The @NYTimes: More Zionist than the Zionists

To welcome the triumphant Benjamin Netanyahu - conquerer of Capitol Hill and tamer of American congressmen - back to Israel, a new Israeli colony was inaugurated beyond the Green Line in occupied Palestinian territory. With the announcements of settlement activity preceding and following his trip, the Israeli government places a big exclamation mark at the end of each rejectionist sentence uttered by Netanyahu during his address to the US Congress.

The new building was covered by both Israeli and American media. Can you guess which lede kicked off the article in the American publication and which led the Israel publication? (emphasis mine)

Lede 1.

One day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Jerusalem will not be divided, the speaker of the Knesset and several other government ministers attended a dedication ceremony for the new Jewish settlement of Ma'aleh Zeitim, in East Jerusalem's Ras al-Amud neighborhood.

Lede 2.

Senior Israeli government officials and dignitaries on Wednesday attended the dedication ceremony of a Jewish apartment complex in a hotly contested, predominantly Palestinian neighborhood of the city across the 1967 boundary.

The first lede, which refers to the building as a "settlement" after mentioning a relevant rejectionist point made by Prime Minister Netanyahu, is in fact from the Israeli newspaper. The second lede, which shamefully misinforms its readers by calling the building "apartments" is from our very own New York Times. I went into detail here about how the New York Times has lost it's way when it comes to the historical narrative surrounding the Nakba and how it has adopted the Zionist telling of the story.

But it seems the inability to be impartial and shake the Zionist narrative transcends discussions of history and is prevalent in the New York Times in its reporting of events ongoing today. I argue that calling the part of Jerusalem where these new structures are being built "East Jerusalem" is inaccurate and a de facto adoption of the Zionist narrative. This is based on the fact that Israel unilaterally annexed an additional 70 sq. km of occupied Palestinian territory and called it "East Jerusalem". Don't get me wrong, I don't think calling them settlements, as Haaretz does, is really accurate either (I think "colonies" is the most appropriate term). But the New York Times takes the whitewashing of occupation to a whole new level by using the language they chose.

It is even more baffling because the very same New York Times article that begins by characterizing the building as a harmless "apartment complex" goes on to say this (again, emphasis mine):

Israel conquered the eastern, Arab part of Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 war and annexed it in a move that has never gained international recognition.

So the question that remains is this, if the annexation of the territory around Jerusalem occupied in 1967 is not recognized internationally (including by the United States) why does the New York Times recognize it when it is supposed to be an unbiased source of information? Or, perhaps more to the point, when put in contrast with the description of the same events by an Israeli publication, why is the New York Times more zionist than the zionists?

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