Saturday, May 28, 2022

My Second Ode to the New York Times (by Elinor Weiss)

Elinor Weiss wrote this second ode to The New York Times. It's posted here with her permission.

 My Second Ode to the New York Times

(My second apology to John Keats)

The NYTimes 
Is in a tizzy,
Over a fashion queen 
Named Hoda Katebi.

She loves to hate
The Jewish State
Using BDS
To annihilate.

Ms. Katebi promotes 
Iranian fashion
The Ayatollah’s laws
Have her positive reaction.

Terrorist theocracy
Is a big win
But democratic Israel
A terrible sin.

No questions, no follow ups
To the law student’s views,
Her pro BDS stance
Is a plus for the paper’s news.

Yet the Times does shows fairness 
In its Israel reports
Because the bias is shared
Among all the cohorts.

From food, to movies
Business and fashion
The pieces have a common
Hate Israel passion.

Consistency is there
For all to see
Israel is covered
Without accuracy.

So Hoda Katebi,
Writer and speaker
A future lawyer
Whose goal 
Is to make Israel weaker.

Is the kind of person
The paper admires
That its journalists promotes
That its editors aspires.

Friday, May 20, 2022

Ode to The New York Times

(Posted here with the permission of the poet.)


Ode to The New York Times


By Elinor Weiss

(with apologies to John Keats)


The New York Times

Seems to hate the Jews

But for many of us

That’s really not news.


Take the Holocaust

The terrible genocide

When Jews were slaughtered

Simply a paragraph inside.


But now it’s not correct

To be an anti Semite

So the grey old lady

Tries to make it look right.


It turns its words

Against the Jewish nation

Israel is demonized

As a repulsive sensation.


Reporters like Yazbek

Filled with hate

Write  lies about

The Jewish State.


Yazbek loves Hamas

Terrorists supreme

Yazbek’s views of Jews

Are quite extreme.


She justifies violence

Against Israelis

The pay to slay ethics

Is never reported in the daily.


Terrorist attacks

Against Israelis in the cities

Don’t merit the Times’ journalists

Sympathies or pities.


The Times is clueless,

It doesn’t seem to know

That Hamas wants all of Israel

To go.


Any evil,

Anything bad,

Is blamed on Israel,

Just sad, sad, sad!


Misleading subheadings,

Misuse of words

So that its readers will think

Israel as a turd.


But to be fair

When holidays come around

Jews hating being Jewish

Are the ones Times has found.


You can be sure to read

Why Hanukkah is overrated

Or a put down on Passover

Jews against God are celebrated.


Defaming Jewish holidays

Encouraging Israel’s demise

Anti semites at the New York Times?

Definitely not a surprise!

Israel Updates: 3 People Reported Killed in Attack-headline and article in The New York Times

Daniel Trigoboff submitted the following letter to The New York Times on May 6, 2022. Not surprisingly, given their heavy anti-Israel bias, they chose not to publish it. It's posted here with the permission of Dr. Trigoboff.

The article itself is on The New York Times website at https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/05/05/world/israel-attack, with the headline "At Least 3 People Reported Killed in Israel Attack" and subhead "The attack follows a wave of violence by Arab assailants that has already killed 14 people in Israel since mid-March."

Dear Editor,

There’s so much wrong with the headline and content of this NY Times article that the question of a deliberate anti-Israel cant is strongly raised. To begin with, the 3 people referenced in the headline were not “reported” killed; they were in fact murdered, there is no doubt about their unfortunate deaths, reported as such by multiple media sources. For a constructive comparison, did The NY Times headline about the 9/11 attacks state that “Almost 3,000 People Reported Killed in Attack?” Of course not.

And, who killed the three people in Israel? Why did this headline omit the widely known and publicized identifications of the murderers as Palestinian Arab terrorists? Why the passive voice? Why not use an accurate headline like “Israel Updates: Palestinian Arab Terrorists Murder Three Israeli Civilians, Wound Six?”

In the body of the article is the heinous misrepresentation of the Temple Mount as “the Aqsa Mosque compound”, supposedly revered by Muslims and Jews alike, and then a statement that Jews refer to it as the Temple Mount, as though the Muslim Arab nomenclature is universally accepted except by Jews. Absolute balderdash on steroids. In fact there is the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, and the flat plaza which surrounds them which was the site of the First and Second Temples. This elevated plaza which sits on the Temple Mount is Judaism’s holiest site, whereas the Al-Aqsa Mosque is only the third holiest site to Sunni Muslims, not to Shia Muslims. In no sense is Judaism’s holiest site, this plaza, a part of any “Aqsa Mosque compound” which does not exist.

In fact it can be argued that by terming it this way, The NY Times is using discriminatory settler colonialist language since Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock were built on top of the site of the First and Second Temples by Arab invaders, who arrived and displaced indigenous Jews many centuries after the Temples were built and then destroyed. 

In considering these faults in this article’s headline and content, I am reminded of the famous Ian Fleming quote: “Once is happenstance, twice is circumstance, three times is enemy action.” What is cause of the obvious enmity borne towards Israel by The NY Times?

Daniel H. Trigoboff, Ph.D.