Key Takeaways:
- A New York Times op-ed dismisses Israeli charges that Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif was a Hamas terrorist, claiming that Israel had done so without credible evidence.
- Polgreen accuses Israel of deliberately targeting journalists, despite Israel only targeting terrorists posing as journalists.
- She also downplays Hamas as a terror organization and questions clear evidence of its tactics.
The New York Times has plumbed the depths with Lydia Polgreen’s latest op-ed, titled “He Was the Face and Voice of Gaza. Israel Assassinated Him.” In it, she claims that Israel is systematically targeting Gaza-based journalists, like Anas al-Sharif. She argues that he was not a Hamas terrorist, dismisses all of Israel’s evidence as non-credible, and ignores any other proof that has emerged since his elimination.
Polgreen isn’t new to Israel-bashing and making unfounded commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though. While she doesn’t always write about Israel, there is a determined demonization of Israel and ridiculous and irrelevant comparisons to other conflicts when she does.
As she mentions in her piece, Polgreen serves on the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). This puts her “opinion” into perspective, as CPJ has been exposed for consistently mourning “journalists” who were either members of or had affiliations with terror organizations like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP).
Indeed, Polgreen subsequently downplays Hamas’ terror credentials and questions the indisputable fact that it operates in civilian areas.
To justify its pitiless pulverizing of Gaza, Israel has endlessly invoked the threat of Hamas, supposedly lurking in schools, hospitals, homes and mosques.
“Supposedly lurking?” Hamas has been shown time and time again hiding behind and within schools, hospitals, homes, and mosques.
Furthermore, she insists that al-Sharif was an innocent journalist and that any affiliation he may have had (though she doubts he did) is irrelevant.
Even if one takes Israel’s allegations at face value… and entertain the idea that in 2013, at the age of 17, al-Sharif joined Hamas in some form, what are we to make of that choice? Hamas at that time had been the governing authority of his homeland since 2006. It ran the entire state apparatus of a tiny enclave.
Would al-Sharif have had no choice but to become a Hamas terrorist? Given that he became a commander on evidently friendly terms with Yahya Sinwar himself, is that someone who had no agency?
Polgreen quotes Tareq Baconi, who serves as president of the board of al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network. Baconi constantly diminishes Hamas’ status as a terror organization, as well as excuses its actions and attacks on Israel over the years. He flips Palestinian suffering onto Israel’s “blockade” of the Strip and does not hold Hamas, as a governing entity, responsible. In a New York Times guest essay in July 2023, he even justified Palestinian terror attacks on Israeli civilians.
He suggests that Hamas is a “movement with a vast social infrastructure” and that trying to destroy it and anyone affiliated with it can amount to genocide. However, the organization as a whole is a declared terror organization.
“It is a movement with a vast social infrastructure,” Tareq Baconi, the author of a book about Hamas, has written, “connected to many Palestinians who are unaffiliated with either the movement’s political or military platforms.”
So, perhaps, joining Hamas is just ‘the thing’ to do, and anyone affiliated with the organization should be morally exempt?
Polgreen thus defends local journalists who take up arms and join a terror organization. She compares it to several other instances – all irrelevant to al-Sharif’s case, and excuses the possibility of his involvement in terrorism and how that could be a respectable and common attribute.
The history of war correspondence is replete with examples of fighters turned reporters — indeed perhaps the most famous among them, George Orwell, recorded soldiers’ lives while fighting in the Spanish Civil War and became a war correspondent.
These days, having served in the military is widely seen as an asset among American war reporters. Far from seeing those who served as hopelessly biased, editors rightly value the expertise and perspective these reporters bring from their experiences and trust them to prioritize their new role as journalistic observers. In Israel most young people are required to serve in the military, so military experience is common among journalists.
This comparison suggests that Hamas merely has a military and is not a terror organization. While she admits that Hamas is “different”, “engaged in horrifying terror tactics,” and is considered a designated terror organization by many countries, she gives it a pass as “the accepted authority in Gaza.”
It’s completely delusional to make an excuse for a journalist picking up arms and joining a terror organization. It’s also completely delusional to make an excuse for a terror organization that commits the horrible and evil acts that it does because it is the “accepted authority” over a strip of land.
Let’s be clear: there is no equivalence between anyone, including journalists, who served in a Western army such as that of the U.S. or Israel. And where many Israelis serve as a result of a military draft, Hamas’ terrorist fighters are the product of an entirely different ideology and motivation.
Researcher and analyst, Eitan Fischberger, probed a letter from U.S. senators requesting an independent investigation into al-Sharif’s assassination and analyzed Polgreen’s piece. In it, he reminds followers of exposed open source information indicating that al-Sharif was a Hamas terrorist.
He also digs into Polgreen’s interview with “journalist” and terror sympathizer Mohammed Mhawish’s ties. (Click on the thread to see more details.)
Polgreen has completely closed her mind to the idea that Israel does not kill journalists legitimately doing their job, just those who are terrorists. She has no problem getting her information from corrupted sources, which she treats as respectable.
When will The New York Times stop shilling for Hamas?
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Image Credits:
– AFP via Getty Images
– Screenshot from Youtube
