New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Steven Erlanger has long been known for his pro-Palestinian reporting, and his Sunday magazine profile of Gaza's Khaled Abu Hilal, who went from the "mainstream" Palestinian group Fatah to the overtly anti-Israeli terrorist group Hamas, certainly fit the pattern.
Erlanger began with this cloying, sorrowful harangue:
"Palestinians never used to do these things to one another. Putting bullets in the back of the heads of men on their knees. Shooting up hospitals. Killing patients. Knee-capping doctors. Executing clerics. Throwing handcuffed prisoners to their deaths from Gaza’s highest (and most expensive) apartment buildings. There is a madness in Gaza now."
Is there not "madness in Gaza" when Palestinian terrorists blow up Israeli citizens in markets and pizzerias? Palestinians may have "never used to do these things to one another," but they do them to Jews, yet Erlanger failed to confront Hilal about terror attacks on Israelis or even address such terrorism.
As usual, Erlanger also failed to designate Hamas as a terrorist group, merely stating that it is "classified as a terrorist organization" by Western powers.
"Hamas -- a religious political-military organization that dominated the last Palestinian elections -- claimed it was fighting infidels, with a holy sanction to kill. Fatah -- the largest group in the Palestine Liberation Organization -- was nearly as brutal as Hamas and claimed it was fighting the Nazis. Poor young men from the squalid, stinking refugee camps of Gaza, their heads filled with religious slogans and revolutionary cant, took off their knitted black masks to pose in front of the gilded bathrooms of the once-powerful and rich men of Fatah. Then they stole the sinks, toilets, tiles and pipes, leaving the wiring and the metal scraps for the ordinary, unarmed poor."
Once again, Erlanger treated former PLO terrorist leader Yasir Arafat as some kind of hero:
"Fatah lost touch not only with the grass roots but also with its soul, and when it largely traded armed resistance against Israel for negotiations that failed to produce either peace or a better life for Palestinians, it seemed to lose a certain amount of self-respect. When Arafat died, it lost its defining symbol, the one charismatic man who combined the idea of war and politics in his tiny, uniformed self, his kaffiyeh carefully tied in the shape of British Mandate Palestine, and who could gather together the many strands of Palestinian politics."
(That paragraph recalled Erlanger's notorious January 6, 2005 statement: "[Palestinian candidate Mahmoud] Abbas, with no heroic history like that of his predecessor as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasir Arafat, has been campaigning in Mr. Arafat's footsteps if not in his clothes.")
And notice which trait of Hamas was emphasized last: "Hamas, working to Islamicize Palestinians and recruit them, combined religious fervor, well-financed charitable and social work and an effective strategy of military confrontation and terrorism. It is classified as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, and both try to disrupt its financing through charitable contributions and bank transfers."
For a fuller version of this article and more New York Times bias, visit Times Watch.
—Clay Waters is the director of Times Watch, an MRC project tracking the New York Times.
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"Palestinians never used
July 17, 2007 - 20:39 ET by Jack BauerOh yes they did. It's just that turds like Erlanger didn't report it because it disturbed the liberal template.
And it's hardly as if the New York Times isn't well-practised in this area. It's almost a tradition from the 1930s when it turned a blind eye to one of the biggest mass-murderers in human history.
Jozef Stalin and the USSR had to be defended and lauded at all costs, because, well to be blunt they were a bunch of commie loving bastards.
What A Hemorrhoid
July 18, 2007 - 00:02 ET by stratmanPalestinians did in fact kill one another over power grabs and familial vendettas throughout their history.
This terrorist sympathizing anarchististic NYT propagandist is a cancerous lesion metastisizing his lies to the world.
Another win for the NYT.
Palestinians: Never is a Long Time
July 17, 2007 - 21:05 ET by Lame CherryWhere to begin in refuting a moron in his literal lack of intelligence in Steve Erlanger.
The "Palestinians" are not a people at all, but 2 groups of people. The West Bank "Palestinians" are neo Syrians which are a compilation of transplants from various empires meant to put people on the land Judeans and Israelites were exiled from.
The "Palestinians" of Gaza are Philistines of Biblical origin.
In stating the above Erlanger can find all sorts of non violent tales of Philistines burning down houses of their own with people in them.
In later days, we can find security tapes with his buddy Arafat having orgies with is body guards to his all boy security detail being molested by the noted Arafat.
One would consider raping kids and burning people alive as inhumane, but then Erlanger tells us never did they murder and abuse each other so as we all know the New York Times is correct.......I guess the security tapes are wrong and the French doctored doctor reports of Arafat dying of aids just do not exist either.
I guess the dead mental retards sent out as suicide bombers do not count toward Palestinians preying on each other either.
Amazing what doesn't happen with all the dead, raped and mutilated bodies of Philistines and neo Syrians for centuries in all those graves just becaue Steve Erlanger says they do not exist.
*HIC IACET ARTORIVS REX QVONDAM REXQVE FVTVRVS
Steven Erlanger's record
July 18, 2007 - 23:09 ET by Alfred J. LemireSteven Erlanger has a track record of mistaken evaluations of political figures. In
May 2002, he wrote, [Jean-Marie] "Le Pen and others
who have modernized their fascism, like Jörg Haider of Austria and Pim Fortuyn
of the Netherlands.” Some could argue that the accusation was true of Messrs.
Le Pen and Haider; I wouldn’t. The accusation was spectacularly false,
insulting, and vicious with regard to the late Pym Fortuyn. Volkert van der
Graaf, allegedly an “animal rights activist,” murdered Mr. Fortuyn because the
latter was, in his words, “an increasing danger to, in particular,
vulnerable sections of society."
Which sections, the news coverage did not provide. From what one could glean of Mr.
Fortuyn’s political career, no portion of society any American leftist would
consider at risk was in any danger from Mr. Fortuyn. He was openly gay and on
the liberal side of most social issues. In the tiny The Netherlands, he wanted
to stop or greatly limit immigration (the news accounts I read did not seem to
be reliable on the point) and was hostile to Islam, perhaps mostly because the
Muslims in the Netherlands not only were not integrating into the society, but
also opposed most of the social positions Mr. Fortuyn favored.
Mr. Fortuyn had faults. Who doesn’t? Being stupid was not one of them.
Nothing supported the odious “modernized their fascism” charge Mr. Erlanger leveled at
Mr. Fortuyn. A better newspaper than The New York Times would have canned Mr.
Erlanger over that. Apparently, like bad wine, Mr. Erlanger has not gotten
better with time.