Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times - He Would Be Proud of the paper's Current Coverage of Israel

Since the patriarch of The New York Times, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, determined that his paper was going to lead the charge against Israel's founding in 1948 (he was a charter member of the infamous American Council for Judaism, the group formed to oppose a Jewish state at the height of The Holocuast) the "grey lady" has maintained its anti-Zionist policy in reporting and, for the most part, in its editorials.  Its agenda, cloaked in the familiar guise of "fair and objective reporting" even extended to downplaying The Holocaust while it was occurring.  Laurel Leff chronicled the paper's misdeeds in her widely acclaimed book, Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper.

The Times bias over the years has been expressed in its choice of reporters. Serge Schmemann, Chris Hedges, Deborah Sontag, Max Frankel, and now, Ethan Bronner have all shared the dominant NY Times hostility towards Israel and the concomitant sympathy for Palestinian Arabs. Bottom line: you don't get hired by the Times' Middle East bureau unless you share its anti-Israel positions. Bearing a Jewish name does not imply a pro-Israel point of view at the paper; as historically demonstrated, the opposite is the case. Such a case in point is the current lead reporter, Ethan Bronner. I recall asking him a question when he worked for the Times' sister paper, The Boston Globe in 2000 when Pope John Paul II made his epic visit to Jerusalem. Sheikh Ekrama Sa'id Sabri, Arafat's appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, took the occasion to spew outrageous Holocaust denial sermons and statements. When I asked Bronner why he chose not to write about Sabri, he replied that the story wasn't worth reporting since "everyone knew Sabri's comments." I then asked him why he didn't report on these statements when they first occurred. Bronner declined to answer.

Clearly designed as an attack on the Netanyahu government just as Bibi met with Obama, the world's most influential newspaper published a massive story, Tax Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in West Bank two days ago.  Obviously an epic in the making, the story was emblazoned across multiple pages complete with detailed maps of the West Bank, clearly intended to indict Israelis and Americans who aid Jews in Israel.

As ably commented on by Alex Safian of CAMERA and Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor, the story was a non-story, replete with errors and glaring omissions.  Safian pointed out that Bronner and his associates conveniently failed to mention the millions of tax exempt dollars funneled to The New Israel Fund and its anti-Israel surrogates within Israel.  Steinberg wrote that "Many organizations use US tax-exempt status to oppose Israeli government policy, and some are among the leaders of campaigns to demonize and wage political war against Israel."

The larger question - which the Times will never report on - is the one documenting massive tax exempt donations and investment being carried out by "charities" like The American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP), which has boasted that it has accumulated over a billion dollars to build Arab housing in the West Bank. The ATFP is the successor organization to The American Committee on Jerusalem founded in Washington in 1995.

One of the central figures behind that organization was Abdul Rahman Alamoudi, currently serving a 23 year federal prison sentence for terrorism. Another board member, Rafaat "Rafi" Dajani, was caught embezzling over a hundred thousand dollars. Count one Tereq Salahi as a board member as well - the same Salahi who breached White House security to crash a Presidential dinner. ATFP's current President, Ziad Asali, was previously a board member along with Alamoudi) on Eugene Bird's Council for the National Interest, an outspokenly anti-Israel organization with close ties to Hamas and convicted terrorists (like Bayan Elashi).

The ATFP has undertaken a number of tax exempt initiatives including a $50,000,000 private equity fund drive administered by Abraaj Capital. The massive funding projects of ATFP dwarf similar tax-exempt projects of such Times cited groups like Ateret Cohanim.

The power and influence of ATFP has grown so quickly that Obama's National Security Advisor, General Jim Jones, appeared as the organization's keynote speaker last year.

The array of tax exempt U.S. organizations collecting funds for Palestinians abroad is almost comical in their titles. Remember the Holy Land Foundation of Richardson, Texas? After their conviction in a celebrated terror case establishing their links to Hamas, their 501 (c) 3 description includes:

Smiling "Peacemakers" on Their "Palestine Encounter" Courtesy of The Middle East Fellowship

Other similarly Orwellian-named groups include:

Palestine Aid Society of America
Ann Arbor, MI (assets: $1,800,000)
(established to assist children of Palestinian "soldiers" - including suicide bombers?)

The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
Carlsbad, CA (assets: $187,000)
(effectively eliminating Israel as a Jewish State)

The Middle East Fellowship
Pasadena, CA (assets: $3.5 million)
(closely associated with the Presbyterian Church which recently promoted
the Hezbollah website)

American Charities for Palestine
Washington, DC
Ziad Asali, President (assets: $160,000)

Aside from their overtly political aims - ultimately, the elimination of Israel - the dozens of tax exempt U.S. Palestinian charities, some of which have been linked to terrorist groups, should merit a sentence or two from The New York Times. But the Times is in the business of avoiding that kind of investigative journalism.

[Crossposted from JStreetJive.]