New York Times Promotes Radical Sources Maligning Israel

A New York Times article about the FBI’s attempts to eavesdrop on the Israeli Embassy in Washington and the resulting leak of wiretapped conversations to a blogger (Scott Shane, “Leak Offers Look at Efforts by U.S. to Spy on Israel,” Sept. 5, 2011) was as much a defense of these actions as it was about the controversial eavesdropping and illegal leak.

Leibowitz (l) and Silverstein (r).

CAMERA  |  by Ricki Hollander

That is because the article was based almost entirely on the comments of extremist, anti-Israel blogger Richard Silverstein justifying the actions of his friend, Shamai Leibowitz, who was sentenced to 20 months of incarceration for illegally transferring wiretapped documents to publicize on Silverstein's blog.

Unsurprisingly, the New York Times article failed to accurately inform readers of the radical anti-Israel agenda of the two. Instead, it identified Silverstein simply as a “blogger” who “gives a liberal perspective on Israel and Israeli American relations” and Leibowitz as “a lawyer with a history of political activism” who shares Silverstein’s “concern about repercussions from a possible Israeli airstrike on nuclear facilities in Iran.”
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