In the wake of sharp criticism for a headline earlier this week calling anti-Semitism a “Gift to the Right,” the New York Times quietly updated the headline to be less, well, anti-Semitic.
Columnist Michelle Goldberg’s argument was that the recent tsunami of violent hate crimes against Jews sweeping America and elsewhere is actually anti-Zionist, not anti-Jewish, but it’s giving anti-Zionism a bad rap. “Right-wing Zionists and anti-Semitic anti-Zionists have something fundamental in common: Both conflate the Jewish people with the Israeli state,” she wrote. Thus, “this violence also threatens to undermine progress that’s been made in getting American politicians to take Palestinian rights more seriously.”
The original headline, “Attacks on Jews Over Israel Are a Gift to the Right,” — suggesting that anti-Jewish violence is bad only because it plays into the hands of the right — was changed to “The Crisis of Anti-Semitic Violence” with no explanation.
Too late: outrage had already swept Twitter. Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer called the article and its headline “vile.” Former NY State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, founder of Americans Against Antisemitism, slammed Goldberg, saying she should “cancel herself.”
That goes for the far-left New York Times, too.