Mistrusting The Media

By Larry Gordon

There was some reluctance regarding the cancellation, but it had to be done. It was a combination of the need to express displeasure with a media entity that depends on readers for its success, and the anger and frustration one reader in particular felt about their coverage of anything having to do with Israel and the Jewish people.

I’ve long had a sentimental attachment to digesting at least part of what The New York Times had to offer each day (the sports section used to be good, but no more), but these days I find it strange how, even though they only print about a million copies of the paper in a country with a population of 350 million, they somehow manage to control the thought processes and talking points that dominate the news in the U.S. and every corner of the globe.

At my parents’ home in Brooklyn, we received a copy of the Times at our front door every day. There were no blue bags in the old days like those that dot the driveways in communities around the country. I suppose it never occurred to the people in their circulation department what would happen if it rained or snowed and their newspaper sitting on the front lawn got soaked.

Sometimes, despite the plastic bags, the papers still got drenched. That includes the orange bags used by the New York Post and even the clear plastic bags preferred by The Wall Street Journal. At my parents’ home, I’d sometimes wake up to see sections of the Times draped across the dining room chairs in the hope that at some point during the day the paper would be readable.

But these weather matters have nothing to do with the manner in which these newspapers cover the news or the editorial stances they take on matters of great importance. These days, I will only occasionally read parts of The New York Times, though I mostly skip their coverage of the ongoing drama in Gaza or for that matter anything that has to do with Israel because they just can’t balance their opinion in any journalistic way and invariably come down on the side of Israel’s enemies.

A few weeks ago, in the Torah reading of Parashas Balak, the Moabite king hired the gentile prophet, Bilaam, to curse the Jewish people as they were making their way towards the Land of Israel. Bilaam did not do a satisfactory job as far as Balak was concerned. As you know from your yeshiva days and probably more recently, Bilaam ended up blessing the Jewish people. Balak asked him more than once to explain why, if he was hired to curse the Jews, he ended up doing the opposite. Obviously, Bilaam would not be able to get a job at The New York Times.

To this, Bilaam responded that he can only say what G-d allows him to say. One of the curious aspects of this episode is a commentary I once read that stated that Bilaam’s name was a conjunction of two words: Bli and Am. That is, someone with no nation. From a more contemporary perspective, we can say that Bilaam was a person who had no nation. In other words, I’ve long thought that Bilaam was the precursor of a Palestinian. 

As far as Bilaam’s view of the Jewish people is concerned, he clearly stated that he sees a nation “destined to dwell alone.” It seems that he was certainly on the mark as far as that prophetic vision was concerned. There are many ways to interpret those words. It has become abundantly clear that Israel is very much a nation ostracized, singled out, isolated, and indeed alone. But for the last two thousand years, we’ve been battling and struggling to undermine that prophecy of Bilaam. We fight to be accepted among the family of nations, to be seen like any other country around the globe.

The news last week and again this week is that a group of countries have said that they are planning to recognize a state of Palestine. Those countries include France, England, and more recently Canada, with others certainly planning on jumping into the fray in the near future. On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial headlined: “Kill Jews, Get Your Own State.” It’s a critical piece about those soft-headed leaders in Europe and Canada who are giving Hamas whatever they want with nothing in return. If that’s the case, what’s the point of negotiating in good faith or at all?

The idea of creating a Palestinian state has been on the world agenda for many decades, possibly even a half century or more. In one way, it is about edging Israel and the Jews off the map of the world. These world leaders know that a Palestinian entity would be a geographic and political nightmare and a humanitarian disaster.

Balak did not retain the professional services of Bilaam in order to create the type of governing coalition he needed to set up whatever nation he was dreaming of once Bilaam’s curses against the Jews took effect. It seems that Bilaam knew all along that the plan was going to be a failure, and no so-called “day after” plan would be necessary.

A few thousand years later, it looks like circumstances are remarkably similar. A few months ago, there was fleeting talk about what the so-called “day after” plan would look like in Gaza. For now, it seems to be more of a moot point than anything else. Seventy percent of Gaza is rubble and more than 90% of major areas like Rafah and Gaza City have been completely flattened and are unrecognizable.

It requires restating that all of this could have been avoided if Hamas had released the hostages and their leadership was allowed to leave unharmed to any number of countries crazy enough to take these wild men in. That’s the deal Hamas refused to budge on.

As you know, media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, the networks and The New York Times have a great deal of complicity in what is going on in Gaza today. The question has not been answered as to why it is Israel’s responsibility to feed the people of Gaza and the Hamas leadership. Are we to assume that Starmer in the UK and Macron in France are going to recognize a State of Palestine without any food?

Starmer says that if there is no peace deal by the end of September he’s going to make his move and recognize a Palestinian state. So, Britain is going to open a British embassy in Palestine but Israel is going to have to provide three meals a day to Hamas as well as British and French diplomats? The idea and the so-called warning are just absurd.

Over the last week, the Times featured a front-page photo of what looked to be a sickly Arab child being held by his mother. The child was so thin, you could see the outline of his spine. As it turned out, the photo that accompanied the “starving child” in Gaza story was of a child suffering from cystic fibrosis, not malnutrition or starvation. In fact, the mother who was holding the child looked perfectly fine, and another child standing alongside the ill child looked fine as well.

When the Times was caught perpetuating this blatant lie and journalistic fraud, they posted a correction on X, where they have 89,000 subscribers. The only thing is that the Times webpage where the story originally ran has 55 million subscribers. Chris Cuomo on NewsNation the other day pointed out this glaring dichotomy, saying he wanted to teach his viewers a media lesson, which is: “The intention is in the correction.” Which means that the Times only wanted a tiny fraction of their audience to be aware of the journalistic fraud they were perpetrating.

Hashem told Bilaam to say that he sees a nation destined to dwell apart. That’s us—Am Yisrael. The struggle today is that Israel is battling to be accepted by all the nations of the world at the UN and elsewhere instead of learning to dwell alone. It may feel like we are alone and sometimes it is painful and sad. But rest assured that on a deeper and more profound level, we are not alone at all. 

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