How Does the NY Times Keep Getting it Wrong?

I cancelled my subscription to the NY Times a couple of years ago after many years of being a loyal subscriber. The reason was my fatigue at reading the endless anti-Israel commentary and reporting in the vaunted paper. By the time they selected the amateurish and churlish Jody Rudoren to become their primary correspondent in Israel, I was already enjoying the Wall Street Journal. Maybe I don’t agree with some of the Journal’s views on US politics, but at least I can read reasonable analysis and news regarding Israel in this paper. I mean, give me Bret Stephens’ analysis over Tom Friedman’s any day of the week, any week of the year.

Today the NY Times came out with an editorial that truly showed how naive and foolish their editors are. In this editorial, the Times suggests that the recent failure of the Iran – P5+1 talks are a shame primarily because they open the door to “generate more hysterical opposition” to the deal. Who are the hysterical opponents? Netanyahu, Saudi Arabia and certain members of Congress.

How does the Times conclude?

The best way to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon is through a negotiated deal that limits uranium enrichment, curbs the plutonium program and allows for maximum international monitoring. Iran took a useful, if insufficient, step on Monday when it agreed to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency access to certain nuclear sites. The opponents of a deal are energized and determined. The United States and its allies have to be united and smart.

I’m not an expert here, so all I can say is that the Times’ wishful thinking might entice some to think resolution could be this simple, but in reality the Iranians and other countries (including Israel) have shown that it’s not difficult to delay or ignore UN agencies. The Iranians have been playing the IAEA like a fiddle for years now, to the point where some people wondered whether El Baradei who headed up the IAEA at one point several critical years ago, was an Iranian agent or plant. In addition, the “hysterical” Israelis seem to believe that as long as the uranium enrichment is permitted and the centrifuges aren’t removed, Iran remains a hop, skip and a jump away from a bomb. I trust the Israelis more on this subject than I trust the NY Times.

What really got to me at the end, however, was reading the NY Times sounding like, well, like Khameini’s personal assistant. I can see why someone such as Khameini might wish to play a divide and conquer strategy between Israel and the US, but why would the NY Times?

“The opponents of a deal are energized and determined. The United States and its allies have to be united and smart.”

Really? You mean that American congresspeople aren’t considered part of the United States and its allies? Israel isn’t an ally?

Dear NY Times, the enemy here is Iran, not Israel. Does the Times actually believe that the friend with whom the US should be working to outsmart allies is Iran?

This is an opportune moment to recall what the NY Times believed in 1981 when Israel destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. That’s right, the NY Times didn’t think that was a good move, though as an editorial in The Forward a couple of years ago noted, Iraq’s Scud attacks on Israel in the early 90’s proved the Israelis had been prescient.

Israel’s sneak attack on a French-built nuclear reactor near Baghdad was an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression.

Even assuming that Iraq was hellbent to divert enriched uranium for the manufacture of nuclear weapons, it would have been working toward a capacity that Israel itself acquired long ago. Contrary to its official assertion, therefore, Israel was not in ”mortal danger” of being outgunned. It faced a potential danger of losing its Middle East nuclear monopoly, of being deterred one day from the use of atomic weapons in war. And while that danger may now be delayed, it is also enhanced – by Iraq’s humiliation.

The NY Times: All the wrong editorials, fit to print all the time.

.