Reading Between the Lines of the Imperialist New York Times

Two Examples

Following the advice and example of Lenin, we should not refuse to survey the “mainstream” bourgeois-imperialist press. We should instead pay attention to the information it gives us while reading between its lines, observing its contradictions and looking for hidden meanings, veiled admissions, and telling silences.

Let’s do that in connection with two recent reports (presented in italics below) from the New York Times, the US-American Empire’s national “paper of record.”

“A Massacre, Not an Operation to Free Hostages”

A June 8, 2024 Times story reports on an “Israeli military operation” that freed 4 Israeli hostages kept in the central Gazan Nuseirat refugee camp. Here’s the brief report:

‘U.S. Intelligence Helped Israel Rescue Four Hostages in Gaza: Intelligence collection and analysis teams from the U.S. and the U.K. have been in Israel throughout the war.

The U.S. provided intelligence on the hostages before Israel’s successful rescue operation Saturday, according to American and Israeli officials briefed on the assistance.

A team of American hostage recovery officials stationed in Israel assisted the Israeli military’s effort to rescue the four captives by providing intelligence and other logistical support, one American official said, speaking without attribution to discuss the sensitive operation.

Intelligence collection and analysis teams from the United States and Britain have been in Israel throughout the war, assisting Israeli intelligence in collecting and analyzing information related to the hostages, some of them citizens of both countries, according to a senior Israeli defense official familiar with the effort to locate and rescue the hostages.

Two Israeli intelligence officials said the American military officials in Israel provided some of the intelligence about the hostages rescued Saturday.

The Pentagon and the C.I.A. have been providing information collected from drone flights over Gaza, communications intercepts and other sources about the potential location of hostages. While Israel has its own intelligence, the United States and Britain have been able to provide intelligence from the air and cyberspace that Israel cannot collect on its own, the Israeli official said…

American officials have said their intelligence support for Israel is focused on the location of hostages and information about Hamas’s top leadership. In large measure this is because American officials believe the best way to persuade Israel to end the war is to get back its hostages and capture or kill top Hamas leaders.

The Israeli official said neither the American nor British teams were involved in the planning or execution of the military operations to rescue the hostages. Israelis, experts in hostage rescue, would have required little support in the tactical planning. But the American and Israeli officials said the outside intelligence did provide added value.’

Okay, so let’s think about this report with a properly skeptical eye, conscious of the Times’ long record of “manufacturing consent” for US imperialism.

Notice what is being somewhat candidly acknowledged here: the United States and its imperialist pit bull England have had military intelligence and “logistical” teams assisting Israel on the ground and in the air since the beginning of Judeo-fascist Israel’s genocidal mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza last October.

But notice something important left out: the giant and criminal civilian casualty toll resulting from Israel’s US-assisted "rescue.” As the non-imperialist Middle East Eye reported four days later, the “rescue operation” killed 274 Gazans and injured at least 600, many quite seriously. Further:

‘ Israel's collective euphoria following the rescue of four captives in Gaza on Saturday stands in stark contrast with the anger, pain and anguish felt by Palestinians after death and destruction were brought to the Nuseirat refugee camp [by the US-British-Israel ‘“rescue operation”]…Palestinians in Gaza have spent the last five days mourning their dead or tending to the wounded in the overcrowded Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Survivors have referred to the attack as a "nightmare" and told Middle East Eye that unnecessary blood was spilt……Israeli commanders called in air strikes, officials told the newspaper, as explosions rocked the narrow streets housing families displaced by Israel's offensive in southern Gaza. …Sharifa Hassan, 35, and her husband, Yehia, were preparing lunch in front of a crowded house in Nuseirat where they had sought refuge when the raid began. "Dozens of helicopters and quadcopters suddenly appeared in the sky. I thought it was an air aid, but they started shooting and bombing randomly," Sharifa told MEE. Sharifa and her family had already fled from Gaza City to Rafah and then to Nuseirat after the Israeli army declared it a so-called "safe zone". "We rushed to take shelter behind a wall, all the while thinking about our eight-year-old daughter who had gone to buy snacks from a nearby grocery," Sharifa said.

