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The Cruelty and Speciousness of Bret Stephens' Denial of Genocide
Bret Stephens brings an unprecedented power over the editorial board at The New York Times because he is seen as the voice of the Israeli government-can-do-no-wrong domestic lobby.
Aug 02, 2025
After the long-time skittish New York Times published a lengthy essay by the renowned genocide scholar, Prof. Omer Bartov of Brown University, titled “I’m a Genocide Scholar, I Know It When I see It,” the Palestinian-hater, Times columnist Bret Stephens, immediately jumped into the Netanyahu‑style rebuttal mode. His column was titled “No, Israel is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza.” His cruel and specious assertion, contradicted by many genocide scholars, was that if the Israeli regime was truly genocidal, they would have committed “hundreds of thousands of deaths” in Gaza instead of the mere 60,000 deaths reported by the Hamas‑run Health Ministry.
Get real, Mr. Stephens, the Israeli military has destroyed the lives of at least one out of four Palestinians there, or about half a million at least, from the daily bombing since October 7, 2023, of civilians and their infrastructure. Saturation aerial and artillery bombardments of 2.3 million defenseless Palestinians, also under constant sniper fire, crammed into an area the geographic size of Philadelphia. (See The Lancet, “Counting the Dead in Gaza: Difficult But Essential”, my column “The Vast Gaza Death Undercount—Undermines Civic, Diplomatic, and Political Pressures” and my article in the August-September 2024 Capitol Hill Citizen). American doctors back from Gaza have repeatedly observed that almost all the survivors are sick, injured, or dying.
Seizing on the Hamas regime’s self‑interest in a low death count, to not arouse further the ire of the residents of Gaza against their lack of bomb shelters and other protections, Stephens constructs the usual fictions, reflecting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime, that Israel does not “deliberately target and kill Gazan civilians.” [Former United Nations Ambassador and Foreign Minister Abba Eban wrote of Israel under then Prime Minister Menachem Begin that Israel “is wantonly inflicting every possible measure of death and anguish on civilian populations in a mood reminiscent of regimes which neither Mr. Begin nor I would dare to mention by name.”] Look at the reports by Times journalists from the area, see the pictures of the mass murder, the slaughter of babies, children, mothers, and fathers that comprise Netanyahu’s Palestinian holocaust.
Listen to the former Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant’s October 9, 2023 enforced declaration that Israeli demolition of Gaza would include “…no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”
Stephens is immovable. Over a year ago, he shockingly wrote that the Israeli military is not using enough force on the Palestinians.
And so indeed has the Israeli military targeted innocent families, journalists, and U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East staff. To quote Professor Bartov, “the systematic destruction in Gaza not only of housing but also of other infrastructure—government buildings, hospitals, universities, schools, mosques, cultural heritage sites, water treatment plants, agriculture areas, and parks…” Bartov grew up in Israel, served four years in the Israeli army, and knows the situation there in great detail.
Bret Stephens brings an unprecedented power over the editorial board at the Times because he is seen as the voice of the Israeli government-can-do-no-wrong domestic lobby inside the Times who is always ready to frivolously accuse anybody at the paper of antisemitism to shut them up or water down their content.
As Will Solomon reported July 25, 2025 in Counterpunch, Stephens is the “minder” of what is unacceptable criticism of the Israeli regime and has succeeded significantly in his censorship. If you wonder for example why it took the Times editorial board so long to condemn the Israeli regime’s starvation of Gazans, especially the most vulnerable infants and children ( See July 31 editorial and The New York Times July 27, 2025 opinion piece “The World Must See Gaza’s Starvation” by Mohammed Mansour), it is likely the climate of fear or weariness generated by Stephens.
Stephens is given remarkable latitude by the Times editors. His falsifications and antisemitic rage against Palestinian semites (see, “The Other Antisemitism” by Jim Zogby) escape his editors’ pen. He is given unusual space, including a recently concluded weekly column with Gail Collins, which replaced valuable editorial space, with repartees that had become shopworn over the years. He also is given special writing projects.
Consider his background. A former hard-line editor of The Jerusalem Post, then for years a warmongering columnist for The Wall Street Journal. Especially vicious against Palestinians and their supporters, Stephens came to the Times for a singular reason. The Times wanted a right-winger who did not like the new president, Donald Trump. What the Times got was a cunning censor of their journalistic integrity and editorial respect for the regular devastating reports the Times was getting from their own journalists operating out of Jerusalem. They were not allowed into Gaza to report independently on what was being done with U.S. tax dollars and the unconditional support from former U.S. President Joe Biden and now Trump.
