NY Daily News Disinfects BDS

Here's something I never saw before: After Omar Barghouti was given op-ed space in the NY Daily News to explain…

By Pesach Benson February 26, 2013

Here’s something I never saw before: After Omar Barghouti was given op-ed space in the NY Daily News to explain the anti-Israel boycott-divestment-sanctions movement (BDS for short), the paper itself slammed Barghouti with a staff-ed.

It’s one thing to present dueling op-eds. But responding with a sharply worded staff editorial — which represents the paper’s official view — is much stronger.  I also liked the staff-ed’s style. Bloggers would refer to the point-by-point refutations as a fisking.

The Daily News even labeled Barghouti as a “propagandist.”

Skilled as a propagandist, he piles falsehood upon falsehood to present Israel as relentlessly oppressing the Palestinians in violation of human decency, and to hold Israel exclusively responsible for the ills afflicting them.

And so, he says, Israel must be hit with BDS — a boycott of commerce, divestment from the country’s economy and economic sanctions.

Let’s catalog his distortions . . .

I’m glad the paper published Barghouti in his own words. Sunlight is indeed a dynamic disinfectant.

(Image of Barghouti via YouTube/sternchenproductions)

© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025

Pesach Benson

Pesach Benson

A Baltimore native, Pesach was with HonestReporting from 2011 to 2020. He edited the Israel Daily News Stream and authored the e-book, Red Lines: HonestReporting’s 8 Categories of Media Bias. Before moving to Israel in 1995, he worked as a reporter for the Baltimore Jewish Times. Pesach has a B.A. in political science from the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, where he was executive editor of the campus newspaper.

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