"The quadcopters were shooting at anything that moved in the area. Many of our neighbors were killed or left bleeding on the ground. After a few minutes, we heard the loud sounds of trucks. We thought it was civil defense or ambulances, but it was tanks…The tanks filled the street and bombed any house that showed any movement. One tank moved over and crushed a man who was injured in his leg. It was the most painful thing I've ever seen in my life," she added.

Abdulfattah Aouda told MEE that he and his 73-year-old father were on their way home after shopping in Nuseirat's main market when the raid began….I tried to stop my father's bleeding while people rushed in all directions, searching for their loved ones or taking shelter from the continuous bombardment. It was like a nightmare," Aouda said. "This was not an operation to free captives - it was a massacre, killing more innocent children and women.”..

Other eyewitnesses described the attack as "hell", with local resident Nidal Abdo telling MEE that he saw "dead children and body parts strewn all over as we fled. No one was able to assist them. I saw an elderly man killed on an animal-drawn cart," he said.

Medics and staff at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah told MEE that they could not keep up with the massive influx of injuries, while Samuel Johann, of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), described that day as a "nightmare”. There have been back-to-back mass casualties as densely populated areas are bombed," he said….

The 7 October attack left 1,171 people dead and saw hundreds of Israelis taken to Gaza. The war on Gaza, now in its ninth month, has turned much of the enclave, which is home to more than two million Palestinians, into an uninhabitable hellscape. Whole neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been devastated by air strikes and scorched by tank fire. Nearly the entire population is reported to have fled their homes, and those who remained in northern Gaza are on the verge of famine. More than 37,000 people have been killed, the great majority of them women and children. Thousands more are missing or presumed to be dead under the rubble.”’

Okay, so, oh by the way, the US and UK intelligence teams in Israel and Gaza helped Israel carry out an indiscriminate slaughter of 274 Palestinians as well as free four Israeli hostages.

Notice how the Times says only “the war.” Middle East Eye has the decency to use a more accurate phrase, “the war on Gaza,” and to point out that the Nuseirat massacre is one recent episode in a genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing and mass murder that has so far killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children.

A better name for this sick and one sided war is the US-Israel Crucifixion of Gaza. It’s been a US-funded/-equipped/-protected/-assisted genocide from day one, consistent with Israel’s longstanding status and role as a leading US imperial asset both within and beyond the oil-rich Middle East.

The Times says that “Israel has its own” intelligence and military capacities but deletes the critical historical fact that these capacities have always depended fundamentally on imperial sponsorship and support, first from the British Empire and then above all and far away from the most dangerous, lethal and far-reaching empire in world history — the one headquartered on the banks of the Potomac.

There’s nothing remotely new about US military and intelligence forces being directly engaged in Israel’s crimes, of course.

Notice how the Times report handles its hint of US complicity in Israel’s crimes in Gaza. The paper says that Washington has granted intelligence support its clients and butchers in Tel Aviv “because American officials believe the best way to persuade Israel to end the war is to get back its hostages and capture or kill top Hamas leaders.”

Please. A far better and real way for Washington to “end the war” is for Washington to immediately stop funding, equipping, justifying, and militarily and politico-diplomatically protecting it. (The best way would be for the US military to dismantle the Israeli military and help sponsor the construction of a revolutionary secular and socialist state in Israel-Palestine. That would require an anti-imperialist revolution here in the United States, long overdue!)

“In Reaction to Continued U.S. Support of Ukraine”

Now to a second example. Yesterday’s Times contained a story on a chilling recent development: the arrival of a four-vessel Russian naval flotilla in Cuba, just 90 miles off the southern coast of Florida:

‘The group includes the nuclear-powered submarine Kazan and the frigate Admiral Gorshkov…capable of engaging in surface warfare, using land attack missiles and defending against maritime and aircraft attacks, the Admiral Gorshkov flew both Cuban and Russian flags, according to news reports, and was greeted with a 21-gun salute as it sailed into Havana Harbor. The Kazan was expected to follow, lurking below the surface…On the voyage to Havana, crews on the warships carrying hypersonic missiles practiced locating targets, and using high-powered precision missiles to simulate destroying those targets, at distances of over 600 kilometers, or more than 350 miles, according to Russia’s Ministry of Defense.’

