Talk about a loaded lead! A Tuesday New York Times headline revealed the paper's standard hostility toward Israel: "Israeli Voices Dissenting Against the War in Gaza Are Growing Louder,” by Isabel Kershner, a New York Times correspondent in Jerusalem.
The online headline deck even shoehorned in the "war crimes" slur:
‘Revenge Is Not a Policy’: Israelis Voice Dissent Against the War in Gaza -- After a long silence, prominent Israelis and activists are increasingly raising alarms about potential war crimes being carried out by the government.
Kershner loaded the deck from the start.
Abhorrence of Israel’s devastating war in Gaza has resonated for months in capitals and in university campuses abroad. Now, a growing number of Israelis are speaking out against what they describe as atrocities carried out in their name in the Palestinian enclave.
Israeli protesters are holding aloft portraits of Palestinian children killed in Gaza. Academics and authors, politicians and retired military leaders are accusing the Israeli government of indiscriminate killing and war crimes.
In the early months of the war, the vast majority of Israelis considered the offensive a just and necessary response to the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, even if they were skeptical that the government’s long-term goal of eliminating Hamas was attainable, opinion polls showed.
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But in recent months, a small but increasingly vocal minority has made anguished calls to end the war on moral grounds, even if many Israelis aren’t even aware such protests are even happening. Many of the protesters may have supported Israel’s right to self-defense after the Hamas attack, but many now say it has gone way too far and contravenes their values.
What other nations at war are obligated to take into account the suffering of enemy civilians, but to provide their sustenance? Only Israel, it seems.
Despite the desperate humanitarian crisis, a survey conducted in May by the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University found that 64.5 percent of the Israeli public was not at all, or not very, concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
About three-quarters of Israeli Jews thought that Israel’s military planning should not take into account the suffering of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza, or should do so only minimally, according to another recent survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Jerusalem.
Kershner forwarded vile claims against Israel without evidence or rebuttal.
Some prominent Israelis have also raised alarms. Ehud Olmert, a former prime minister, decried what he called the “cruel and criminal killing of civilians” and the starvation of Gaza as a government policy. Moshe Yaalon, a former military chief and defense minister, has warned for months of ethnic cleansing. Yair Golan, a former deputy chief of the military and leader of the Democrats, a left-leaning opposition party, caused a furor when he said the government was killing babies “as a hobby.”
The Israeli government denies committing war crimes in Gaza, though the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant….
The International Criminal Court has long discredited itself as a virulently anti-Israel organization that finds Israel’s self-defense offensive.
Kershner rounded up Israel leftists signing petitions, while aligning with the guilt-ridden angle of the “Left-wing Haaretz newspaper.”
The mainstream domestic news media has rarely provided vivid coverage of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. While the left-wing Haaretz newspaper has covered the suffering, a popular right-wing television station, Channel 14, regularly provides a platform for people calling for even harsher action against Gaza’s civilians.
Kershner has a history of insensitivity toward Israel. In a June 2024 story she managed to turn a risky, triumphant rescue of four Israeli hostages by the IDF into a “deadly Israeli operation.” To use their word, the Times bias against Israel is "vivid."
