UPDATE: Double Standard Continues at New York Times

By Published On: July 11, 2006

Just yesterday, CAMERA reported here on the double standard that Russia and the New York Times maintain towards the assassination of terrorist leaders (see below). Today, the New York Times reaffirmed this double standard with an editorial, “Death of a Terrorist.” This editorial lauded the killing of Shamil Basayev, a man who “lived for terror,” and described him as “behind the bloody seizure of a school…and several other acts of mass murder.”

Contrast this with the Times’s editorial after Israel assassinated Ahmed Yassin, the leader of Hamas. Yassin was indisputably directly responsible for numerous terror attacks against Israelis — a fact attested to in the Arab as well as Israeli media. Among other instances, Yassin met with and personally authorized Reem Salah al-Rayashi, a female suicide bomber who killed four Israelis on January 14th, 2004. But the Times describes Yassin only a “spiritual leader,” and calls Hamas a “militant organization,” despite the fact that it is considered a terror organization by the U.S. State Department and the European Union.

Why did the Times choose to highlight the murderous acts of Basayev, while describing Yassin, whose hands are soaked in blood, as a “spiritual leader?” And why the refusal to refer to Hamas as a terrorist organization? The New York Times unfortunately seems to view terrorism against Israel as somehow less heinous or deplorable than that against Russians or Americans.

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