An in-depth comparison of The New York Times coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine vs. Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza shows how the Times dutifully launders the news to fit the U.S. government’s agenda.

The Times reporting consistently condemns war crimes committed by Russia while in Gaza, it either obfuscates their nature or legitimizes Israel’s excuses for committing them. In Gaza the accusation that resistance fighters operate amongst civilians grants carte blanche for Israeli war crimes; in Ukraine the tactic is framed as that of a wily and brave resistance struggling against a military with vastly superior firepower. Ukraine’s “outgunned” army always needs more weapons, while the notion of The Times suggesting so for Hamas is absurd. And while the paper has provided in-depth coverage of the art and culture that is at risk of being lost in Ukraine, it has categorically ignored Israel’s violent campaign to erase Palestinian cultural production.

Conclusion:

The United States has a clear interest in painting Russia—one of its main geopolitical rivals—as the thuggish aggressor in Ukraine that commits war crimes for sport and presents an existential challenge to Western civilization. And it legitimizes its military aid and diplomatic support by portraying Ukrainians as the scrappy underdogs that resist in whatever way necessary (with Western weapons) to protect their homeland.

In Gaza, the United States has an interest in presenting Israel, its bedrock ally in the Middle East, as a nation defending itself from existential threats that is forced to make hard choices between destroying bloodthirsty terrorists and killing civilians en masse. Palestinian resistance has to be completely decontextualized, its motivations and history erased. It is necessarily presented as a cruel, ISIS-like beast which is driven by a single-minded desire to slaughter Jewish people.