The headline in The Washington Examiner was blunt and to the point. It read:
Liberal media have debased themselves in their anti-Israel coverage
The Examiner reported:
Mainstream liberal media outlets have consistently gotten stories wrong about Israel and Gaza, trusting the word of Hamas terrorists and their United Nations supporters. As the war has gone on, though, these outlets are choosing to debase themselves more and more, even going as far as to knowingly peddle false narratives and write sob stories for terrorists.
The New York Times has served as an unofficial propaganda organ for Hamas for decades. In 2014, Noah Pollak detailed for the Washington Examiner how The Times only published pictures of civilians in Gaza, never of Palestinian terrorists or militants. The outlet was one of many to run with the false hospital bombing story in the aftermath of Oct. 7, where “500 Palestinians” (a few dozen) were killed when a “hospital” (parking lot) was struck by an Israeli (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) missile.
In short, you could call this assessment the liberal media versus Israel.
There was much to ponder over this. I say this having just returned from a Newsmax TV-sponsored, week-long trip to Israel. (Full disclosure, I am a Newsmax contributor.)
The trip had two parts. One was a days long walking tour of Jerusalem, one of the world’s oldest and historic cities.
The second part was a series of get-togethers with various members of the Israeli government, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the Israeli President, its various Cabinet and Knesset members and others.
And it was the liberal media’s repeated pushing of what The Examiner correctly called “false narratives” that was specifically addressed by the Prime Minister in his welcoming speech to those of us in Newsmax.
Said Netanyahu to Newsmax of the liberal media coverage:
"Thank you, Newsmax, for helping us on the eighth-front war: seven fronts against Iran and its proxies, the eighth front — the battle for truth…..And, Newsmax, you have let the truth circle the globe against the lies that have circled it before and continue to do so...There's only one way to beat the lies, and that's with the truth.
The Prime Minister made a point of describing Israel’s enemies as “barbarians at the gate.” He added:
When I say barbarians, this is not hyperbole. It's not only the goal of destroying Israel; it's the method they use to murder and mutilate the heathen, as they call them.
He flatly rejected the liberal media stories of Israel waging famine in Gaza or committing genocide. "The genocidal element is Hamas," he declared.
The genocidal element is the Iranian axis that openly calls for the annihilation of Israel, the extermination of Jews in America, and for the death of America itself.
As Newsmax reported, the Prime Minister bluntly attacked The New York Times “for publishing misleading images to support famine allegations.” Netanyahu added that fighting misinformation is now an "eighth front" in the war, alongside military and humanitarian efforts.
Journalists on the Newsmax tour were taken to a couple of sites in particular that deserve serious media attention. The first was a soccer field where kids were playing soccer -- only to have Hezbollah fire rockets at the field, killing twelve Israeli kids.
The second was the site of the Nova music festival where a concert was ongoing when the terrorists suddenly appeared and raided the grounds, massacring almost 400 concert attendees.
Suffice to say it would be a decided understatement to say that the liberal American media’s depictions of what has been going on in this latest surge of Hamas/Hezbollah terrorist violence in Israel has been grossly inaccurate. Seemingly deliberately reversing the facts on the ground, painting the bad guys as the good guys and the good guys as the bad guys.
The Prime Minister “linked current accusations (by the media against Israel) to centuries-old antisemitic blood libels, recalling false charges in the Middle Ages that Jews poisoned wells or used Christian blood in rituals — lies that helped pave the way to the Holocaust.”
Not good. Not good at all.
The real problem here for The New York Times and other liberal media is that they are sabotaging - maybe make that “further sabotaging” - their own credibility. And however one looks at it, it isn’t good.
Will they change and get to fact-based journalism covering the war instigated by the murderous terrorists of Hamas against the Jewish State of Israel? Will they move on from the idea of the liberal media versus Israel? Don’t hold your breath.
All of which would indicate that in dealing with Hamas Prime Minister Netanyahu - not unlike President Reagan before him in dealing with the Cold War -- has one serious option at hand.
That would be: “We win, they lose.”
