Israel Skewed In Back-To-Back Opeds

New York Times highlights columnists’ calumny regarding Lebanon

I feel compelled to respond to two lengthy, deeply distorted Opinion pieces that appeared in the New York Times on consecutive days this week. Each portrays Israel as the immoral, expansionist aggressor in the current Mideast conflict.

Such one-sided views should not go unanswered.

Israel, like numerous countries, has many faults in living up to its noble ideals. But it has never coveted the land of Lebanon or been at war with its citizens. Israel’s desire is to protect its own people, have cordial relations with bordering states if possible, and at least be left alone by its neighbors. But that is a luxury it has never enjoyed since the day it declared statehood in 1948. The military conflicts between Israel and Lebanon over the years were not with the Lebanese people but with the two terror groups – the PLO and Hezbollah – that have launched attacks on Israel from their perches in Lebanon.

New York Times columnist Lydia Polgreen has a different perspective. On Sunday (June 7), her prominently placed essay, entitled “Lebanon Is Fed Up, and Ready to Remake Itself,” describes her visit to the beleaguered country, talking to frustrated civilians who are the pawns suffering from the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

I have empathy for the people of Lebanon, as do most Israelis, but in Polgreen’s essay, Israel is the primary cause of the troubles. Hezbollah, described as “the Iran-backed Shiite militia group … in conflict with Israel, off and on for decades,” is seen as the protector of Lebanese civilians.

Those “off and on” battles have taken place whenever Hezbollah decided to attack Israel. That’s because its sole purpose as a jihadist terror group is to destroy the Jewish state and its citizens. The group’s 1985 manifesto states “our struggle will end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no ceasefire, and no peace agreements.”

None of this is mentioned in Polgreen’s piece.

The Lebanese people, caught in the crossfire, are in effect being held hostage to Hezbollah, and the Lebanese army is too weak to take on the terror group. Ironically, only Israel has the clout to defeat Hezbollah and restore a sense of order to Lebanon, its northern neighbor.

But Polgreen sees Israel, not Hezbollah, as the source of the violence. She asserts that “the ferocity and indiscriminate nature of the Israeli assault have revived Hezbollah’s image as a protector of Lebanese sovereignty, for all its deep ties to Iran.”

Nowhere in the piece does she suggest that Hezbollah has zero loyalty to Lebanese citizens, and that, like Hamas in Gaza, the terror group uses innocent civilians as fodder – the more casualties that result, the more Israel is blamed.

Megan K. Stack, a contributing Times Opinion writer, takes things a step further in her essay, “Israeli Expansionism Is Shaking the Mideast” (June 8). She asserts at the outset that “since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, aggression and expansionism have come to define Israel’s foreign policy.” The Jewish state is “moving with disoriented speed on multiple fronts,” she writes, attributing the IDF’s presence in Gaza and Lebanon to an “emboldened” land grab rather than protecting its border communities in response to murderous attacks on Israeli citizens by Iran-funded Hamas terrorists in Gaza and Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon in their effort to destroy Israel.

Israel also comes in for blame for its attempt to end Iran’s threat to annihilate the Jewish state. “In Iran,” Stack writes, “Israel eagerly tried to induce regime collapse, apparently unconcerned with creating a dangerous power vacuum in a country containing 11 tons of enriched uranium.”

Would the collapse of a regime that slaughtered tens of thousands of its own people in January not be celebrated by Iran’s citizens? And for what purpose has Iran spent an estimated $100 billion over almost five decades to develop enriched uranium other than to make good on its pledge to destroy Israel?

Stack doesn’t address those issues, nor the fact that Iran’s ultimate goal is to destroy “Big Satan” (the US) as well as “Little Satan” (Israel) in its mission to spread Islamism throughout the globe.

“Most of all,” she writes,” an assumption of impunity and the willingness to use violence as a political tool are turning Israel into a pariah.”

Israel is being defamed and unfairly blamed in columns like the ones cited above in mainstream media, and it’s an uphill battle to keep track, respond and point out the layers of bias. Few defenders of Israel are more effective in pointing out the salient facts of the complexities of Mideast conflicts than Sam Harris, a best-selling author, philosopher, podcast host and neuroscientist with a deep interest in these issues. A piece he posted this week on Substack, anchored in facts, logic and moral clarity, offers an important general response to those who oppose Israel.

Entitled “Why I Won’t Debate Critics of Israel,” the essay summarizes several of his strongest points.

He first cites and condemns Prime Minister Netanyahu’s “corrupt alliance with the far right,” settler violence in the West Bank and the deaths of innocent Palestinian civilians. But he maintains that “the ethical difference between Israel and her enemies remain vast, and the global preoccupation with the Jewish state, as though it were the worst villain among nations, is contemptible, being the product of perennial lies and delusions.”

Harris insists that “militant Islam is ten times worse than you think it is,” and that “the problem in the Middle East is not, and never has been, the existence of the state of Israel.” Rather, he says, it is the “evil jihadists … who take the most pernicious doctrines of Islam too seriously” in their zealous efforts to rid the Mideast of Jews. He suggests that “if the Palestinians laid down their arms, there would be peace.” But if Israelis laid down their arms, they would be the victims of genocide. October 7 was proof enough of the jihadists’ goals.

“There is only one nation on Earth that must continually argue for its right to exist, even when the very survival of its people is threatened by avowedly genocidal enemies,” Harris writes, adding: “This obsession with Israel and the double standard to which its people are held,” is antisemitism, and that matters not just for Jews but for all open societies. “So decrying antisemitism is not an act of special pleading,” Harris notes. “It is a defense of the moral and institutional architecture that free societies require.”

Harris’s point is well taken and consistent with my belief that calling out blatant bias in journalists’ work regarding Israel is an obligation, not just on behalf of defenders of the Jewish state but of the moral duty to seek the truth.