JPOST
‘NYT’ coverage framed Israel as ‘sole aggressor,’ Palestinians as ‘passive victims,’ study finds
Mathilda Heller
September 14, 2026

The New York Times’ reporting after October 7 consistently portrayed Palestinians as “passive victims” and Israel as the “sole aggressor,” a new peer-reviewed study by Edieal Pinker of Yale School of Management found. The study, How The New York Times Framed the War Between Israel and Hamas, was published in the academic journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism last week. It is an expansion of an initial quantitative study published by Pinker in February 2025, as covered by The Jerusalem Post at the time. Drawing on a body of 1,559 news articles written between October 7, 2023, and 7 June, 2024, Pinker documents a dominant narrative that assigned “near-exclusive agency and responsibility to Israel while diminishing Hamas’s role in sustaining the conflict.”  According to Pinker, in this narrative, from October 8, 2023, onward, Israel “has been the sole aggressor” whereas Palestinians are portrayed as “passive victims whose suffering grows daily as they are relentlessly attacked by the Israeli military.” READ MORE

PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE New York Times walks back line that seemed to question if Israelis were victims on Oct. 7 In an article on the documentary film “NAZA” published Monday, the newspaper reported, “Israelis are deeply divided over how to apportion blame for the policy, military and intelligence failures that preceded the attack and the war.” “But Israelis still largely view themselves as the victims of Oct. 7,” the report said. The statement drew fire from critics, who said the line cast doubt on whether Israelis were victims of the attack. “Implying Israelis falsely view themselves as victims while downplaying Oct. 7 ignores basic reality,” says CAMERA, a media watchdog group. “Intelligence failures don’t negate civilian suffering. True journalistic integrity requires context and facts, not narrative spin.”

CAMERA Tamar Sternthal: NY Times Publishes Editor’s Note After Reporting Israelis ‘Largely View Themselves’ As Oct. 7 Victims CAMERA today prompted a social media uproar and an Editor’s Note at The New York Times after the Gray Lady reported that “Israelis still largely view themselves as the victims of Oct. 7,” wording which suggests that Israelis were not, in fact, the victims of Hamas’ horrific Oct. 7, 2023 massacre.