Neil MacFarquhar

New York Times Middle East reporter Neil MacFarquhar brought his usual anti-Israel slant to his Monday New York Times story on the Palestinians seeking United Nations membership: “Palestinians Turn To U.N., Where Partition Began.”

The Palestinians see the membership application as a last-ditch attempt to preserve the two-state solution in the face of ever-encroaching Israeli settlements, as well as a desperate move to shake up the negotiations that they feel have achieved little after 20 years of American oversight. The question is whether trying to bring the intractable problem back to its international roots will somehow provide the needed jolt to get negotiations moving again.

In "Abandon Stereotypes, Muslims in America Say," his Tuesday story from a Muslim convention in Rosemont, Ill., New York Times reporter Neil MacFarquhar, who covers Muslims in America for the Times, again acted more like an advocate than an objective reporter.

"It is time for the United States to stop treating every American Muslim as somehow suspect, leaders of the faith said at their largest annual convention, which ended here on Monday….The image problems were among the topics most discussed by many of the 30,000 attendees. A fresh example cited was an open letter from two Republican House members, Peter Hoekstra of Michigan and Sue Myrick of North Carolina, that attacked the Justice Department for sending envoys to the convention because, the lawmakers said, the Islamic Society of North America was a group of 'radical jihadists.'"