The New York Times’s 80-year crusade against Israel

Read the original at Washington Examiner ↗
Washington Examiner · collected 2026-10-02 · by David Harsanyi

Quick Summary

This article criticizes The New York Times for allegedly biasing its coverage against Israel. It highlights a recent incident where the newspaper reportedly downplayed a terrorist attempt aboard an Israeli-bound flight from Dubai by initially describing it as a mere "altercation" between pilots. The author argues that this reflects a pattern dating back decades, including during World War II when the paper avoided mentioning Jews in relation to the Holocaust. The piece contends that such coverage consistently favors an anti-Israel stance and suggests ideological motives rather than journalistic neutrality.
Written locally by qwen2.5:14b on 2026-10-02, using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the same event (that is the story summary below).

AI analysis runs on qwen2.5:14b, locally

Story summary

On September 30, 2026, a Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv signaled an emergency and was diverted over Jordanian airspace towards Saudi Arabia, landing at Tabuk Airport. The incident prompted Israel to scramble warplanes due to initial concerns of hijacking. Israeli security officials later revealed that the distress signals were triggered by a fight between the pilots rather than a hijack attempt. With around 150 passengers, mostly Israelis, on board, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held emergency consultations regarding the flight's situation.

Written for “Israel Bound Flight Diverted” on 2026-10-06, grounded in this article and the 327 other(s) covering the same event.

Signals How these are calculated →

Claims extracted
71
claim-shaped sentences
Uncertain
8%
6 of 71 hedged
Leaning
Leans strongly right
of the writing, not the subject · beta estimate
Correction & hedging signals
72.3
corrections and hedging in what we collected; not a measure of accuracy
Outlets on this story
328
Politics
Narrative spread
1
articles carrying this framing
Analyzed 2026-10-02 · how these are computed

Story

📰 Israel Bound Flight Diverted
Politics · 328 article(s) covering the same event. See how they differ ↓

How this is being covered How these are calculated →

Article leaning vs. publisher reliability
Source leaning vs. consistency

Compared with similar articles

This article reads leans strongly right and hedges 8% of its claims. Each row says how that neighbour differs.
National Post
⚖️ leaning not scored 🔴 9% hedged 4 of 44 📰 publisher trust 60
“The articles describe different events occurring on different dates with distinct contexts and locations.”
The Dispatch
⚖️ leaning not scored 🔴 4% hedged 1 of 24 📰 publisher trust 97
“Article A discusses an interview about Israel's decision-making process in response to Hamas attacks, while Article B critiques The New York Times' reporting on a recent aircraft diversion incident involving potential hijacking.”
Israel’s Tight Race, One Month Out different event · 95%
The Dispatch
⚖️ leaning not scored 🔴 0% hedged 0 of 2 📰 publisher trust 97
“Article A mentions various news items including an arrest near a U.S. air base, while Article B discusses a specific incident involving a plane diversion due to pilot misconduct.”
CBS News
⚖️ leaning not scored 🔴 0% hedged 0 of 2 📰 publisher trust 66
“Article B references an incident but primarily focuses on criticizing The New York Times's coverage of Israel, while Article A directly reports on new details about a stabbing incident aboard a flight.”
BBC News
⚖️ leaning not scored 🔴 no claims extracted 📰 publisher trust 72
“Article A lacks details about the specific incident described in Article B, focusing instead on a general discussion or commentary rather than reporting a single occurrence.”
Fox News
⚖️ Leans strongly right 🔴 0% hedged 0 of 18 📰 publisher trust 69
“Both articles describe the incident involving Yaniv Chayon tackling a knife-wielding attacker in an airborne cockpit, preventing what Netanyahu described as 'another 9/11'.”
Washington Examiner
⚖️ Leans strongly left further left than this 🔴 2% hedged 1 of 44 📰 publisher trust 72
“The articles discuss different aspects of anti-Israel sentiment, with Article A focusing on general antisemitism over time and Article B critiquing The New York Times' reporting on a specific incident involving an attempted hijacking.”
Semafor
⚖️ leaning not scored 🔴 25% hedged 1 of 4 📰 publisher trust 95
“Article A describes the impact of an attempted stabbing incident on Israeli elections, while Article B focuses on a critique of media coverage of the same incident.”
Washington Examiner
⚖️ Leans strongly right 🔴 24% hedged 8 of 34 📰 publisher trust 72
“Both articles describe the exact same incident of a FlyDubai flight nearly crashing due to an attempted hijacking by the co-pilot, aimed at Israelis on board.”
Washington Examiner
⚖️ leaning not scored 🔴 13% hedged 10 of 75 📰 publisher trust 72
“Both articles describe the same attempted hijacking incident involving a flight from Dubai to Israel, where one pilot stabbed another and an attempt was made to crash the plane.”

