New York Times, Like Iran's Rouhani, Dilutes Jewish History for Its Readers

...however much mullahs or media may seek to distort inconvenient historical facts, people devoted to truth will continue to know better.
Rabbi Avi Shafran

Rabbi Avi Shafran writes that The New York Times, like Iran's Rouhani, tries its hand at Defining History Down.

At a time that Rouhani sidestepped on the Holocaust, the New York Times for its part also watered down the history of the Jews. Last week, Jodi Rudoren of The New York Times wrote Jews Challenge Rules to Claim Heart of Jerusalem.

Shafran takes issue with matters of emphasis in the article. The real issue, however, is the video that accompanies the article:

But what was truly disconcerting was the narration of the Times’ video expanding on the article. It referred to the Har Habayis as the place “that Jews call the Temple Mount…” and that “Jews widely believe was the site of the Temples.” Italics, of course, mine.

Such subtle casting of long-accepted historical fact as mere popular Jewish belief is of a sort with the subtle devaluation of “Judaism’s holiest site” the Old Gray Lady has perpetrated in the past – like when it bestowed that honor to the Western Wall rather than to the Temple Mount that lies behind it.

Fact: Objective students of history – of all ethnicities – see no reason to not accept the Bible’s account that, approximately nine centuries before the beginning of the Common Era and nearly 1500 years before Mohammed’s grandmother was born, King Solomon built the first of the two Holy Jewish Temples on that Jerusalem site. And that sacrificial offerings, as the Talmud and Roman sources alike recount, were brought on the altar there on behalf of both Jews and non-Jewish visitors.

Read the whole thing.

Here is the video:



Just 2 months Rudoren and the New York Times falsely reported that US policy considered Israeli settlements illegal -- and went on to publish a correction. Since the New York Times whitewash in this case is more subtle, and in a video instead of in print, don't expect a correction.

The Temple Mount Credit: Wiki Commons/Assayas

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