Imagine, for example, the Times not writing an editorial following the Israeli booby-trapping of thousands of pagers in Lebanon. This was called a clear war crime by former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.
While the Times has published op-eds critical of Israeli aggressions, it has maintained a list of words and phrases that could not be used in its reporting, such as “genocide.” It has avoided doing features on the many Israeli human rights groups sharply taking Netanyahu to task, or groups in the U.S., such as the very active Veterans for Peace with 100 chapters around the U.S. By contrast the Times devoted extensive space to repeated false propaganda by the Israeli regime.
Even coverage of the omnipresent Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now requires dramatic nonviolent civil disobedience, as with the October 24, 2023 sit-in at Grand Central Station, to get into the Times pages.
Throughout the months since October 7, and the mysterious total collapse of the multitiered Israeli border security apparatus on the Gaza border, still denied an official investigation by its perpetrators, the defiant presence of Stephens persists, though it is being countered by the sickening pictures of skeletal, starving Palestinian infants. (A survey last year by a British civic association had 46% of Palestinian children wanting to die and 97% expecting to be killed.)
Credit Stephens with covering his self-designated, intimidating role of policing what should not be appearing by staff in the Times’editorial pages. In his column with Collins, he used humor and praise of Times reports and book reviews not connected with the Israeli domination of the Middle East. Recognizing a no-win situation for herself, Gail Collins agreed not to raise the Israeli-Palestine issue in any of the hundreds of columns she wrote with Stephens, who is disliked by many at the Times.
Stephens is immovable. Over a year ago, he shockingly wrote that the Israeli military is not using enough force on the Palestinians. He refuses to disavow the most racist, vicious descriptions of Palestinians over the years by high Israeli government officials. He refuses to support opening Gaza to foreign journalists, including Israeli journalists. He even declines to support the airlifting of amputated and horribly burned Palestinian children to ready and able hospitals in the U.S.
The New York Times does not fear Donald Trump. But it does fear or is very wary of the smiling, internal censorious presence of this AIPAC clone and the attention he demands because of the forces he represents. The editorial board and Times management need to reject this affront to the freedom of its journalists and the paper’s institutional integrity.
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Trump's Media Takeover Isn't About Bias, It's About Silencing Dissent
The Trump administration is weaponizing psychological terminology to create a world where one pathetic old man can stifle all entertainment that forces him to confront his own obvious inadequacies and irrelevance.
Aug 02, 2025
It's remarkable how much happens that barely makes the news. While we scroll through memes and sensationalized soundbites, our attention monetized by oligarchs who profit from our stupor, democracy dies in broad daylight.
Many of us fastidiously tracking political events may have missed a chilling detail buried in the Paramount/CBS merger: a "bias monitor." The Trump administration installed this Orwellian position alongside the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion at CBS and Paramount. According to Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Anna Gomez, the sole dissenting vote against the merger, this represents "just another part of this administration's campaign of censorship and control."
Commissioner Gomez explained the gravity of this so-called monitor: "What they're saying is that they are going to self-censor basically for ideological purity according to what this administration likes and to report only in the way this administration likes. Apparently, bias is anything this administration doesn't like. And that is what they're promising not to show anymore to their consumers."
This is not a threat. It is a promise being delivered.
When Satire Dies, Democracy Dies
Stephen Colbert's cancellation marks that promise in action. The highest-rated late-night host, Emmy-nominated, and like other effective comedians, someone who has pointed out the absurdities of our political system for decades. As Inae Oh of Mother Jones reported, "one could argue that [until now] Trump's attacks had yet to take down our actual culture. I'm talking about the literal content we consume—the television, art, movies, literature, music—no matter how much Trump complained. That it remained protected and free-willed, a rare area of control for a public that otherwise feels powerless to take action." The cancellation of Colbert changes this. We are witnessing the first successful assault on the cultural sphere itself.
They're not just coming for our votes or our institutions, they're coming for our imagination, our ability to envision a different world.
What does it mean to have a president who uses his enormous platform to pathetically attack performers and entertainers? Just in the last week of July, U.S. President Donald Trump personally attacked Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Oprah, Bono, Taylor Swift, Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and Joy Behar. These attacks aren't just the desperate posturing of a has-been reality TV star president, they threaten to become official government-led investigations.
Of course, there's no credible evidence for any of his claims. But that hasn't prevented the capitulation of systems that could fight back. Recently, Brown, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, University of California Los Angeles, Paramount, Disney, and Meta all paid multimillion dollar settlements ($221 million in the case of Columbia) to the Trump administration to avoid litigation. This litigation could have helped establish some balance of power in this country. Because of these capitulations, they are now all complicit in the dismantling of our democracy.
