[News] NY Times killed investigation of Israeli hooligans, internal email reveals

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/ny-times-killed-investigation-israeli-hooligans-internal-email-reveals>
NY Times killed investigation of Israeli hooligans, internal email reveals

Asa Winstanley <https://electronicintifada.net/people/asa-winstanley> Media
Watch <https://electronicintifada.net/blog/media-watch> 18 November 2024
------------------------------
 [image: maccabi-tel-aviv-amsterdam.jpg]

Supporters of Israeli side Maccabi Tel Aviv went on a violent rampage in
Amsterdam before and after their side’s match against Dutch team Ajax in
the Europa League on 7 November.
ANP

*The New York Times* has killed an investigation by one of its own
reporters into Israeli mob violence in Amsterdam earlier this month.

In an internal *Times* email inadvertently shared with The Electronic
Intifada, Dutch reporter Christiaan Triebert
<https://www.nytimes.com/by/christiaan-triebert> explained to a manager
that he had pitched “a visual investigation I was conducting into the
events of [6-8 November] in Amsterdam.”

“Unfortunately, that story was killed,” he wrote. “I regret that the
planned moment-by-moment visual investigation was not further pursued.”

“This has been very frustrating, to say the least,” Triebert wrote.

The email was addressed to senior *Times* manager Charlie Stadtlander
– a former
senior press officer
<https://theintercept.com/2023/03/07/new-york-times-nsa-charlie-stadtlander/>
for the US National Security Agency and for the US army
<https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlie-stadtlander-1548b665/>.

Triebert appeared interested in carrying out reporting that would set the
record straight, remediating the false narrative insistently advanced by
his own newspaper – that the Israeli fans were victims of mob violence
motivated by anti-Jewish hatred.

The correspondence between Triebert and Stadtlander on Friday was triggered
by The Electronic Intifada’s requests for comment to *The Times* regarding
the paper’s highly misleading reporting of Israeli mob violence in
Amsterdam.

As this reporter explained on The Electronic Intifada livestream on
Wednesday, the paper actually inverted reality.

You can watch the full livestream segment in the video above, where we
break down the evidence in detail.

There is still precisely zero evidence that even one anti-Semitic attack
took place in Amsterdam – let alone the “pogrom” that Israeli government
officials immediately claimed had happened.

*The Times* has come under fire for using a video of Israeli football
hooligan violence in Amsterdam last week to claim the exact opposite of
what the video actually showed.

*The Times* claimed footage shot by a Dutch photojournalist
<https://x.com/iAnnetnl/status/1854664685469028610> showed “anti-Semitic
attacks” on Israelis – even though it actually showed Israeli mob violence
against a Dutch citizen.

For several days, the footage was attached <https://archive.is/Nb57z> to
the top of the paper’s 8 November report
<https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/08/world/europe/amsterdam-israel-soccer-fans-attacked.html>
about events in Amsterdam the night before.

But on Tuesday the paper was forced to issue a correction
<https://archive.is/emtvO>, after the video’s creator – Dutch
photojournalist Annet de Graaf – publicly condemned
<https://x.com/iAnnetnl/status/1855317780251414830> international media for
mislabeling her video as evidence of “anti-Semitic attacks” against Israeli
football supporters.

In fact, the video shows a mob of dozens of Israeli hooligans attacking
someone, after their team Maccabi Tel Aviv lost an away game 5-0 to Dutch
club Ajax on 7 November.

*Times* manager Stadtlander claimed to The Electronic Intifada in a
statement on Friday that after the correction, the newspaper had “removed
the video at the creator’s request.”

But de Graaf insisted that was untrue. “I haven’t said that at all,” she
told The Electronic Intifada by phone on Friday. “It’s not true what the
chief editor [Stadtlander] is saying to you in the email. Not true.”

Asked to comment, Stadtlander declined to respond to that, writing only
that “my statement to you last night constitutes our comment on the matter.”

None of the four authors of the article – John Yoon, Christopher F.
Schuetze, Jin Yu Young and Claire Moses – responded to requests for comment
from The Electronic Intifada.

Stadtlander denied playing any role in the commissioning or editing of the
article.

After The Electronic Intifada received Triebert’s “inadvertently copied”
email, Stadtlander sent a follow-up email in what appears to have been an
attempt at damage control.

He claimed that “the valuable work Christiaan [Triebert] and others on his
team were doing did not become a standalone piece” because “much of the
material was incorporated” into another article the *Times* had published.

But the piece that Stadtlander linked to
<https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/10/world/europe/israeli-soccer-fans-amsterdam-attack.html>
is yet another whitewash of the Israeli mob violence in Amsterdam – one of
a number published by the *Times*.

It obfuscates or outright reverses cause and effect and downplays the
Israeli attacks on Dutch citizens while relying almost entirely on the
Israeli hooligans’ claims.

