New York Times journalists chose to ignore, acquit, distort or justify each of these crimes.

Like any arms manufacturer, the New York Times is part of the war mechanism, producing in public opinion the impunity that enables and perpetuates Israel's ongoing genocide.

When we first occupied the lobby of the New York Times in November 2023, we denounced the paper's refusal to date the Al-Aqsa Flood in the context of Israel's occupation of Palestine for more than seven decades, and its choice to portray the Israeli army's bombing of Gaza as a targeted war against Hamas. We demanded the newspaper the truth. We printed our own newspaper, "War Crimes of New York," which included the names of the Palestinian martyrs registered at the time. It took us more than an hour to read the names of the martyrs who were less than one year old. We called on our audience to boycott the newspaper, withdraw their time, trust and interest from it, and unsubscribe from its news, games and recipes.

We are not the first to point out The Times' commitment to Zionism. The dossier we published this month is based on investigative work by media outlets and organizations, including Electronic Intifada, Mondois, The Intercept, Fairness and Accuracy in Coverage, and Palestinian writers who have exposed the paper's falsity for decades. 

Since October 7, these criticisms have gained a new audience and growing importance. Newsroom word-choice tracking data, as well as leaks of Times editorial directives, show anti-Palestinian bias. Times headline corrections have become a favorite rhetorical tool of the Palestine solidarity movement—to expose distortion, to correct facts, and to tell the truth.

Our dossier adds to this body of knowledge: it reveals twenty senior editors, executives, and journalists covering the Gaza war with ties to the Zionist "state," which would further undermine the Times' undeserved status.

Natan Odenheimer served in the Magellan Special Unit of the Israeli occupation forces. Now that he is a reporter for The Times in Tel Aviv, he writes about his former comrades in arms and joins them in the work. How can we expect someone to provide accurate coverage of the occupation, who has worn the uniform of the occupier for four years?

Isabelle Kirchner is the mother of two former soldiers in the Israeli occupation army, and the wife of another soldier. After his service, Kirchner's husband took over the information strategy program of an Israeli think tank, a department tasked with painting a positive image of Israel in the media. There is no need to wonder how this relationship affects her media coverage: Kirchner has cited her husband's think tank more than 100 times since she began writing for The Times in 2007. The influential executives and writers of Zionism clearly show that The Times is in an awkward position. The entire institution is systematically organized to shield Israel from international accountability.

The Times' support for Zionism and the settler-colonial mission of the region is entrenched in its history. A.M. Rosenthal, the Times' head of news for nearly two decades, was paid tribute at his funeral for showing that "love of Israel is exactly the same as love for our country." Max Frankel, the Times' executive editor for more than a decade, admitted that he wrote "from a pro-Israel perspective" and said he was expected to defend "Israel" "whether it is right or wrong."

The Times condemned our research as a "despicable campaign" in the press, but refuses to accept that Israel's killing of more than 200 Palestinian journalists was targeted. Those who serve in Israel's occupation "army," who are paid by Israeli lobbyists to spread Israeli propaganda, are not the bravest fellow Palestinians: they are their enemies.

The newspaper's response to our case uses the same tortured logic used in its coverage – how can our research be both "publicly known" and "inaccurate"? We know why the Times is silent about the murders of media workers: Palestinian journalists are exposing the very truth that the newspaper seeks to obscure. They are constantly accused of bias and the inability to cover objectively because they are Palestinian. Their identity is the ultimate accusation. At The Times, Palestinians escape justice, and their struggle to live freely is unjust, unjust and deserves condemnation.

"The New York Times does not recognize Palestine," one of the Times editors told Palestinian intellectual Ibrahim Abu Lughod. Abu Lughod responded, "Well, Palestine also doesn't recognize the New York Times." His refusal to recognize the Times 37 years ago is an invitation to undermine its prestige. Everyone should heed his call and boycott, divest, and unsubscribe from the Times. To imagine a free Palestine in our lifetime, it is useful to imagine a world without the New York Times.