NYT Slammed for Backing Trump Plan to 'Deradicalize' Gaza—Not the Country Committing Genocide

In its assessment of US President Donald Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza, The New York Times editorial board on Tuesday resorted to age-old "Islamophobic tropes," said one writer—namely, the claim that the exclave that is home to more than 2 million Palestinians, nearly half of them children, must be "deradicalized."

The editorial board asserted that the White House had "crucially" included in its peace plan a proposal to not only restore basic services to Gaza and feed people who have been starved by Israel's near-total blockade that was first imposed nearly two years ago, but also empower a multinational authority to develop Gaza as a "deradicalized terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors."

The Times editors said that the proposal repeats a call by the Wilson Center, the Washington think tank that has called for a program in Gaza's schools and media "to remove Hamas’ pervasive radicalizing influence over Gazan society."

The editors, said Brian Tashman of the Vera Institute of Justice, appeared to subscribe to the "belief that Palestinians are motivated by irrational bigotry... and that there is no way they might be angry over being occupied, brutalized, impoverished, displaced, and murdered by Israelis."

Tashman noted that the viewpoint is pervasive in the US political establishment, with former President Joe Biden asserting last year that Hamas was motivated by an "ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people off the face of the Earth" when it led a violent attack on southern Israel in October 2023.

The West Bank-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, which for years has conducted public opinion surveys of Palestinians, called into question the view that Palestinians in Gaza support the atrocities Hamas is accused of committing in its October 7 attack.

"Our findings show the exact opposite," pollster Khalil Shikaki told NPR. "Those who think atrocities were committed on October the 7 do not support October the 7 and do not support Hamas." About 60% of Palestinians in Gaza, Shikaki's survey found, do not support Hamas.

Numerous polls of the Israeli public, however, have shown broad support for their government's policies and statements about Gaza. A survey conducted by Hebrew University in Jerusalem in June found that 64% of the Israeli public agreed that there are “no innocents in Gaza.” Former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman had made the statement in 2018, and it was paraphrased in October 2023 by Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

Another poll this year by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 79% of the Israeli public "did not feel personally troubled by reports of starvation in Gaza."

The Times editorial came as Israel's assault on Gaza nears the end of its second year, with more than 66,000 Palestinians killed and the exclave facing what one report called the "largest orphan crisis" in modern history as more than 39,000 children have lost one or both parents. More than 400 people have starved to death so far due to Israel's near-total blockade on humanitarian aid. Numerous human rights groups and experts on the Holocaust have called the bombardment of Gaza a genocide.

"The New York Times editorial board thinks we need to deradicalize the starved and brutalized survivors of a genocide, but not the neighboring society that enthusiastically endorsed said genocide," said author and editor Dan Sheehan. "Poll after poll over the past two years has shown overwhelming Israeli public support for the starvation, brutalization, and even extermination of Palestinians in Gaza. Meanwhile, more than half of Gaza’s population WEREN’T EVEN BORN the last time Hamas was elected."

The Times' call for Palestinians to be "deradicalized," said Adam Johnson of the podcast Citations Needed, amounted to "pure racism."

"Israel has killed 19,000+ children," said Johnson. "Seventy-nine percent say they are 'not troubled' by the reports of famine... How is this not the society in urgent need of de-radicalization?"

Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani added that "one can similarly imagine the Times reporting from Poland in 1943 and publishing an editorial that sanctimoniously proclaims that the main impediment to peace in Europe is the Bolshevik virus that has infected the continent’s Jews."

"The concept of deradicalization has a long pedigree. At heart, it is based on the premise that colonial subjects have no grievances towards their foreign rulers," wrote Rabbani. "The natives, duly infected with ideas like independence, social justice, and the redistribution of wealth, need to be deradicalized so that the natural order of things can be restored... The Palestinian case is no different. They hate Zionism and Israel only because they have been taught and terrorized into doing so... If we can only reform the Palestinian school curriculum yet again, Palestinians will learn to peacefully co-exist with dispossession, apartheid, and genocide."

"If Palestinians are indeed radicalized, the agents of their radicalization are Israel and its policies, not least its compulsive murder of their children," he added. "The only available formula for deradicalization is Palestinian rights, first and foremost their inalienable right to self-determination."