New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, whose writings repeatedly demonstrate how little he knows about Israel, cannot be restrained. Immoral equivalence between Israel and Hamas recently became his favorite trope.

Two weeks ago he began by citing (unnamed) “experts” who agreed that “both Israel and Hamas are engaging in crimes of war.” Unable — or unwilling — to distinguish between launching rocket attacks and responding to them, he asserted that if Hamas is to be criticized so, too, must Israel. Predictably, Kristof’s presidential model is Barack Obama, the least friendly president toward Israel since its birth in 1948.

Prime Minister Netanyahu is Kristof’s prime target for daring to expand settlements — in the Biblical homeland of the Jewish people. Why, he wonders, should American tax dollars fund a government that is responsible for the absence of a two-state solution? He is evidently unaware that Palestinians have repeatedly rejected that idea. His blinding obsession with Israeli malfeasance as “an oppressive military power,” guilty of “crimes of apartheid,” prompts his absurd conclusion that “it’s not anti-Semitic to criticize Israel for possible war crimes.”

Evidently confronting (deserved) criticism for his article he responded two weeks later (June 3) with another column by asking “Were My Criticisms of Israel Fair?” The obvious answer is no. His primary, indeed solitary, source for affirming his fairness is Sari Bashi, a self-described Israeli “human rights lawyer.” In translation, that means Palestinian advocacy and laceration of Israeli. Her focus has been “the right to freedom of movement for Palestinians,” especially Gaza residents, who she says embrace Hamas because they have no other choice for confronting their “oppressor.” Meaning Hamas? No; Israel.

It is entirely understandable that Ms. Bashi should be Kristof’s primary source. The recent Hamas war, she insists, must be blamed on Israel, “led by a prime minister desperate to stay in power to avoid jail on corruption charges.” Netanyahu “created a provocation by using violence and the threat of violence against Palestinians in Jerusalem.” 

Ms. Bashi embraces the falsehood that “Israeli security forces … threatened to forcibly transfer Palestinian families from their homes as part of an official policy to ‘Judaize’ occupied East Jerusalem, which is a war crime.” That Kristof gives primacy to these false allegations is a striking display of ignorance — or bias. In fact, a handful of Sheikh Jarrah Palestinian residents inhabit several houses that are not theirs, as an Israeli court decision recognized some years ago. Owned by Yemenite Jews since the late 19th century, the property was seized in 1948 by invading Arabs during Israel’s war of independence.

Without a shred of supporting evidence Kristof cites “most experts” (unnamed) who “consider Israel to be occupying Gaza.” In fact, it forced its own citizens to abandon their homes and withdrew in 2005. He is convinced that “other countries have responded to attacks with more restraint and wisdom” than Israel, preposterously citing British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for not bombing Dublin or Boston for attacks by the Irish Republican Army. To his credit, however, he concedes that “these analogies are inexact and imperfect.” In fact, they are absurd. 

Kristof blames “extremists on each side” (Palestinians and Israelis alike) who “empower those on the other” — as if Israel is to blame for the hundreds of Hamas rockets recently fired from Gaza. Conceding that “Hamas committed war crimes,” he offers the false equivalence trope, unsupported by a shred of evidence, that “most scholars believe … that Israel also committed war crimes with its attacks on Gaza that were far more lethal to civilians than attacks by Hamas.” In translation, Israel must follow the Hamas model and bomb gently.

Kristof’s column is titled “Were My Criticisms of Israel Fair?” The obvious answer is no. They fit comfortably within decades of Times hostility toward the idea, no less reality, of a thriving Jewish state in the Biblical homeland of the Jewish people.

Jerold S. Auerbach is the author of twelve books, including Print to Fit: The New York Times, Zionism and Israel 1896-2016, selected for Mosaic by Ruth Wisse and Martin Kramer as a Best Book for 2019

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