‘Recalcitrant,’ ‘Bellicose,’ ‘Ultranationalist’: New York Times Uses Harsh Labels for Israel — but Not Hamas

Another day, another snarky New York Times adjective hurled at Israel — but not at the terrorists Israel is fighting.

The Times‘ Jerusalem bureau chief, Patrick Kingsley, had a story up on the newspaper’s internet homepage saying Israel’s “governing coalition depends on support of ultranationalist leaders who are opposed to a permanent truce.” It also said, “[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s grip on power relies on the support of two far-right parties opposed to any agreement that would leave Hamas in power in Gaza.” And it referred to Bezalel Smotrich, “a far-right firebrand whose party holds the balance of power in Mr. Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.”

What’s remarkable here is the double standard. Israel and Israelis get pejorative labels: “ultranationalist,” “far-right.” Yet the Times seems to have abandoned even its prior practice of using the “militant” euphemism to describe Hamas, which is a terrorist organization. Hamas gets “no labels” treatment from the Times article, aside from a passing description of its negotiating position as “flexible” in contrast to Israel’s “hardball.” This is a Times news article, not an opinion piece or even something carrying a “news analysis” label. Where are the Times editors who are supposed to be preventing and policing this sort of blatant tilt?

The Kingsley story also misled Times readers in that it was inaccurate to suggest, as his article did, that opposition to leaving Hamas in power in Gaza is confined to Israel’s “far right.” Such opposition is a widely held view in Israel, and, for that matter, in America, at least outside the far-left New York Times.

This was only the latest in a series of recent examples of the Times slapping nasty names on Israel while staying studiously neutral in describing Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran.

An article in the July 3 edition of the Times that carried the bylines of Times bigfeet Peter Baker and David Sanger described Israel as “a recalcitrant ally whose continued war against Hamas was creating yet another threat to a second term.” Hamas and Iran, which are both mentioned in the Times article, got no insulting descriptive label, not even the apparently passé “militant.” Yet Israel is called “recalcitrant,” which my Webster’s Second translates to “making obstinate opposition; refusing to obey authority, custom, regulation, etc.; stubbornly defiant; noncompliant; refractory.” To a sophisticated ear, this may even echo antisemitic tropes; a Louis D. Brandeis Center Fact Sheet on the “elements of antisemitic discourse” mentions “intransigence,” which is close to stubborn defiance.

Another news article, on page one of the July 5 New York Times, said, “Israeli officials have voiced increasingly bellicose threats of a potential invasion of Lebanon to push Hezbollah away from the border.” Bellicose, my Webster’s Second says, means “warlike; disposed to quarrel or fight.” Hezbollah was described in the same article more politely as “the politically powerful Lebanese armed group.” That article, too, slapped a “far-right” label on Smotrich and a “right-wing” label on the Israeli government, while applying no label at all — no label whatsoever — to Hamas.

It’s outrageous — the Times labels Israel as “bellicose” and “right-wing,” while Hamas gets no label at all and Hezbollah, which is also a terrorist group, just gets “politically powerful,” as if it is some American advocacy group like the American Federation of Teachers or the National Rifle Association.

The Times has also slapped the “ferocious,” “aggressive,” and “rabidly partisan” labels recently on Israel and its allies in other articles that typically also failed to apply similarly tendentious descriptions to Hamas or Hezbollah — or Iran, which backs both Islamist terrorist groups.

For Israel and its friends, it’s pick the Times insult of the day. For Iran and its friends, the Times adopts “no labels.”

I’ve been in and around the news business for three and a half decades at this point, a lot of them as an editor, and, at nearly every paper I worked at, invariably reporters would try to slip loaded words like this into news articles to see what they could get away with. Good editors take those words out to protect the newspaper’s reputation for fairness and accuracy. Or at least they used to.

At a minimum, if such words are used, they need to be applied to all sides rather than just one side. Otherwise, the Times risks earning a hard-to-shake “rapidly partisan” label for its own newsroom.

Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.

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