New English Review

When I think that the media cannot possibly get any worse, they do--and how they do!

Is it worth documenting this increasingly dangerous decline even one more time? It doesn't seem to change things. Yes, we must go on the offensive. But it might still be necessary to rebut, expose, and condemn the Western media and all those who believe every word they read there--as long as the words are anti-Zionist and anti-Trump.

As Israel keeps fighting and succeeding in its war of self-defense in Gaza, in Yehudah and Shomron, and in the North, the mainstream/left-stream Western media simply double down and publish even more articles filled with Lethal Lies against Israel and the Jews; publish even more photos of suffering, even of allegedly starving Palestinian women and children, photos which often turn out to have been taken in previous years and/or in entirely different countries. Such photos are rarely balanced with equally sympathetic images of Israeli suffering.

Here's the unspoken rule: Whatever fact-based good that Israel does--feed the enemy while it is actively seeking to exterminate them, or accomplish miracles in terms of avoiding civilian casualties--is hotly denied, discounted, disappeared. Whatever fact-based evil that Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Qatar, or Iran perpetrate is denied, minimized, or discounted entirely.

For example: Even as Israel sends in truckloads of food--its efforts are condemned by the United Nations, and the media accuse it of starving a civilian population in a way that amounts to "genocide." Not mentioned: It's been 600 days since the 10/7 pogrom-on-steroids, a period of time during which Hamas has been purposely starving, as well as beating, raping, chaining, verbally tormenting, their captives and depriving them of air. And no, the Red Cross has not visited a single one of them. And no, the United Nations has not condemned any of this.

The Western leftists/feminists/LGBTQ folk have, if possible, become even more gleefully and viciously anti-Zionist than ever before

Today alone, The New York Times has published four articles about and against Israel, coverage which takes up two full pages and which begins as the lead story on the first pages. They have also published a three-column op-ed piece by Thomas L. Friedman, which takes up three-quarters of the last page of the first section.

Friedman is following the same line that M. Gessen launched a day or two ago in these same pages. According to her/him/them, Bibi and Trump are evil twins. The actions of one shadow the actions of the other. In Gessen's view, the alleged "genocide" that Israel is committing far, far outweighs whatever Putin is doing in Ukraine. Here's Gessen:

"Even Israel's massacre in Gaza, which makes Russia's warfare in Ukraine look restrained, can't produce new headlines after more than 19 months of indiscriminate bombing and warfare by starvation. It is news when two Israeli Embassy employees are murdered in Washington D.C. But when entire Palestinian families are killed, or when Palestinian children die of malnutrition, it's just another day in Gaza. Nor is it news that the U.S. government is indifferent to war crimes committed by its allies."

What in God's name is she smoking?

These wars are still ongoing and reliable figures are hard to come by. However, as of May 26th, 2025, according to Euro News, the estimated number of those who've been murdered and wounded in Russia and Ukraine amounts to approximately one million people. One million people.

Comparatively, the most exaggerated Hamas Ministry of Health figures, estimate that the number of Gazans killed in the war that Hamas began amounts to approximately 54,249; Israel estimates that at least 20,000 of these deaths are terrorist combatants. According to Andrew Fox and Tatiana Glezer, in Middle East Quarterly, the majority of dead Gazans are men of fighting age.

M. Gessen: There is simply no comparison.

Let's put this in further perspective by looking at some wars and genocides in the past.

In 1915-1916, Muslim Turks murdered at least 664,000 Christian Armenians, but perhaps as many as 1.2 million Armenians. This is considered a genocide.

In 1939-1945, during World War Two, the database EBSCO estimates that seventy million people died, including approximately forty million civilians. This war also involved the genocide of Jews and Roma.

In 1994, in one hundred days, Hutu on Tutsi genocide led to 800,00 thousand Tutsi murders. This is also considered a genocide.

Gessen's and Friedman's (and so many others’) hyperbolic language, their propaganda-based accusations against Israel are not only highly exaggerated--they are also, in a sense, confessions. What Israel and the Jews are being accused of are the very acts perpetrated by infidel-hating Islamists and by Nazis.

For those who are exceedingly simplistic thinkers, please understand that I am not defending President Trump or Prime Minister Netanyahu--nor am I attacking or faulting either of them. There will be plenty of time for that.