Where was the criticism of Israel? That was the plaint from Ethan Bronner (pictured) in his Wednesday "News Analysis," "Foreign Policy Debate's Omissions Highlight Skewed Worldview."

Bronner, former Jerusalem bureau chief for the New York Times, wrung his hands over all the issues missed during the third and last presidential debate Monday night, which focused (mostly) on foreign policy. While he didn't suggest criticizing Muslim countries, or critcizing Palestinian terrorism against Israelis, he used the term against Israel, wondering where the "criticism" was of "its settlements or its occupation of the West Bank."

Departing New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner filed Thursday's off-lead front-page story from the West Bank town of Ramallah, passing on yet another sympathy note for the Palestinians, whose left-wing cause for statehood and against Israeli "occupation" is no longer being trumpeted as loudly in the wake of the tumult in the region: "Mideast Din Drowns Out Palestinians."

The above-the-fold photo featured two Israeli soldiers firing orange flame at "Palestinian stone throwers" in the West Bank....from a clash last month. A photo of a Palestinian "protester" throwing stones was relegated to the jump page.

President Obama no longer has an Israel problem, Jerusalem Bureau Chief Ethan Bronner reported on Thursday, bolstering Obama’s pro-Israel credentials by assuring Times readers that the president’s recent speech at the United Nations on Israel was pro-Israel. Bronner also broadcasted pro-Obama results from an online poll conducted by the Jerusalem Post – although online polls are an unreliable format the paper rarely consider newsworthy, in “Israelis Happy at Home But Glum About Peace.”

Moreover, the sense over the past two years that President Obama was growing angry with Israel and steering American policy away from its interests subsided last week. The parts of Mr. Obama’s United Nations speech about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could have been written by any official here. It said nothing about Israeli settlements, the 1967 lines, occupation or Palestinian suffering, focusing instead on Israel’s defense needs.

 In Wednesday’s New York Times article, "Where Politics Are Complex, Simple Joys at the Beach: Israelis and Palestinians Dare to Swim Together," reporter Ethan Bronner sympathetically devotes nearly all of the article to a group of left-wing Israeli women - an organization called We Will Not Obey - who illegally smuggle Palestinian women through checkpoints from the West Bank into Israel so they can visit the beach.

The article includes a quote from one member of the group who ridiculously compares herself to a resident of Germany living during the Nazi era, while a second activist invokes legendary civil rights activist Rosa Parks. Bronner is apparently so impressed with the quote about Rosa Parks that he uses larger text to preview the reference for readers near the end of the article.

And, according to the pro-Israel group CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle Eastern Reporting in America), the article relays the inaccurate claim that Israelis, unlike Palestinians, enjoy the privilege of unrestricted travel at all points between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, when in reality Israelis do face restrictions on travel into the West Bank.

President Obama’s much-hyped speech Thursday on the Middle East called for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians and endorsing Israel’s pre-1967 borders as the starting point for the negotiations. The New York Times’s lead story Thursday morning by Helene Cooper and Ethan Bronner, "Focus On Obama As Tensions Soar Across Mideast," set the table by sharpening the focus on Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s "unyielding" recalcitrance as the main "stumbling blocks" to negotiations.

Mr. Obama, who is set to address Americans -- and, more significantly, Muslims around the world -- from the State Department on Thursday morning, may yet have something surprising up his sleeve. One administration official said that there remained debate about whether Mr. Obama would formally endorse Israel’s pre-1967 borders as the starting point for negotiations over a Palestinian state, a move that would send an oratorical signal that the United States expected Israel to make concessions.

Times reporting from Jerusalem is often hostile toward the conservative security-conscious Netanyahu, while whitewashing the terrorist origin of the Palestinian militants of Hamas, and there were traces of that on Thursday’s report from Washington.