Zero accountability: On the Times' miscoverage of Israel.

The Times Tel-Aviv based correspondent Gabrielle Weiniger co-authored the most infamous piece published by the outlet since the Oct. 7th massacre.

As we demonstrated in a post at the time, that June 7, 2024 article, “Israel says Hamas weaponised rape. Does the evidence add up?”, co-written by Catherine Philp (whose visceral hostility to Israel we’ve documented for over a decade) tried to undermine ubiquitous evidence that Hamas used rape as a weapon of war.

The piece was so shoddy and dishonest that the outlet received a rebuke by one of the Israeli women interviewed for the piece, Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, who heads the Dinah Project, the organisation which has been meticulously documenting the rape of women, girls and men by Gaza terrorists since Oct. 7, 2023.

Halperin-Kaddari accused the co-authors of grossly misrepresenting her words in an attempt to “discredit and gaslight the victims of heinous acts of sexual violence”.

Though we complained to top editors at the outlet, who assured us they would investigate the accusations by Halperin-Kaddari, we never received a reply – and the piece was never amended. (Nor was an apology offered, by editors or the co-authors, to Israeli rape victims.)

Last week, Weiniger authored another widely condemned Times article, one which legitimised the conspiracy theory that the late sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad agent. Shortly after the Feb. 8 piece was published, it was revealed that the anonymous FBI source – framed by Weiniger as someone of importance – who was “convinced that Epstein was a co-opted Mossad agent” turned out to be a fraudster and Holocaust denier named Charles Johnson.

How the piece – which, based on zero evidence, advanced an anti-Israel conspiracy that not even the Guardian has promoted – got past Times editors represents more evidence that – at least as it pertains to Israel – their reporters are not held accountable for egregious breaches of basic journalistic standards.

Weiniger further tarnished her professional reputation when she inexplicably posted on X a clear AI fake photo purporting to depict Epstein with Israeli president Isaac Herzog – despite the fact that Herzog wasn’t mentioned in her Times article.

Though she eventually deleted the post, and apologised, the original ‘Mossad-Epstein’ hoax is still up on the Times’ website, and hasn’t been amended to note the identity of the FBI source cited by Weiniger.

Though the rape-denial article from 2024 and the Epstein-Mossad hoax published last week represent two of the most egregious examples of Weiniger’s unambiguous bias against Israel, an egregious omission in a piece published yesterday is also worth noting.

The piece (“Hamas warned to disarm or face fresh Israeli military operation”, Feb. 17) includes the following:

The calm has been punctured by sporadic Israeli strikes. Overnight bombardment on Saturday killed 11, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said. More than 600 Palestinians have been killed since October’s ceasefire came into force, according to Gazan officials

First, no information is provided by Weiniger concerning the terrorist ceasefire violations the previous day that had prompted “Israeli strikes”.

As our co-editor Hadar Sela documented in a post yesterday, the first of those incidents on Feb. 14 involved a Palestinian who was shot dead after crossing the ‘yellow line’ in the north of the Gaza Strip and posing a threat to soldiers in the area under Israeli control. The second incident – also in northern Gaza – involved five armed terrorists who exited a tunnel and entered a damaged building on the Israeli-controlled side of the ‘yellow line’ near troops operating in the area. At least two of the terrorists were eliminated.

Similarly, Weiniger’s following sentence, where readers are told that “more than 600 Palestinians have been killed since October’s ceasefire came into force“, completely erases near-daily Hamas ceasefire violations – including attacks over recent months which killed five Israeli soldiers – that prompted IDF retaliatory attacks on terror targets, resulting in alleged death count cited.

Though we’ll be complaining about Weiniger’s grossly misleading omission, which represents a larger Times pattern of erasing Hamas from the post-Oct. 7 battlefield, our experience with editors’ unwillingness to hold their journalists accountable give us little hope for a serious, professional response.