NYT ‘investigates’ genocide, uncovers nothing but ‘loosened standards’
On Thursday, The New York Times ran a bazillion-word would-be expose on the ongoing United States-backed Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip titled Israel Loosened Its Rules to Bomb Hamas Fighters, Killing Many More Civilians. It can also be listened to on the newspaper’s website – if you happen to have 28 minutes and 27 seconds to kill.
The word “genocide” appears exactly once in the article – and only as an allegation that Israel denies: “Israel, which has been accused of genocide in a case before the International Court of Justice, says it complies with international law by taking all feasible precautions to minimize civilian casualties.”And yet as the article itself demonstrates, any such pretence of precaution was essentially thrown to the wind on October 7, 2023, when the Israeli military issued an order that gave mid-ranking officers unprecedented leeway in authorising attacks on Gaza. In previous conflicts with Hamas, according to the Times, “many Israeli strikes were approved only after officers concluded that no civilians would be hurt” – which would certainly be news to the thousands of Palestinians in Gaza slaughtered by Israel in the past 20 years alone.
While the Times report includes damning details regarding Israel’s behaviour, at the end of the day it’s always the fault of Hamas – and Israel is always permitted to remain in the self-appointed club of ethical and “civilised” nations. This enables the United States newspaper of record to project a veneer of fair-minded criticism without fundamentally condemning Israel’s current mass extermination campaign.
So it is that the Times informs us that “unlike Hamas, which fires rockets indiscriminately at civilian areas, Israel and all Western armies operate under a multilayered oversight system that assesses the legality of planned strikes.” Never mind that much of the Israeli military activity described in the article itself would appear to qualify as indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas.
After the October 7 order, another order issued on October 8, 2023, permitted the military to “cumulatively endanger up to 500 civilians a day” in strikes. The article continues: “In any case, the limit was removed two days later – allowing officers to sign off on as many strikes as they believed were legal.”
Other findings from the Times investigation also imply blatant indiscrimination, such as that the Israelis “often relied on a crude statistical model to assess the risk of civilian harm, and sometimes launched strikes on targets several hours after last locating them, increasing the risk of error”. Plus, the military “struck at a pace that made it harder to confirm it was hitting legitimate targets” while also adopting an “unproven system for finding new targets that used artificial intelligence at a vast scale”.
