By: Phyllis Chesler

Dearest Readers:

Please tell me what to do. Is it time for me to finally cancel my subscription to the New York Times–or not? My single cancellation will make absolutely no difference except that I will no longer be able to document or monitor their extraordinary hardcopy propaganda campaign against Israel, their daily publishing one malevolent article after another with an even more arresting and large number of photographs.

As I’ve said before, I read their obits religiously–as well as their book review (in my view, not as good as the Wall Street Journal’s), which routinely reviews very different books. It is certainly not as good as The Jewish Review of Books or Tablet. And yes, I also read their Ethicist column written by Kwame Anthony Appiah, an author with whom I’ve profoundly disagreed about the nature of honor killing (femicide). I might read the very rare truly radical feminist piece as opposed to their endless anti-feminist pro-trans and pro-sex-worker pieces.

The entire world has been brainwashed–the Jews are not being scapegoated for the same old reason, namely envy. Or anger about the high ethical standards we’ve set for ourselves and for the entire world. Jew hatred is due, in part, to the age-old Muslim hatred for all infidels–unleashed–beginning with the Jews but hardly ending there. Anti-Christian and anti-Hindu persecution and murder rage hotly in the Middle East, Central Asia (Bangladesh right now, as well as India), and in Africa–a hatred which has now spread into the West, which is rapidly being Islamified. I’ve read that the maker of the Barbie doll, Mattel, has produced a Hijab Barbie–even as the movie about Barbie has been censored by a number of Muslim countries and an open-air screening cancelled in Noisy-le-Sec in France. The reason given was fear of Muslim violence.

And by the way, I did not read anything about the pro-Hindu rally that just took place in NYC against the “atrocities” being committed by Muslims against Hindus in Bangladesh–in the pages of the NYT. Did you?

Just today, in their A section, there are four articles, including a front-page piece, which together total 5,349 words. But more important, there are nine photographs, including a front-page five-column-wide photograph titled: “Displaced children last week in Gaza City. One girl said she played with sand, shaping it into imaginary meals. She usually eats one meal a day, her parents said.” The story that accompanies this photo continues two entire pages where there are seven photographs, one of them seven-columns wide.

The titles in today’s NYT A section are as follows: “In Gaza, the Joys of Childhood Dissolve Into Indelible Trauma;” “U.S. Halts Visas for Gazans Seeking Medical Care;” “Mass Protest in Israel Seeks a Truce in Gaza And Hostages’ Return;” and “Israel Accuses Iran of Recruiting Dozens of Israelis for Sabotage, or Worse.”

Please allow me, once again, to count the number of anti-Israel, anti-Netanyahu, and pro-Hamas words in only this one media outlet in just the last seven weeks. This is only one example of the intensity of the systematic brainwashing. I really want you to understand how over-the-top even one media outlet has been in terms of Gaza.

I have previously written four articles about how long and how fierce the anti-Israel and pro-Gaza/pro-Hamas coverage is at the Gray Lady in only the last seven weeks. It is quite unbelievable. Three of these articles total 21,001 words. Together with today’s (8/18/25) offering, the total word count (in only the first A section) comes to 26,350 words.

This word count does not include the numerous magazine articles that have appeared in this same time period, including one in the magazine section against PM Netanyahu, on July 11, 2025. It was titled: “How Netanyahu Prolonged the War in Gaza to Stay in Power.” This piece alone totaled 12,076 words.

And none of these word counts include those of the endless number of anti-Israel op-ed pieces by Tom Friedman, M. Gessen, Nicholas Kristof, or Ezra Klein, who recently interviewed Mahmoud Khalil (positively) about Gaza and violent Palestinian activism on campus, etc.

Photos are even more “believable” than words, even if the photos are mainly staged, faked. I have given up counting all these photographs but where I did count, they ranged between 30-50 in this same time period. Maybe more.

How does one begin to counter the effects of at least 38,426 words in only one influential and allegedly prestigious Paper of Record? To what extent does this Propaganda Overkill account for the fact that so many NYC Democrats, including Jewish Democrats, voted for Zohran Mamdani in the mayoral primaries?

How do we de-program the brainwashed members of a cult? How can we isolate billions of people, each one from every other one, in order to do so? Or, going forward, even though I believe that it is now too late to reverse the devastating loss of the “narrative,” of truth itself, how can we cut down on all the lethal lies, at least in the West? On all the search engines and online? Is that even possible? What would my long-ago suggestion for an Iron Dome against Lies look like?

So: Do I cancel my subscription to the hardcopy edition of my hometown newspaper? What would you do?