HonestReporting recently exposed ‘media pundit’ and provocateur Refaat Alareer as a proud Israel-hater.
He compared Israel to Nazi Germany more than 100 times; promoted modern-day blood libels; and repeatedly disseminated falsehoods about the Jewish state.
Yet, The New York Times is evidently unrepentant about having given a platform to Alareer during May’s Hamas-initiated conflict against Israel, as the publication has now produced a glowing feature about him that whitewashes his antisemitism.
The November 16 article by Patrick Kingsley, In Gaza, a Contentious Palestinian Professor Calmly Teaches Israeli Poetry, defies belief with its gushing descriptions of Alareer and his job teaching university students.
Observing that Alareer has introduced his class to the work of an Israeli poet, Kingsley writes:
Here was an appreciation of one of Israel’s best-loved poets from a Palestinian professor at a university co-founded by the former leader of Hamas, the militant group that runs the Gaza government, does not recognize Israel, and was responsible for dozens of suicide attacks on Israelis. Experts say the study of Israeli poetry in Palestinian colleges is rare, though not unheard of.
What Mr. Alareer admired about the poem, ‘Jerusalem,’ he told his students, was the way it blurred divisions between Israelis and Palestinians and implied that ‘Jerusalem can be the place where we all come together, regardless of religion and faith.'”
While Alareer may have paid lip service to lofty ideas about peaceful coexistence under the gaze of Kingsley, the facts speak for themselves.
Alareer has repeatedly used his social media platform to spew hatred about Israel, including his assertion that the Jewish state is “nazi Germany on steriods [sic]” and by comparing Zionism to Hitler’s Germany as “two cheeks of the same dirty arse.”
Kingsley seems to have missed all this, summed up in Alareer’s tweet below:
Hitler is as peaceful as any Israeli leader.
— Refaat🇵🇸 (@itranslate123) September 25, 2020
Kingsley’s piece continues:
Mr. Alareer, 42, is not an obvious champion of Hebrew poetry.… And on social media, he frequently writes furious barrages that describe Israel as a source of evil, posts that led to the suspension of his Twitter account. In one post he wrote: ‘No form, act, or means of Palestinian resistance whatsoever is terror. All Israelis are soldiers. All Palestine is occupied.'”
Yet, Alareer’s social media posts amount to slightly more than “furious barrages.”
The tweet that Kingsley highlights is one in which Alareer justifies Palestinian terrorism and argues that all Israeli civilians are legitimate targets.
Furthermore, Alareer’s primary criticism of Hamas appears to be that the US-designated terrorist group engages in prisoner swap negotiations with “nazis” [Israel], whereas he takes no issues with indiscriminate Palestinian rocket fire and suicide bombings that have killed and maimed thousands of Israeli civilians.
Did Kingsley bother to challenge Alareer over such remarks in the course of writing this article?
Like Nazis, Zios will always claim to be the victims.
Same shit, same asshole! https://t.co/IR2h7uWm5V— Refaat🇵🇸 (@itranslate123) November 10, 2021
Kingsley even gives Alareer an unencumbered opportunity to suggest he is not an antisemite, despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary:
‘As Palestinians, do we have any problem with Jews, as Jews?’ Mr. Alareer asked his class. ‘No, it is a political kind of struggle.’”
Let’s be completely clear: There is nothing “political” about advocating for the elimination of the world’s only Jewish state.
That Patrick Kingsley and his employers at The New York Times find nothing wrong with glamorizing a person who harbors such loathsome views is beyond the pale.
It is one of the reasons HonestReporting is asking readers to sign our petition calling for The New York Times (and BBC) to stop giving a platform to people who spread antisemitism and act as apologists for terrorism.
Where views such as these rear their ugly head, they must be challenged — not given an effusive 1,200-word tribute in America’s “newspaper of record.”
To register a complaint with the New York Times please contact [email protected]. Alternatively, the article’s author Patrick Kingsley can be contacted directly at [email protected]
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Featured Image: New York Times Building: pio3 / Shutterstock.com, Palestinian flag: Nayef Hammouri / Shutterstock.com