It also downplays a video <https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1854988410022183024>
of Maccabi hooligans returning from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv airport chanting
an openly genocidal slogan gloating that there are “no children left” in
Gaza as merely “incendiary chants against Arabs and Gazans.”
Anti-Palestinian agenda

That the *Times* newsroom had a pro-Israel agenda from the outset of its
coverage of the incident is apparent from reading the earliest version
<https://archive.is/ErSd4> of the piece still available in online archives.

That version did not include the video by Annet de Graaf, and contained no
evidence – or even allegation – of anti-Semitism, aside from the baseless
claims of Israeli government officials.

One of the main sources quoted in that version was Itamar Ben-Gvir
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/itamar-ben-gvir-0>, Israel’s far-right
police minister, who wants to expel all Palestinians. “Fans who went to see
a football game encountered anti-Semitism and were attacked with
unimaginable cruelty just because of their Jewishness,” the article quoted
Ben-Gvir as saying.

However, all references to Ben-Gvir were removed from the article, within less
than two hours <https://archive.is/wiX91>.

To date, *The New York Times* has published more than a dozen articles
<https://www.nytimes.com/search?dropmab=false&lang=en&query=maccabi%20amsterdam&sort=newest>
substantially focused on the violence in Amsterdam.

This is an astonishingly high number compared, say, to how the newspaper
has ignored or consistently downplayed
<https://fair.org/home/double-standards-and-distortion-how-the-nyt-misreports-sexual-violence-in-israel-palestine/>
grave crimes perpetrated by Israelis in Palestine, including systematic and
well-documented sexual assaults and rapes of Palestinian prisoners by
Israeli forces.

The *Times* coverage not only includes numerous news articles baselessly
spinning the Amsterdam violence as “anti-Semitic,” but opinion columns with
inflammatory headlines such as “Amsterdam Is About Jew Hatred – and Gaza
<https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/13/opinion/friedman-gaza-amsterdam-antisemitism.html>,”
“A Worldwide ‘Jew Hunt’
<https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/12/opinion/amsterdam-antisemitism-jews-israel.html>”
and “The Age of the Pogrom Returns
<https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/11/07/opinion/thepoint/israeli-attack-soccer-amsterdam-pogrom>
.”

The willingness of the *Times* to falsely portray Israel and Israelis as
victims in this case is reminiscent of how it has insistently advanced
the debunked
narrative
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/ny-times-found-no-7-october-rape-victims-reporter-admits>
of “mass rapes” by Palestinian fighters on 7 October 2023, including false
reporting
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/watch-ny-times-investigation-mass-rape-hamas-falls-apart>
by its star correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman.

Such atrocity propaganda masquerading as journalism has been used to
justify Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
A new front in Israel’s genocidal war?

In his internal *Times* email to Stadtlander, reporter Christiaan Triebert
explained that, after a conversation with de Graaf, “I reached out to the
authors of the article to address the factual inaccuracies it contained.”

Triebert wrote that he had been unsure “what the rationale was for deleting
the video rather than including the detail in the article. I think it would
have been helpful to have the video in there with the context that it
showed Israeli fans attacking a man.”

De Graaf has repeatedly clarified as much herself, as even the *Times’*
correction admits.

“What I explained to several media channels is that the Maccabi supporters
deliberately started the riot in front of central station returning from
the game,” de Graaf wrote
<https://x.com/iAnnetnl/status/1855057599592304984> on X, also known as
Twitter.
And footage of the same incident shared on an Israeli Telegram
<https://t.me/yediotnews10/98175> channel shows the Maccabi hooligans’
attack from a different angle, apparently shot by one of the hooligans
themselves.

The channel falsely claimed in Hebrew that the video showed Maccabi Tel
Aviv fans being “violently attacked in the last hour by dozens of
Palestinian rioters.”

A full video report of the Israeli hooligans’ rampage by popular Dutch
YouTuber Bender also shows footage of the same incident.

Israeli football hooliganism in Europe seems to have become Israel’s latest
global front in its genocidal war in Gaza.

On Thursday night, Israeli football hooligans attacked supporters of France
at a European Nations League match in Paris between the two sides.

British journalist Peter Allen reported witnessing “horrendous violence” by
the Israelis. He said he “spoke to three off-duty soldiers who were over
from Tel Aviv, while one openly wore” an Israeli army T-shirt.
Based in Paris for many years, Allen is a contributor of reporting to many
international media outlets, including occasionally to The Electronic
Intifada
<https://electronicintifada.net/search/site/%2522Peter%2520Allen%2522>.

Despite the attendance of French President Emmanuel Macron, the match was
heavily boycotted, with Reuters reporting
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98d9nrg1rgo> that the Stade de France
was barely one-fifth full and protests taking place in Paris against the
event.

It was the lowest attendance
<https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/11/15/hundreds-protest-against-france-israel-football-match-in-paris-amid-high-security>
for any home match in the history of France’s national team.
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