The New York Times has been criticized for helping terrorists in the past by disclosing investigatory methods and rendition policies and practices, supporting them in its editorial pages and allowing terror suspects to spin their stories in the news section, disclosing methods our nation has used to prevent funds from reaching terrorists the paper has consistently mislead its readers (including a large percentage of the policy-making elites) regarding the goals and nature of the Iranian nuclear program and the lethal malevolency that fuels its development. The Times is fulfilling a role that it once did so show shamefully in the 1930s: an enabler of genocide. |
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The intentions of the regime can be discerned through its words and actions. Iran has long boasted of its plans to wreak nuclear destruction upon Israel, even before the world heard the rantings of its current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In 2001, its former President Rafsanjani (still a power broker in Iran) boasted that one day the Islamic world would have a nuclear weapon and that its use against Israel would destroy that state, while the any retaliation against the Arab world would only inflict relatively minor damages because of the vastness of the Arab world.
This was not ambitious enough for the current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who boasts of his plans to destroy America and Israel. In widely reported remarks, he called for Israel to be wiped "off the face of the earth". Even media outlets distinctly unfavorable to Israel reported this boast. Less frequently quoted remarks from the same speech called for the destruction of America. However, alone among major and minor media outlets, the Times displayed an unseemly alacrity in ignoring the clear meaning of his remarks and has been promoting the view that this destruction was not what Ahamdinejad advocated.
The paper, in an article that ran in its influential Sunday edition, presented an almost delusional benign view of Ahamdinejad's words that virtually no one accepts (even groups with a history of animosity towards Israel): Ahmadinejad is merely calling for "regime change" in Israel. Somehow, the image of Ahamdinejad espousing the ouster of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert does not ring true. Who did the Times find to validate its absurd view? Juan Cole. Professor Cole teaches at the University of Michigan, and is widely known for his anti-Israel activism and for his blog that consistently takes harshly anti-Israel view. He has been widely criticized for his scholarly failings.
AND STILL MORE:
The New York Times has a shameful history regarding its coverage of genocidal dictators. Laurel Leff recently wrote a revelatory book, Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper, that was a masterful and meticulously constructed expose of how the paper throughout the1930s and 1940s averted its eyes (and the eyes of its readers) from the outrages committed by Nazi Germany. The Times all but ignored the depredations being visited upon the Jews of Europe, and refused to report in any forthright manner the existence of mass murder. In minimizing the extremism of Hitler and ignoring the violence he was committing against the Jews (and others), the paper played a role in our nation's feeble response to the rise of Hitler. The rising dangers to America and to the world were systematically ignored or belittled by the paper, which deliberately and willfully "deep-sixed" the developments that led to the deaths of 6 million Jews and many millions of non-Jews. The record of the "paper of record" is clear.*
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, later as farce. The New York Times has unparalled abilty to create the news agenda that the rest of American media follows. Many of our decision-makers rely on the Times for its views of the world and for the opinions it promotes. The Times has portrayed Iran and its nuclear program in the most benign way possible: explaining away its apocalyptic ideology through abusrd translation gymnastics that rely on a marginal professor, apologizing or ignoring its role in promoting terror and the deaths of Americans and other peoples, minimizing at all turns the risks of its nuclear program, and depicting an Iran that is being bullied by America and one that should be allowed to develop not only its nuclear technology but also a nuclear arsenal. In the Times view, America should come to accept this "reality".
The Iranian dictator boasts of his desire to remove Israel from the "pages of time"; if he succeeds, the pages of the Times will again play a role in yet another Holocaust.
Read it and weep.
The intentions of the regime can be discerned through its words and actions. Iran has long boasted of its plans to wreak nuclear destruction upon Israel, even before the world heard the rantings of its current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In 2001, its former President Rafsanjani (still a power broker in Iran) boasted that one day the Islamic world would have a nuclear weapon and that its use against Israel would destroy that state, while the any retaliation against the Arab world would only inflict relatively minor damages because of the vastness of the Arab world.
This was not ambitious enough for the current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who boasts of his plans to destroy America and Israel. In widely reported remarks, he called for Israel to be wiped "off the face of the earth". Even media outlets distinctly unfavorable to Israel reported this boast. Less frequently quoted remarks from the same speech called for the destruction of America. However, alone among major and minor media outlets, the Times displayed an unseemly alacrity in ignoring the clear meaning of his remarks and has been promoting the view that this destruction was not what Ahamdinejad advocated.
The paper, in an article that ran in its influential Sunday edition, presented an almost delusional benign view of Ahamdinejad's words that virtually no one accepts (even groups with a history of animosity towards Israel): Ahmadinejad is merely calling for "regime change" in Israel. Somehow, the image of Ahamdinejad espousing the ouster of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert does not ring true. Who did the Times find to validate its absurd view? Juan Cole. Professor Cole teaches at the University of Michigan, and is widely known for his anti-Israel activism and for his blog that consistently takes harshly anti-Israel view. He has been widely criticized for his scholarly failings.
AND STILL MORE:
The New York Times has a shameful history regarding its coverage of genocidal dictators. Laurel Leff recently wrote a revelatory book, Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper, that was a masterful and meticulously constructed expose of how the paper throughout the1930s and 1940s averted its eyes (and the eyes of its readers) from the outrages committed by Nazi Germany. The Times all but ignored the depredations being visited upon the Jews of Europe, and refused to report in any forthright manner the existence of mass murder. In minimizing the extremism of Hitler and ignoring the violence he was committing against the Jews (and others), the paper played a role in our nation's feeble response to the rise of Hitler. The rising dangers to America and to the world were systematically ignored or belittled by the paper, which deliberately and willfully "deep-sixed" the developments that led to the deaths of 6 million Jews and many millions of non-Jews. The record of the "paper of record" is clear.*
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, later as farce. The New York Times has unparalled abilty to create the news agenda that the rest of American media follows. Many of our decision-makers rely on the Times for its views of the world and for the opinions it promotes. The Times has portrayed Iran and its nuclear program in the most benign way possible: explaining away its apocalyptic ideology through abusrd translation gymnastics that rely on a marginal professor, apologizing or ignoring its role in promoting terror and the deaths of Americans and other peoples, minimizing at all turns the risks of its nuclear program, and depicting an Iran that is being bullied by America and one that should be allowed to develop not only its nuclear technology but also a nuclear arsenal. In the Times view, America should come to accept this "reality".
The Iranian dictator boasts of his desire to remove Israel from the "pages of time"; if he succeeds, the pages of the Times will again play a role in yet another Holocaust.
Read it and weep.
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