Publisher

Washington Examiner · 2018 article(s) · 3 correction(s) detected
Running correction rate · 3 correction(s)
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Who wrote this

David Harsanyi
7 article(s) here · 1 carrying a prediction
🔮 Every time Republicans threaten to cut federal jobs, though they rarely follow through, Democrats predict that society will be plunged into chaos and high unemployment.
🔮 The New York Times could not have known all the details at the time, but it immediately downplayed the potential terrorist angle.
2026-10-02 · assertive framing · The New York Times’s 80-year crusade against Israel
🔮 Would he now renounce those who held vigils supporting the mass murderer Ayatollah Ali Khamenei?
🔮 Would he now renounce those who held vigils supporting the mass murderer Ayatollah Ali Khamenei?
🔮 Of course, there’s no way French could determine whether the cheering students were Texans or foreigners based on how they “looked.”
🔮 But no international court has found Israel guilty of genocide, and no court would be able to do so unless the definition was radically changed.
🔮 At night, you might be propositioned by hulking transvestite prostitutes or walk past affluent young couples holding Starbucks lattes pushing a stroller.
2026-08-28 · assertive framing · The damage 9/11 did to our country
Also by David Harsanyi
Nothing else under this byline is closely related to this article, so these are simply their most recent.
All 7 articles by David Harsanyi →

Topics

Islamist Israel Israeli Israelis the New York Times

Subjects

the New York Times ORG · 10× Jewish NORP · 7× Israel GPE · 3× Islamist NORP · 2× Israeli NORP · 2× Israelis NORP · 2× Jew NORP · 2× Sulzberger PERSON · 2× Zionist NORP · 2× Dubai GPE · 1×

Narrative

All of which is to say, it was unsurprising that after Oct. 7, 2023, the New York Times emerged as one of the leading legitimizers of Hamas propaganda, giving virtually every blood libel a veneer of credibility. Days after the massacre, the New York Times ran a front-page story accusing Israel of a missile attack on Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, killing patients, children, and staff.
framing: assertive · carried by 1 article(s) · first seen 2026-10-02
🔮 The New York Times could not have known all the details at the time, but it immediately downplayed the potential terrorist angle.
2026-10-02 · Washington Examiner
The New York Times’s 80-year crusade against Israel · assertive framing

Claims (71 extracted, 6 hedged)