Now, according to “experts” cited by the Times, there’s not really much to see here. No cause for alarm: it’s just “a symbolic show of strength in reaction to continued U.S. support for Ukraine, and a reflection of growing ties between Russia and Cuba.”

Please.

Notice what the Times leaves out. The United States and its giant imperial military organ NATO have been provoking the Hell out of the nuclear weapons superpower Russia on Russia’s historically super-sensitive Western border for decades now. This wildly reckless “bear-poking” has included sponsorship of a right-wing anti-Russian coup in Ukraine in 2014 and clear US efforts to bring Ukraine into the Western military alliance (NATO). The US has been massively funding and equipping an imperialist proxy war with Russia in Ukraine for more than two years now. The conflict has killed and maimed untold tens of thousands of people so far. The war is a despicable “meat-grinder” that could have been averted with five words from Washington and Kyiv: “Ukraine will never join NATO.”

That’s the cold reality behind what the Times calls “continued U.S. support for Ukraine.” (“Continued support for Ukraine” that has led to the death, maiming, and crippling of tens of thousands of Ukrainians.)

Throughout all of this, Russia’s authoritarian head of state Vladimir Putin has been warning the US and its allies of the possibility the their actions could compel him to use nuclear weapons.

The bloody-jawed US warmonger “Genocide Joe” Biden offers a curious response to the warning: “make my day.” He has recently approved the use by Ukraine of US weapons to strike inside Russia. Because, hey, what could go wrong?

Ukraine shares a massive border with Russia — a border that has been repeatedly invaded by Western forces, resulting in the deaths of many millions of Russians. A number of leading US imperial planners and thinkers including top Cold War strategists George Kennan and Henry Kissinger have long warned the White House and the Pentagon that Ukraine is a “red line” not to be crossed for fear of nuclear war.

Bear in mind that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock closer to Midnight than it has ever been (90 seconds) thanks mainly to the US-Russia proxy war in Ukraine.

Putin has sent a small military flotilla to Cuba in the current perilous historical moment in a clear and obvious effort to remind Washington that it is playing with radioactive fire in Ukraine. The voyage of the Admiral Gorshkov and the Kazan is a clear nod to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world came to the literal brink of World War III after Soviet Russia responded to its nuclear encirclement by the US by placing nuclear-capable missiles in Cuba.

Ask yourself a question the Times will never pose: how long woud it take for the US to launch a devastating invasion of a Canadian province or Mexican state that had hosted an anti-US coup and aligned itself with a Chinese and/or Russian military pact?

“When the Soviet Union Removed the Missiles”

The Times report includes a curious passage on the 1962 Missile Crisis:

‘In 1962 the threat of nuclear catastrophe reached an all-time high…when the Soviet Union answered the American installation of missiles in Turkey with its own deployment of ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads in Cuba, igniting a 13-day standoff known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Crisis was averted when the Soviet Union removed the missiles, but Cuba and Russia have maintained close ties.’

Here’s what this passage leaves out: the crisis was averted after the White House agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey. The Soviets took down their Cuban missile sites only after the Kennedy administration promised to do that.

Perhaps the Times deletes that part of the story because that history suggests that the way for Washington to avert a potential war with nuclear Russia is to stand down from the insane war it is waging in Ukraine.

Embargo Deleted

Also of course missing from the Times’ reporting on the Russian naval trip to Havana is the question of why Cuba needs economic assistance from Russia: because of the ongoing 62-year US economic, commercial and financial embargo on Cuba, implemented to punish Cuba for having an anti-imperialist and socialist revolution in 1959. This vicious and crippling embargo is still very much intact under the imperialist warmonger Biden.