When Israel seems guilty of killing Palestinians to The New York Times, the newspaper is eager to trumpet the story across its front page. We all remember the June 12, 2006 headline “Errant Shell Turns Girl Into Palestinian Icon“, and the article that suggested that in all likelihood, Israel was responsible for the shell that killed 9 Palestinians.
But when Palestinians kill Palestinians, The New York Times is a lot less interested. A car bomb near a Gaza beach on Friday exploded near a Hamas vehicle, killing five Hamas members, a 7 year-old girl, Sareen Safadi, and wounding 22 others (at last count). Did The New York Times put the story on its front page? No, but the article about over-exuberant parents of children at summer camp did.
To be fair, the New York Times, like, say, the moonie rag, the Washington Times, is somewhere on the hypocritical continuum of awareness of what they routinely do in terms of journalistic standards of objectivity. Not completely blind; not completely biased. But Landes reasonably points to the NYT's selection of the satanic principle of the scapegoating Israel because, in my opinion, it has recourse to no other system having rejected the Christian faith alternative long, long ago. The latter offers a way out of the false transcendence of "Satan casting out Satan" that may for a time produce momentary social stability. The latter offers a freedom that the NYT knows nothing about.
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