Yes, The New York Times Is Committing Genocidal Journalism
MEDIA, 28 Jul 2025
Belén Fernández | Al Jazeera – TRANSCEND Media Service
The bodies of Palestinians killed while trying to reach aid trucks entering northern Gaza through the Zikim crossing with Israel, are brought to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Sunday, 20 Jul 2025. [AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi]
In his latest column for the NYT, Bret Stephens tries to excuse a uniquely horrific crime with uniquely horrific journalism.
23 Jul 2025 – The Israelis certainly owe Bret Stephens a favour.
Yesterday, The New York Times opinion columnist took to the pages of the United States newspaper of record to promote his latest deranged argument, headlined: “No, Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza”.
Never mind that numerous global institutions, ranging from various United Nations bodies to Amnesty International, have determined that Israel is committing just that. These are organisations that hardly throw the G-word around lightly, but Stephens knows better. And he will tell us why.
In the very first paragraph of his Times intervention – which should perhaps come accompanied by a trigger warning for readers prone to aneurysms – Stephens demands defiantly: “If the Israeli government’s intentions and actions are truly genocidal – if it is so malevolent that it is committed to the annihilation of Gazans – why hasn’t it been more methodical and vastly more deadly?”
It would seem, of course, that the Israeli military’s near-comprehensive conversion of much of the Gaza Strip into rubble – via the bombardment of homes, hospitals, schools, and everything else that can be bombed – would be rather “methodical”. As for the perceived insufficient deadliness of Israel’s ongoing “actions”, Stephens cites the official Palestinian death count of “nearly 60,000” in less than two years, and wonders why there are “not, say, hundreds of thousands of deaths”.
He goes on to proclaim that “the first question the anti-Israel genocide chorus needs to answer is: Why isn’t the death count higher?”
Among the many questions that Stephens himself needs to answer, meanwhile, is why he thinks slaughtering 60,000 people is no big deal. As of November 2024, Israel had killed at least 17,400 children in Gaza – but even this is apparently not “malevolent” enough. Furthermore, according to a study published in the Lancet medical journal more than one year ago, the true death toll in Gaza was already potentially set to exceed 186,000. How’s that for “hundreds of thousands”?
In lieu of waiting for an answer from the “anti-Israel genocide chorus”, Stephens presents his own, which is that “Israel is manifestly not committing genocide.” Citing the UN genocide convention’s definition of the term as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”, Stephens proceeds to announce that “I am aware of no evidence of an Israeli plan to deliberately target and kill Gazan civilians.”
Objectively speaking, this is the equivalent in terms of ludicrousness of claiming that there is no evidence of a plan by the operators of a chicken slaughterhouse to deliberately end the lives of the poultry therein. You don’t kill 17,400 children in 13 months by accident; nor do you repeatedly bomb hospitals and ambulances if you aren’t, you know, deliberately aiming to kill civilians.
But it’s not just about bombs. Forced starvation is genocide, too. And on that note, another question Stephens might answer is how intentionally depriving a population of two million people of the food and water that is necessary for human survival does not constitute an “intent to destroy” that group. Yesterday alone, Gaza health officials reported that at least 15 Palestinians had starved to death, including four children.
Since the end of May, more than 1,000 Palestinians have also been killed while trying to procure food from the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). This diabolical outfit, backed by Israel and the US, not only concentrates large numbers of starving Palestinians in a single location for easier mowing down by the Israeli army, but also furthers Israel’s US-backed vision of forcibly expelling the surviving Palestinian population.
While Stephens does deign to mention the “chaotic food distribution system” in Gaza, he insists that “bungled humanitarian schemes or trigger-happy soldiers or strikes that hit the wrong target or [Israeli] politicians reaching for vengeful sound bites do not come close to adding up to a genocide.”
And yet in his war on the use of the G-word in the Gaza context, Stephens refuses to acknowledge that Israel itself has been a genocidal endeavour from the get-go. Zionists were well aware of the need to dispense with the majority of the Indigenous population of Palestine even before the formal creation of the state of Israel on Palestinian land in 1948, a process that entailed mass killing and the destruction of hundreds of villages. Some three-quarters of a million people were made refugees.
Since then, Israel has continued on what is fundamentally genocidal footing, working to disappear the Palestinians both physically and conceptually – as exemplified in the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir’s famous assertion that the Palestinians “did not exist”. Indeed, Israel’s existence as a Jewish settler-colonial state is predicated on the very “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”.
Anyway, forget history and reality. Stephens warns us that, if the word genocide “is to retain its status as a uniquely horrific crime, then the term can’t be promiscuously applied to any military situation we don’t like”.
Speaking of promiscuity, the Israeli military has long been in bed with The New York Times and a host of other US corporate media outlets, which do their best to sanitise Israeli atrocities as self-defence. But as Israel now continues to carry out a uniquely horrific crime in Gaza with the firm backing of the global superpower, Stephens’s genocidal journalism is also uniquely horrific.
_____________________________________________
Belén Fernández is an Al Jazeera columnist and a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine. She has written for the New York Times, London Review of Books, Current Affairs, and Middle East Eye, among numerous other publications. She is the author of Checkpoint Zipolite: Quarantine in a Small Place (OR Books, 2021), Exile: Rejecting America and Finding the World (OR Books, 2019), Martyrs Never Die: Travels through South Lebanon (Warscapes, 2016), and The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work (Verso, 2011).
Go to Original – aljazeera.com
Tags: Corporate Media, Fake History, Fake Report, Gaza, Genocide, Genocide Studies, Israel, New York Times, Official Lies and Narratives, Palestine
DISCLAIMER: The statements, views and opinions expressed in pieces republished here are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of TMS. In accordance with title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. TMS has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is TMS endorsed or sponsored by the originator. “GO TO ORIGINAL” links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the “GO TO ORIGINAL” links. This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Join the discussion!
We welcome debate and dissent, but personal — ad hominem — attacks (on authors, other users or any individual), abuse and defamatory language will not be tolerated. Nor will we tolerate attempts to deliberately disrupt discussions. We aim to maintain an inviting space to focus on intelligent interactions and debates.