It’s not that the New York Times gets a lot of stories regarding Israel completely wrong. asserted
lot → ’ → Israel
It’s that every one of its “mistakes” happens to skew in the exact same ideological direction. asserted
one → ’ → direction
It’s a statistical miracle. asserted
It → ’ → ?
“Breaking News,” the New York Times posted on X this week, “a plane flying from Dubai to Israel was diverted after an altercation between the pilot and co-pilot, Israeli officials said.” The “altercation” entailed what looks to be a radicalized Islamist Flydubai pilot stabbing his Indian co-pilot and attempting to hijack a plane filled with around 180 Israelis aboard and crash it. asserted
pilot → post → it
He nearly succeeded. asserted
He → succeed → ?
While the plane plummeted over 17,000 feet, passengers and crew got into the cockpit — reportedly the door had been opened by the wounded captain — and neutralized the terrorist. uncertain
door → plummet → terrorist
One passenger, a doctor, worked to save the captain. asserted
passenger → work → captain
Another passenger took over the controls and landed the plane. asserted
passenger → take → plane
The New York Times responded to criticism about its misleading headline, contending that live coverage contained “all the facts we’re able to confirm” at the time. asserted
we → respond → time
“Unlike activists and partisans, we don’t publish speculation or unverified information.” uncertain
we → publish → speculation
Of course it does. asserted
it → do → ?
The New York Times could not have known all the details at the time, but it immediately downplayed the potential terrorist angle. uncertain
it → know → angle
It’s what the New York Times has been doing for decades. asserted
Times → ’ → decades
Last year, for instance, after a Hezbollah-inspired Islamist attempted to massacre a daycare filled with 4- and 5-year-old Jewish children, the New York Times published stories with headlines such as, “The Michigan Synagogue Attacker Was a Quiet Restaurant Worker” and “Family Members of Michigan Synagogue Attacker Died in Airstrike in Lebanon.” asserted
Members → inspire → Lebanon
Last week, the paper’s Jerusalem reporter, Isabel Kershner, lamented that Israelis “still largely view themselves as the victims of Oct. 7.” asserted
Israelis → lament → Oct.
Israeli officials had not made any definitive statements about what had happened on the Flydubai, nor had they settled on an account. asserted
they → make → account
But the New York Times grabbed the most convenient theory and passed it along as the definitive account of events. asserted
Times → grab → events
The paper’s first instinct is to whitewash and rationalize anti-Jewish terrorism. asserted
instinct → whitewash → terrorism
And it has gone on far longer than people might realize. uncertain
people → go → ?
It is often forgotten that the New York Times, which had famously whitewashed Stalin’s famine in Ukraine, also downplayed the Holocaust. asserted
which → forget → Holocaust
Publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, a German Jew who assiduously avoided any connection to his faith or culture, didn’t want the New York Times to be seen as offering any special pleadings. asserted
Times → avoid → pleadings
During the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, for instance, the New York Times published an entire editorial avoiding the words “Jew” or “Jewish” with the same conviction it now avoids referring to Islamist suicide as terrorists. asserted
it → publish → terrorists
It merely noted that “500,000 persons” had been “herded into less than 7 percent of Warsaw’s buildings” and that “400,000 persons were deported.” asserted
persons → note → buildings
Where were they deported? asserted
they → deport → ?
As the modern Zionist movement picked up momentum, the New York Times editorial page relentlessly rallied against a prospective Jewish state, and it has never stopped. asserted
it → pick → state
“I have been trying to instruct the people around here on the subject of the word ‘Jews’, i.e., that they are neither a race nor a people, etc.,” Sulzberger wrote to his Washington Bureau Chief in 1942. asserted
Sulzberger → try → 1942
The paper even railed against wartime rescue missions that would have sent Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe to British Palestine. asserted
that → rail → Palestine
When the Roosevelt administration was looking for a Jewish liaison in 1942, Sulzberger lobbied to ensure that the post didn’t go to “some Zionist or active Jewish Nationalist. asserted
post → look → Zionist
Nothing has changed. asserted
Nothing → change → ?
The opinion page is filled with “anti-Zionists,” including an outsize number of self-hating Jewish editorialists and op-ed writers. asserted
page → fill → editorialists
For decades, the New York Times even refused to send Jewish reporters to cover Israel. asserted
Times → refuse → Israel
At the same time, the paper had no problem employing Arab correspondents and reporters to cover the Islamic world. asserted
paper → have → world
These days, many of them are histories of pro-Palestinian activism and antisemitic rhetoric, including praising Hitler. asserted
many → include → Hitler
Over the years, the New York Times’s news coverage regularly oscillates between blatant propaganda and vile moral relativism. asserted
coverage → oscillate → propaganda
In one famous 2000 piece, the paper ran a photo of a bloodied young man being dragged by a baton-wielding Israeli policeman. asserted
paper → run → policeman
The caption identified the man as a Palestinian who had been beaten at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. asserted
who → identify → Jerusalem
In reality, the man’s name was Tuvia Grossman, a Chicago yeshiva student, who had been dragged out of a taxi and stabbed by a Palestinian mob. asserted
who → drag → mob
The Israeli police officer was protecting him. asserted
officer → protect → him
In another loathsome 2002 piece, “2 Girls, Divided by War, Joined in Carnage,” the New York Times ran side-by-side portraits of Rachel Levy, a 17-year-old who was murdered while doing some last-minute shopping before Sabbath, and Ayat al-Akhras, a suicide bomber who killed her, treating them both as victims. asserted
who → divide → victims
You can fill a book with similar coverage. asserted
You → fill → coverage
…and 31 more, not listed.
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