Delighted to announce that @RajaAbdulrahim is joining the @nytimes Jerusalem Bureau where she will roam widely, writing about Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, with a special focus on Palestinian affairs.
— Michael Slackman (@meslackman) November 3, 2021
There is definitely justification for hiring a native Arabic-speaking journalist to add to the coverage of the region. However, newspapers should at least pretend to choose journalists who are objective.
Abdulrahim is not one of them. Not one of her tweets that mention Israel is positive about the country.
She regards Gaza as "little more than an open-air prison:"
She fully accepts the lie that Jews cast every critic of Israel as antisemites, ignoring (in this case) Marc Lamont Hill's antisemitism and support for Palestinian terrorism, as she implies that CNN is a Jewish pawn:
She believes that despite tens of thousands of anti-Israel articles attacking Israel, all critics of Israel (including herself) are being "silenced."
Abdulrahim gleefully embraces the "apartheid" slur:
The existence of a pro-Israel lobby is terribly unhealthy. But only the pro-Israel lobby - the only lobby in America she has ever mentioned.
One word Raja has never tweeted: "Hamas."
To her, there is no conflict, only unending oppression by a powerful Jewish state against innocent, unarmed Palestinians who have never done anything bad.
Raja Abdulrahim cannot be considered objective by any definition. Her own social media posts on the topic are far more than biased - they are completely one-sided against Israel.
The New York Times chose her not in spite of her bias but because of it.
The guidelines that she extols for journalists to follow are explicitly anti-Israel. They include:
All reporting should take into consideration that Israel occupies Palestinian territory, and that Palestinians — whether they live in the West Bank, Gaza or inside Israel — are subject to an unjust and unequal system...Avoid “both sides” framing. Recognize the power imbalance between Israel and the Palestinian people.Do not call Gaza “Hamas-controlled.” It is sufficient to say “Gaza,” or “Gaza’s Health Ministry,” for example.Replace “eviction” and “real-estate dispute” with “forced removal.” The terms “eviction” and “real-estate dispute” suggest a disagreement between a landlord and tenant, obscuring the Israeli government’s efforts to forcibly displace Jerusalem’s Palestinian population.Be cognizant of how you’re identifying Palestinians. Do not use the identifiers “Arab-Israeli” or “Israeli-Arab,” unless requested by the individuals described. Instead use “Palestinian citizen of Israel” if that applies, or “Palestinian.”
This reporter is embracing guidelines that explicitly instruct journalists to be biased against Israel in every story, using inaccurate language. They are to push a narrative, not to seek out objective facts. They telling Arab reporters to exclude any Israeli or Jewish perspectives. And they tell them not to even mention Hamas or Palestinian terror - ever.
Judging from Abdulrahim's tweets, she internalized these guidelines before they were written. And this is the kind of slanted, one-sided reporting we can expect from her in Israel.
(h/t YMedad)
UPDATE: She actually denied that Hamas and Hezbollah were terror organizations, and that they murdered Israeli civilians - during the second intifada.
UPDATE 2: See CAMERA's 2011 article about her.
