New York Times Fears DC Shooting Could Fuel ‘Further Repression’ of Anti-Israel Activists

Ira Stoll

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Police officers work at the site where two Israeli embassy staff were shot dead near the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, US May 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

The New York Times started the week attacking the Heritage Foundation for a project aimed at combating antisemitism.

It was poor timing, given the shooting Wednesday night of two staffers of the Israeli embassy in Washington by a gunman shouting “free Palestine.” Heritage was able to respond: “Many have been questioning why Heritage launched Project Esther, our national strategy to combat antisemitism in the United States. Because antisemitism is leading to Jewish people being assassinated on the streets of our capital, that’s why.”

The Times countered with a news article expressing anxiety that “the killings also risked painting all pro-Palestinian activists, the vast majority of whom do not engage in violence, with the same brush, which could lead to further repression of their movement.” That’s quite an angle on the murder of Israeli embassy employees in the streets of Washington, that it creates the “risk” of “further repression” of the anti-Israel protests that the Times insists on inaccurately describing as pro-Palestinian. You can’t make this stuff up.

The original Times attack on Heritage, breathlessly headlined “The Group Behind Project 2025 Has a Plan to Crush the Pro-Palestinian Movement,” quoted as an expert “Jonathan Jacoby, the national director of the Nexus Project, a watchdog group that works to combat antisemitism and protect open debate.” The Times didn’t say that Nexus got started with $75,000 in grants from the Open Society Foundations, the George and Alexander Soros outfit that also pays anti-Israel protesters.

The Times article, which appeared on page one of the print paper on Monday, May 20, was particularly strange because it included a passage that described Jewish Voice for Peace as a Jewish organization.

The Times reported that the Heritage project “has drawn criticism from many Jewish organizations amid increasing calls for them to push back against the Trump administration.”

After the introductory reference to “many Jewish organizations,” the Times report went on immediately to quote one:

“Trump is pulling straight from the authoritarian playbook, using tools of repression first against those organizing for Palestinian rights,” said Stefanie Fox, the executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace. “And in so doing, sharpening those tools for use against anyone and everyone who challenges his fascist agenda.”

Recent polling has shown the overwhelming majority of American Jews reject Jewish Voice for Peace. The Algemeiner reported on a study earlier this year finding the group had a “record of support for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization with the stated goal of dismantling Israel and replacing it with a Palestinian state.”

The Algemeiner has previously reported that JVP argued in a recently resurfaced 2021 booklet that Jews should not write Hebrew liturgy because hearing the language would be “deeply traumatizing” to Palestinians.

A Heritage Foundation staffer, Yehoshua Jason Bedrick, said the Times was “smearing the Heritage Foundation.”

“If you actually *read* Project Esther, you will find that it’s not the fascist nightmare of the NYT’s fever dreams, but rather a sober and thoughtful effort to address the very difficult problem of foreign terrorist groups and their government sponsors attempting to weaponize our freedoms against us–while preserving our freedoms and respecting constitutional norms,” Bedrick wrote in a Facebook post.

The Heritage Foundation wants to combat the Hamasniks and the antisemites who are cheering on them and their agenda. The New York Times apparently thinks it’s the Heritage Foundation, rather than the Hamasniks, who are the real problem. The sad events of the past week made clear how misguided that is. And it’s just short of unbelievable, and well beyond grotesque, that, rather than ceding the point or just being quiet, the Times is reacting to the shooting by fretting that it might have the unfortunate effect of “further” repressing the anti-Israel activists.

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Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. He writes frequently at TheEditors.com. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.

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