This Is Not About Bias
Let me be clear as a psychologist: This is not about bias. Bias is a tendency, often unconscious, that leads to preferences or disfavor of people, ideas, or beliefs, often in ways that are unfair. Real biases manifest as stereotypes, prejudices, and systematic preferences that shape how we perceive and interact with the world.
If we genuinely wanted a bias monitor at any corporation, it would require enormous funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion purposes. Actual bias monitoring would examine unconscious prejudices, systemic discrimination, and unfair treatment of marginalized groups. This is the opposite of what the Trump administration has been doing as all the policies being enacted reinforce white supremacy.
What we have instead is the Trump administration weaponizing psychological terminology to create a world where one pathetic old man can stifle all entertainment that forces him to confront his own obvious inadequacies and irrelevance.
This isn't about bias, it's about following the predictable playbook of authoritarians. This suppression of critical voices mirrors what happens in North Korea, where the government exerts near-total control over media and entertainment, allowing only content that glorifies the ruling family while strictly banning dissent or satire. There are no North Korean Stephen Colberts. Critical art is suppressed, and those attempting to create or access it face harsh punishment, including forced labor or execution.
The Revolutionary Power of Art
While this moment is dire, I believe in the revolutionary power of art. History shows us that authoritarian regimes fear artists above all else because art reveals truth in ways that propaganda cannot counter.
To all who continue to create—comedians, performers, writers, artists—don't stop. Keep faith in the transformative power of art because, in Toni Morrison's words, "Art takes us and makes us take a journey beyond price, beyond cost, into bearing witness to the world as it is and as it should be."
As we navigate this slide away from democracy, we need artists to continue creating more than ever. Every joke that punctures pomposity, every song that speaks truth to power, every story that humanizes the dehumanized is an act of resistance.
The Trump administration understands something we must remember: Culture shapes consciousness. They're not just coming for our votes or our institutions, they're coming for our imagination, our ability to envision a different world.
As usual, Trump doesn't get humanity and doesn't understand that art has always thrived under oppression. The most powerful voices often emerge from the margins, from the underground, from those who refuse to be silenced.
This "bias monitor" isn't monitoring bias, it's monitoring our humanity. And that's exactly why we must not let them win.
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ADL-Backed Bipartisan Bill Threatens to Censor Israel Criticism on Social Media
The bill’s lead sponsors described it as part of an effort to prevent antisemitic hate. But their comments during a press conference on the measure suggest it will also target critics of Israel.
Jul 25, 2025
Free speech advocates are raising concerns that a new bipartisan bill would force social media companies to censor criticism of Israel on their platforms.
Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Don Bacon (R-Neb.) rolled out the bill, called the Stopping Terrorists Online Presence and Holding Accountable Tech Entities (STOP HATE) Act, at a press conference Wednesday, alongside Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
The bill would mandate that social media companies work with the federal government to implement moderation policies that curb the speech of groups the government designates as "terrorists." They'd be required to provide regular reports to the U.S. attorney general. Those that don't comply would be fined $5 million each day they refuse.
The lawmakers justified the measure by citing some recent examples of overt antisemitism and calls for violence on social media.
"We've seen an explosion of disinformation and antisemitic hate online in America and around the world," Gottheimer said. "After the shooting outside the Capital Jewish Museum, anti-Zionist extremists used social media to call for further violence, posting messages like 'may all Zionists burn.' Even AI platforms like Grok have posted deeply disturbing content, praising Adolf Hitler and Nazism."
Bacon said, "We want to be in a country that makes clear that antisemitism or any kind of racism is repugnant, unacceptable, not allowed in an online space, and that we have zero tolerance for it."
However, other statements from the lawmakers make clear that their definition of "antisemitism" goes far beyond expressions of hatred or calls for violence against Jewish people.
As Matthew Petti wrote for the libertarian magazine Reason: "The specific idea that Bacon had in mind was antisemitism, and he made clear that it includes criticism of the State of Israel in his book."
At the press conference, Bacon explicitly referenced recent protests against Israel's policy of starvation in Gaza.
"I saw protests out here the last two days, they were vile, right?," he said. "They were...you can see the antisemitism in their comments and how they were treating some of our members of Congress who are Jewish. I saw that firsthand."
