Diaa Defiant

I saw this Instagram post:

Diaa Hadid of the New York Times, who terms herself a “corro”, has become controversial for her reporting and here are some examples.  A more detailed review by Mirabelle can be read here.  Ari Lieberman terms her writing “warped“.

Based on the above, allow me to add my observation.

No, I wouldn’t argue whether that ‘swirl’ is really a ‘cloud’.

What irks me is her total lack of context.  “Protests”?  The Gazans have been tearing down the security fence, have been invading Israeli territory (an act of war, actually), shooting at Israelis across the border not to mention the stone throwing.  All this is documented.  Even in the New York Times. Even by … Diaa herself who noted the

rushing the Gaza security fence en masse, and sometimes crossing it…[and] hurled rocks in the direction of military jeeps”

on November 6.  She can call it ‘defiance’ or ‘the new normal’ but in her social media communications, she is playing out her role as propagandist agent for the cause of the Arabs-who-refer-to-themselves-as-‘Palestinians’.

These are not protests but attacks. Violent attacks. They are not non-violent direct action protests.  She is befuddling her readers.

This is not journalism and her, ahem, journalism output, inseparable from her thinking and approach to the subject  is tainted.

The New York Times and her bureau chief may be unmoved, satisfied or, perhaps, even delighted at such a standard of a mobilized press but it is biased, unethical and a breach of all criteria of objectivity.  Not to mention truth and facts.

Diaa herself is a defiant defender of Palestinianism.

And that fits the NYTimes, it appears, all too well.

Once, there was the “freedom of the press”.  Now, there’s a “terror of the press.”