{"id":119856,"date":"2025-03-16T17:00:08","date_gmt":"2025-03-16T15:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=119856"},"modified":"2025-03-16T11:05:11","modified_gmt":"2025-03-16T09:05:11","slug":"16-00-99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=119856","title":{"rendered":"New York Times Cheerleads for \u2018Pro-Hamas\u2019 Mahmoud Khalil"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>New York Times Cheerleads for \u2018Pro-Hamas\u2019 Mahmoud Khalil<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

Ira Stoll<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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A taxi passes by in front of The New York Times head office, Feb. 7, 2013. Photo: Reuters \/ Carlo Allegri<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

On March 9, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student. Secretary of State Rubio posted on X, \u201cWe will be revoking the visas and\/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.\u201d President Trump himself posted, \u201cICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of @Columbia University. This is the first arrest of many to come.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyone who expected straight-down-the-middle, impartial coverage of this issue from the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0would be disappointed. Instead, the paper\u2019s news columns have turned themselves into cheerleaders for Khalil and his supporters, portraying him as a free-speech martyr.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the four-and-a-half days since Khalil\u2019s arrest, the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0has published at least 11 articles about it, with credits to no fewer than 13 reporters and two opinion columnists. The opinion columns set the tone with hyperbolic alarmism. \u201cThis Is The Greatest Threat to Free Speech Since the Red Scare,\u201d one opinion headline put it, overlooking the McCain-Feingold campaign speech restriction legislation championed by the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0itself, signed into law by President George W. Bush, and eventually found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.<\/span><\/p>\n

The news articles read pretty much the same. One piece was by Eliza Shapiro, who last attracted\u00a0notice<\/a>\u00a0for a\u00a0flawed investigative series that targeted Orthodox Jewish schools<\/a>\u00a0in New York. Shapiro\u2019s latest article included this passage: \u201cThe Columbia Jewish Alumni Association, which has been calling for aggressive action against pro-Palestinian demonstrators, praised Mr. Khalil\u2019s detention in a series of social media posts, calling Mr. Khalil, without evidence, a \u2018ringleader\u2019 of the chaos at Columbia.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

These Columbia protesters are not \u201cpro-Palestinian.\u201d They are anti-Israel, pro-terrorism, and pro-Hamas. Likewise, it\u2019s loaded to say the Columbia Jewish Alumni Association has been \u201ccalling for aggressive action\u201d against the students who have been disrupting campus activities, including classes. The Jewish alumni have been calling for defensive action to protect the Jewish and Israeli students from the violent assaults, harassment, and social ostracism that has interfered with their education.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the same sentence, the \u201cwithout evidence\u201d is such garbage \u2014 a classic tell of\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0aggression toward whomever the phrase is applied to. The Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans offered up\u00a0evidence<\/a>\u00a0including a\u00a0New York<\/em>\u00a0magazine article describing Khalil as a \u201clead negotiator for Columbia University Apartheid Divest,\u201d a group that has called for \u201ctotal eradication of Western Civilization\u201d and that the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0itself, in a brief moment of lucidity,\u00a0acknowledged in an October 2024 headline<\/a>\u00a0\u201cPro-Palestinian Group at Columbia Now Backs \u2018Armed Resistance\u2019 by Hamas.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Another\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0reporter whose slant was clearly visible was Ana Ley. Her\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0acknowledged, \u201cMahmoud Khalil, 30, emerged as a public face of students opposed to the war, leading demonstrations and granting interviews.\u201d So much for \u201cwithout evidence.\u201d But there, too, the bias shows; the students weren\u2019t actually \u201copposed to the war\u201d; they support Hamas\u2019s war against Israel, that is, \u201carmed resistance.\u201d What they oppose is Israel fighting back in self-defense, with American assistance. A print version of Ley\u2019s article included quotes from\u00a0Israel boycott advocate<\/a>\u00a0\u201cSophie Ellman-Golan, the communications director of Jews for Racial & Economic Justice\u201d; Ben Wizner of the ACLU; and a Columbia professor supportive of Mahmoud Khalil. That\u2019s three sources on Mahmoud Khalil\u2019s side, and virtually no representation of the point of view that supports deporting disruptive student protesters who are non-citizens. Perhaps the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0newsroom thinks this point of view is so reprehensible that\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0readers need to be protected from exposure to it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Columbia gives out the Pulitzer Prizes, which are a key to career advancement at the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>. Maybe the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0is hoping for a Pulitzer for its all-hands-on-deck defense of free-speech martyr Mahmoud Khalil? The free-speech aspect of the issue seemed somehow less salient to the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0newsroom when the Israel-haters at Columbia were disrupting the class of an Israeli professor, preventing him from speaking. It is almost enough to make a reader wonder whether the\u00a0Times\u2019<\/em>\u00a0cause is really free speech, as a universally applied principle, or if what they are really dug in committedly in favor of is the ability of Columbia students and graduates to cheer on Hamas without any significant adverse consequences.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Ira Stoll<\/strong> was managing editor of\u00a0<\/i>The Forward\u00a0and North American editor of\u00a0<\/i>The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular\u00a0<\/i>Algemeiner\u00a0feature, can be found\u00a0<\/i>here<\/a>.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

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New York Times Cheerleads for \u2018Pro-Hamas\u2019 Mahmoud Khalil Ira Stoll A taxi passes by in front of The New York Times head office, Feb. 7, 2013. Photo: Reuters \/ Carlo Allegri On March 9, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student. Secretary of State Rubio posted on X, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119856"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=119856"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119871,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119856\/revisions\/119871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=119856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=119856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=119856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}