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by Lev Tsitrin ( New English Review)
The New York Times has a useful feature that tells how long it will take to read a given piece; a typical op-ed takes about 5 minutes of a reader’s time.
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But on occasion, op-eds run longer. Nicholas Kristof’s recent cry of his bleeding, afflicted heart, “What Happened to the Joe Biden I Knew?” requires a greater commitment from a reader — 16 minutes, or three times the average.
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This is because Mr. Kristof talks of many things to prove his thesis that Biden’s support of Israel’s war effort must end — he talks of the goodness of Biden’s heart and of the badness of Netanyahu’s; he quotes from former ambassadors, advisors, and analysts, as well as from some currently-serving senators; he invokes the history of Vietnam protests and of political disasters they brought upon the Democrats, and warns of potential repeat in 2024; he cites European politicians who see Israel’s war on Hamas as equivalent to Russia’s war on Ukraine. And of course, Mr. Kristof quotes statistics about the terrible, blood-thirsty Israelis (“53 percent of Israeli Jews favor … an all-out attack on Hezbollah;” “more than two-thirds of Jewish Israelis oppose allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza”).
Yet, amidst so many words spent on expressing the sympathy for the poor, much-suffering (and innocent — of course they are innocent, for can the burning hate of Israel and Jews be a sin when it is such a natural emotion, as Mr. Kristof undoubtedly knows from looking in the mirror — can a genuine “progressive” be without it?) Gaza Palestinians whom, in the midst of war on Hamas with whom those innocents heartily sympathize, and whom they faithfully support by acting as human shields — yet whom the cruel Israelis routinely forget to treat to coffee, buns and butter in the morning, to whom they neglect to send a sandwich at lunchtime, and whom they fail to provide a three-course-dinner served on the best china at night, and for whom Mr. Kristof sheds so many impassioned tears, Mr. Kristof forgets to mention one word. This word is — “hostages.”
I kid you not. I excuse you for not believing me, so check it yourself. The text is huge, yet the test is simple: press Ctrl+F to invoke the search function, and put in the word “hostage” into the little search window that will appear above or below Mr. Kristof’s opus, and type in the word “hostage” — and you will see the number of occurrences of that word: “0/0”. Bizarre as it will sound to anyone who ever heard of the Gaza war, the word just isn’t there.
Given its key importance in what’s going on in Gaza, the natural question become, “why is it missing”?
I have a theory. If Mr. Kristof used that word, it would have ruined his entire argument, by giving a simple and natural (rather than malignantly scary) explanation for Israeli attitudes that manifest themselves in Netanyahu’s policies — and for that matter, in Biden’s. A word of truth — “it’s about the hostages” — would wreck Mr. Kristof’s carefully-constructed 16 minutes of lies.
But was it just the need to provide a submission by the deadline so he could get paid, that drove Mr. Kristof to disingenuously paint Israelis as monsters, and Biden as Netanyahu’s clueless puppet? Or is there something more to it — namely, the hate towards Israel and Jews that animates Mr. Kristof, just as it does Hamas and its supporters?
I am strongly inclined to believe the latter explanation. Mr. Kristof’s fabricated argument is soaked in antisemitism, all complete with an unspoken assertion that Israel is guilty, that it should not be allowed to defend itself and utterly defeat its terrorist enemies, and that Israelis are just crafty manipulators of the public opinion and of the kind-hearted and simple-minded President Biden, but they have no genuine cause — each, a classic anti-Semitic trope. So if you talk like an anti-Semite, and if you hide facts to support your antisemitic argument (as any anti-Semitic scribbler would do) — than the simplest explanation for such behavior is, that you are yourself are an anti-Semite, Mr. Kristof.
Which poses yet another question — this time, a question for the New York Times: why do you guys hire anti-Semites like Mr. Kristof? Why do you publish their lying screeds? Is your op-ed editor asleep? Or is your editor Mr. Kristof’s fellow-traveler?
One former New York Times’ opinion editor, James Bennet, famously had to resign in 2020 after publishing Senator Tom Cotton’s op-ed on rioting that engulfed American cities following the death of George Floyd — an op-ed that was not to “progressives’” liking. Should Mr. Kristof’s anti-Semitic concoction get a pass? I don’t think so.
Fire him, New York Times. Don’t maintain a double-standard. No anti-Semite should be on your payroll to spew his hate, and his lies — even if they are lies of omission — like not telling the reader of the the deepest bleeding wound in Israeli psyche, that of hostages cruelly taken, and held by Hamas. Cut Mr. Kristof loose, New York Times. Let him weave his lies on the pages of Der Sturmer — where his anti-Semitic rants rightly belong.
