“Israelis still largely view themselves as the victims of October 7,” The New York Times reported on Monday.
The comment in an article by the paper’s senior correspondent in Jerusalem, Isabel Kershner, came nearly three years after some 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, were killed and about 250 more were taken hostage in the single worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
“Israelis are deeply divided over how to apportion blame for the policy, military and intelligence failures that preceded the attack and the war,” the article states. “But Israelis still largely view themselves as the victims of Oct. 7.”
The remark in a news article about a controversial Israeli documentary drew sharp criticism from a prominent media watchdog.
“Wait, what? That Israelis are victims of the Oct. 7 massacre is a matter of Israeli ‘perception’ and not simply fact?” tweeted Tamar Sternthal, the Israel director of CAMERA, on Wednesday. “If they’re not the victims, then what are they? The perpetrators?”
The article comes just days after a study found that the NYT’s coverage of the first months of the war in Gaza displayed a clear bias against Israel by downplaying the country’s casualties and minimizing Hamas’s role in the conflict.