Bacon did not specify what specific comments he was referring to. However, Petti noted:
Protesters stormed the congressional cafeteria on July 1 to call for food aid to Gaza, and interrupted Rep. Randy Fine (R–Fla.)—who has called for Palestinians to "starve away"—during a hearing on campus antisemitism last week.
Bacon also suggested that merely stating opposition to pro-Israel congresspeople, including himself, constitutes antisemitism.
"I even saw an article today. It was about me, but talking about we have to oppose congressmen who are pro-Zionists, right?" said Bacon, who is notably not Jewish. "It's all over our social media and it's unacceptable."
Gottheimer, meanwhile, said the policy was not just about combating terrorism, but about halting a "massive disinformation campaign influencing us every day."
Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald—a critic of government efforts to regulate "misinformation"—suggested that the bill flies in the face of the right's supposed commitments to free speech.
"There was [a] full consensus on the Right for the last decade that Big Tech censorship was a great evil, especially if pressured and demanded by the U.S. government," he said on X. "All that changed [when] it came time to censor for Israel."
In a statement released Friday, the American‑Arab Anti‑Discrimination Committee (ADC) likewise described the STOP HATE Act as part of "the continuous efforts by lawmakers to silence, censor, and chill freedom of speech and expression in this country at the behest of Israel."
They warned that the bill gives the government, in tandem with pro-Israel groups like the ADL, "unfettered powers to police private social media companies, attack lawful expression, and levy fines of up to five million dollars each day if companies fail to silence and censor users."
This is not the first time Gottheimer and Bacon have introduced the STOP HATE Act. A similar version, introduced in 2023, died in committee.
When introducing that version of the bill, they were more explicit in their calls for government regulation of media—calling on the Department of Justice to require the news outlets Al Jazeera and its subsidiary AJ+, which are sponsored by the Qatari government, to register as foreign agents.
The two congressmen were also at the forefront of calls for the U.S. government to ban TikTok, which Gottheimer said was being used by the Chinese Communist Party to "boost anti-Israel and pro-Hamas videos in the United States." They have also introduced legislation that would criminalize efforts to boycott Israeli products.
Greenblatt, who spoke alongside the two legislators on Wednesday, has explicitly said that "Anti-Zionism is antisemitism." Though he's faced criticism for this stance, including from members of the ADL itself, he has only continued to double down.
In one infamous exchange during the outbreak of pro-Palestine protests on college campuses in 2024, Greenblatt suggested that students wearing keffiyehs—a kind of scarf commonly worn by Palestinians—were doing the equivalent of wearing a swastika armband.
More recently, he endorsed Immigration and Customs Enforcement's warrantless abduction of pro-Palestine organizer Mahmoud Khalil, who he accused—along with other pro-Palestine demonstrators—of being an asset of foreign governments and likened to Middle Eastern terrorist groups.
Wednesday's press release from the legislators on the STOP HATE Act cites the ADL's 2024 "Social Media Scorecard," as evidence that "the five major social media platforms—Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and X—routinely failed to act on antisemitic hate reported to them."
That Scorecard page features a quote from Greenblatt, who said, "Social media platforms are still falling far too short when it comes to moderating antisemitic and anti-Israel content."
After the October 7, 2023 attacks led by Hamas, the ADL changed its methodology to categorize antisemitic incidents to not only include hate speech or threats directed at Jewish people, but also language expressing "opposition to Zionism."
The proposed STOP HATE Act comes at a time when American public opinion has dramatically shifted against Israel's genocidal actions in Gaza. According to a CNN poll conducted by SSRS, released last Friday:
Only 23% of Americans say Israel’s actions have been fully justified, a 27-point drop from a[n] October 2023 poll taken shortly after Hamas’ October 7 attacks. Another 27% now say those actions have been partially justified and 22% say that they have not been justified at all. In October 2023, just 8% said Israel’s actions were not justified at all.
In recent weeks, Israeli leaders have openly called for the mass displacement of two million Palestinians to make room for Jewish settlers. Meanwhile, at least 115 Palestinians—including more than 80 children—have reportedly starved due to Israel's restrictions on aid entering the Gaza Strip. Over 1,000 aid seekers have been killed, often by Israel Defense Forces soldiers, at aid sites jointly administered by the U.S. and Israel.
"The First Amendment is supposed to be the cornerstone of American democracy—our shield against censorship and government overreach," said Abed Ayoub, ADC's national executive director. "When members of Congress and state lawmakers start compromising our freedoms to satisfy the demands of a foreign government, we lose what makes this country free. We must reject any legislation that threatens our speech, our conscience, and our right to dissent."
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