What Were They Thinking? The New York Times Has Some Serious Explaining To Do

[rangerrebew]

What Were They Thinking? The New York Times Has Some Serious Explaining To Do
by Steven Emerson
IPT News
April 24, 2026

 
By platforming Ussama Makdisi as a moral voice on Israel, America's newspaper of record handed its op-ed page to a man who publicly said he wished he had been among those who massacred 1,200 Israelis on October 7.


On the second anniversary of the October 7 massacre, parents and children visit site of the Nova Music Festival where 360 young Israelis were murdered in the first few minutes of the 72 hours of non-stop mass murder of 1200 Israelis carried out by Hamas death squads. (Photo by MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images)

There are editorial decisions that make you scratch your head. And then there are decisions so staggering in their moral recklessness that they demand a public accounting. The New York Times' choice to publish an op-ed today (April 23, 2026) by University of California, Berkeley history professor Ussama Makdisi — positioning him as a credible, sober commentator on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — falls firmly, irredeemably, in the second category.

This is not a close call. This is not a matter of reasonable people disagreeing about which voices belong in the public square. This is the Times conferring the prestige of its op-ed page — the most coveted platform in American journalism — on a man whose public record on this subject is not merely controversial, but morally indefensible. The editors who authorized this piece owe their readers an apology.

"I Could Have Been One of Those Who Broke Through"

Let us begin with the statement that, on its own, should have ended any conversation about Makdisi as a Times contributor on this topic. In the aftermath of the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023 — in which 1,200 Israeli men, women, and children were slaughtered, babies were killed in their homes, elderly Holocaust survivors were dragged from their kibbutzim, and young people were gunned down at a music festival — Ussama Makdisi took to social media and shared an article with this title: "I Could Have Been One of Those Who Broke Through the Siege on October 7."

 https://www.investigativeproject.org/9450/what-were-they-thinking-the-new-york-times-has

[rangerrebew]

Let us begin with the statement that, on its own, should have ended any conversation about Makdisi as a Times contributor on this topic. In the aftermath of the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023 — in which 1,200 Israeli men, women, and children were slaughtered, babies were killed in their homes, elderly Holocaust survivors were dragged from their kibbutzim, and young people were gunned down at a music festival — Ussama Makdisi took to social media and shared an article with this title: "I Could Have Been One of Those Who Broke Through the Siege on October 7."
 

Certainly this *sshole isn't trying to make us believe he can be impartial and unbiased toward Jewish students while at the same time, desire to kill them?      But, it is UC Berkeley, of which that great POTUS candidate, Gavin Newsom is very proud.  That makes as much sense as that good Christian, Jimmah Caaaaaaata, lusting in his heart for some Playboy Playmate.