The New York Times has published a six-paragraph “Editors’ Note” walking back as “inaccurate” and incomplete an article about a Gaza poetry professor. Pro-Israel groups had assailed the article as a whitewash.

The note, which appears in the Dec. 14 print edition of the newspaper and atop the online version of the November 17 original Times article, says the story “about Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian professor who includes a discussion of Israeli poetry in his literature classes, gave an inaccurate portrayal of the professor.”

The note goes on to say that after the article was published, “Times editors reviewed additional information that is at odds with the article’s description of Mr. Alareer, a literature professor at Islamic University in Gaza.”

The Times reporter appears to have witnessed — and reported on — a class put on for show, for his benefit, the note suggests: “In the class witnessed by a Times reporter, Mr. Alareer taught a poem by the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, which he called ‘beautiful,’ saying it underscored the ‘shared humanity’ of Israelis and Palestinians. He said he admired how it showed that Jerusalem is a place ‘where we all come together, regardless of religion and faith.’”

The editors’ note says, though, that “in a video of a class from 2019, he called the same poem ‘horrible’ and ‘dangerous,’ saying that although it was aesthetically beautiful, it ‘brainwashes’ readers by presenting the Israelis ‘as innocent.’ He also discussed a second Israeli poem, by Tuvya Ruebner, which he called ‘dangerous,’ adding ‘this kind of poetry is in part to blame for the ethnic cleansing and destruction of Palestine.’”

The editors’ note goes on, “When The Times asked Mr. Alareer about the discrepancy, he denied that there was a ‘substantial change’ in his teaching and said that showing parallels between Palestinians and Jews was his ‘ultimate goal.’ But he said that Israel used literature as ‘a tool of colonialism and oppression’ and that this raised ‘legitimate questions’ about Mr. Amichai’s poem.

The editors’ note concludes, “In light of this additional information, editors have concluded that the article did not accurately reflect Mr. Alareer’s views on Israeli poetry or how he teaches it. Had The Times done more extensive reporting on Mr. Alareer, the article would have presented a more complete picture.”

Pro-Israel media accountability watchdogs had raised alarms about the Times article practically from the moment it was published. A Nov. 17 article by the group HonestReporting.com was headlined, “New York Times Publishes Glowing Profile on Notorious Anti-Israel Terror Apologist.” It noted that Alareer “compared Israel to Nazi Germany more than 100 times; promoted modern-day blood libels; and repeatedly disseminated falsehoods about the Jewish state.” It said the Times article “defies belief with its gushing descriptions of Alareer and his job teaching university students.”

A Nov. 23 article by the Committee for Accuracy on Middle East Reporting and Analysis was headlined, “In New York Times, Hagiography of a Hatemonger Misinforms Readers.” CAMERA also had surfaced the footage of the 2019 class mentioned in the editors’ note.

And a Nov. 23 Algemeiner column had mocked the Times coverage: “the terrorist group Hamas, which is in control there, has reportedly sentenced eight Gazans to death this month alone for allegedly collaborating with Israel. Yet the Times has not reported on that, as it might mar the newspaper’s idyllic depiction of the Gaza Strip as a place full of literature professors teaching Yehuda Amichai poetry to Palestinian students.”

The editors’ note is the latest in a series of embarrassments for the Times’ Jerusalem Bureau Chief, Patrick Kingsley, who wrote the article about the Gaza professor. When Kingsley was named to the job in October 2020, an Algemeiner column noted that previous articles on Israel by the 31-year-old incoming bureau chief had been “riddled with mistakes.”

A November 2021 article by Kingsley about a deadly Jerusalem terror attack carries two corrections, covering three factual mistakes.

Attributing the problem just to Kingsley would be letting him off too easy, though. What is the system that awards a plum post to someone with such a problematic track record, and then fails to provide him with a level of editorial supervision adequate to keep the mistakes out of the newspaper? Where was Times management?

Meanwhile, Alareer was chosen for the Times’ “Quotation of the Day” under the headline “Discovering Empathy With Political Enemies Through Poetry.” No editors’ note has been appended to that piece of online content. And the Times opinion section published Alareer earlier this year under the headline, “My Child Asks, ‘Can Israel Destroy Our Building if the Power Is Out?’” It all fits with what the paper’s progressive editors and readers want to believe about Gaza Palestinians — that they are primarily empathetic poetry readers and innocent victims of US-funded Israeli aggression — rather than the reality, which is that a significant number of them are militant, Iran-funded Islamist fundamentalists determined to kill as many Jews as possible on the way to wiping Israel off the map.

Perhaps worst of all, neither Kingsley nor his editors appear to have learned the lessons implied by the editors’ note. They keep on churning the New York Times-Gaza-Hamas propaganda machine. The same print edition that carries the editors’ note also carries an article under Kingsley’s byline about a meeting between Prime Minister Bennett and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates. The article reports:

 Palestinians portrayed the meeting as a betrayal.

“This is the ultimate treason,” said Muhammad Abul Eis, 41, a driver in Gaza City. “History will never forgive and will show no mercy to the UAE or any country that normalizes ties with the occupation.”…

People in the Emirates, where dissent is rarely tolerated, used social media on Monday to praise the meeting between the two leaders. But some Emiratis abroad were far more critical.

“This scene burns the heart of every free Emirati,” wrote Ahmad Alshaibah Al Nuaimi, a London-based Emirati writer, in response to a video of Mr. Bennett’s arrival in Abu Dhabi.

Notice the double standard. The Times writes that dissent is rarely tolerated in the Emirates, but it fails to mention that dissent is rarely tolerated in Gaza. It quotes an Emirati in London but it doesn’t quote any Palestinian outside of Gaza who might see the Emirati move as constructive, the sort of thing that ought to be emulated and adopted by Palestinians as a replacement for the rejectionism and antisemitism that have brought them misery for decades.

Maybe, a month from now, we’ll get another editors’ note about how also this Patrick Kingsley dispatch failed to meet Times standards for accuracy and completeness. A cynic would see it as a Times business strategy for doubling its internet traffic. You get the anti-Israel readers to read the original articles, then the pro-Israel readers to read the editors’ notes correcting the articles. What a racket.

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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