Palestinians pass by the gate of an UNRWA-run school in Nablus in the West Bank. Photo: Reuters/Abed Omar Qusini.

If a magician never reveals their tricks, then we shouldn’t expect The New York Times to acknowledge the brazen sleight of hand it used to cover up for terrorists involved in the Oct. 7 massacre.

The secret behind the newspaper’s illusion, however, should be revealed.

After all, the Times promises something far greater than petty amusement. It promises journalism that’s “beyond reproach” and of the “highest possible standards,” as the paper’s guidelines put it, all of which makes The New York Times, in the words of its executive editor, “a pillar of democracy.”

From the perspective of the audience, the trick looked something like this: Readers see that Israel charged several UN employees with participating the Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre. They are told that Israel hasn’t shared evidence for such charges. And with the wave of the wand, the UN is vindicated, and Israel is incriminated.

In the paper’s own words:

Israel and UNRWA have long had contentious relations, and they have sharply deteriorated since the war began. Earlier this year, Israel accused a dozen workers of participating in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led terror attack in Israel or its aftermath, an allegation that imperiled the organization because it led donors, including the United States, to suspend their financial support.

The United Nations fired 10 of the 12 employees Israel accused. An internal UN investigation later found that Israel had not provided evidence to back up its separate allegation that many UNRWA workers had ties to Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.

UNRWA is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

There could hardly be a more egregious and indefensible example of misdirection.

The UN investigation mentioned by the paper did not look into Israel’s complaint about UNRWA staff involvement in the Oct. 7 massacre. But a separate UN investigation did.

And that investigation largely vindicated Israel.

As the United Nations announced on Aug. 5, “the evidence obtained … indicated that the UNRWA staff members may have been involved in the armed attacks of 7 October 2023.” [emphasis added] (This was the agency’s diplomatic language — as a separate piece in a separate section of the newspaper noted, “A U.N. spokesman said that they probably did take part.”)

One allegation. One UN investigation into the allegation. But when the allegation goes into the magician’s hat, an altogether separate investigation gets pulled out. It might not be magic. But it’s certainly not journalism of the “highest possible standards.”

Gilead Ini is a Senior Research Analyst at CAMERA, the foremost media watchdog organization focused on coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict, where a version of this article first appeared.