We found many instances in A1 articles published in the NYT after October 7 where language frames Israel’s disproportionate military response to the Hamas attack as morally justified. A1 articles often present an implicit motive without contextualizing decades of siege, blockade, previous military campaigns, and a 56-year military occupation of Palestinian territories. Descriptions of the conflict often rely on euphemisms and rhetorical figures, minimizing the profound level of devastation caused by Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment across the entirety of the Gaza Strip, including hospitals, residential areas, and schools, and the Palestinian death toll. Passive language is often employed to divert attention from an active scene, and these articles often fail to name Israel as the party responsible for the level of death and destruction in Gaza

2.1 Language that minimizes civilian casualties

The NYT article, “In Gaza, Epithets Are Fired and Euphemisms Give Shelter” references David Grossman’s 1987 study on Israeli occupation stating, “A society in crisis forges for itself a new vocabulary (…) words that no longer describe reality, but attempt, instead, to conceal it.” These guideposts for linguistic standards were published in your paper, and we applaud this kind of reporting.

However, instead of maintaining these standards, A1 articles in the NYT since October 7 consistently employ phrases that describe Israel as striking “targets” rather than civilian infrastructure (10/23, 10/25), downplaying the extraordinarily high civilian cost of the strikes. Articles also omit the fact that indiscriminately attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure constitute war crimes under international law.

An analysis of A1 articles in the NYT also shows how Palestinian civilians are often referred to as “noncombatants” (10/11, 11/1, 11/3, 11/15), not only when quoting Israeli officials but also in the NYT’s reporting. This kind of terminology dehumanizes Palestinians while creating a double standard between enemy and victim in this conflict. An analysis of the same articles describe Israeli civilian casualties as such, with no “noncombatant” or other dehumanizing qualifiers.  

Unlike the standards set by Grossman, NYT’s reporting since October 7 continues to employ generalizations, dehumanizing language, and euphemisms. 

In the article, “Slaughtered at a Festival of Peace and Love Leaves Israel Transformed”, the author uses the phrase, “They were rounded up and shot like animals…” This kind of inflammatory language shapes a public view that committing similar crimes against others can be justified. The animalistic comparisons do neither justice to the tragedy of October 7 and its ensuing response. Would the NYT report on the killing of Palestinians as the “rounding up and shooting” of animals?

2.2 Reframing a man-made humanitarian crisis as a strategic objective

The language describing how Israel prompted the evacuation of Northern Gaza towards the south is generous to Israel’s motives: “Israel stepped up its efforts to persuade hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians to leave northern Gaza. The Israeli military said it had showered the population with warnings” (10/14).

This language, while also lacking important context, suggests that civilians killed in northern Gaza had viable options, including being “persuaded” to “leave” instead of being “forced” to “evacuate” under threat to their lives from the indiscriminate bombardment in northern Gaza, as well as every other area in the Gaza Strip. The framing of Israel’s evacuation orders as being somehow benign implies victims of a massive bombardment campaign are somehow culpable in their own murder. The implication is that those who remained were fairly forewarned and should have known better. Facts on the ground consistently reveal otherwise. Israel’s evacuation orders led to forced displacement of a civilian population, which got bombarded to death in what Israelis claimed to be designated “safe zones.” 

The word “retaliation” is frequently used to reference Israel’s attacks on Gaza. It is rarely used to describe Palestinian attacks, offering to the public that only one party to the conflict has a valid defense, while the other enacts violence through terrorism— and Israelis only “retaliate” (10/9, 10/12, 11/14).

One article published on 10/9, goes as far as justifying Israel’s continued killing of civilians in Gaza as “inevitable.” A question to the NYT is, would the term “inevitable” be used to describe deaths of Israeli civilians as an outcome of Palestinians legally resisting their occupation?

The terms “terrorism” or “terrorists” are almost exclusively reserved to describe acts of violence committed by Hamas or other militant Palestinian groups. It is rarely, if ever, used to describe the acts of violence committed by Israeli settlers and other militants, or crimes committed by the IDF, such as assassinations of “terrorists” who have already been “neutralized” or the shooting of unarmed children, point blank. One such example of the selective use of language to label actions that result in death differently: “Since terrorists from Gaza raided Israel on Oct. 7, killing roughly 1,400 people according to the Israeli government, the Israeli military says it has struck more than 7,000 targets inside Gaza” (10/25). Israelis are always people while Palestinians are almost always “targets.” 

Hamas is specifically labeled a terrorist organization at least 33 times by NYT reporters and at least 23 by people quoted in articles, often with language to the effect of “designated a terrorist group by the United States and European Union,” (10/25, 10/24,10/7, 10/14,10/26).

However, only one mention (10/11) is made to current members of the Israeli cabinet having been accused of terrorism or linked to terrorist organizations. For example, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was convicted in 2007 of backing a group considered by Israel and the US to be a terrorist organization, and Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Yoel Smotrich was arrested by Israeli Security Services in 2005 under suspicion of planning terrorist attacks in Gaza. This selective application of the term “terrorist” compounds the bias the NYT consistently includes in its reporting against Palestinians relative to Israelis who are clearly guilty of the same criminal or “terrorist” conduct – that is, if the NYT accepts the definition of terrorism as recognized by international law.

2.3 Lack of accountability impressed through passive language

NYT’s use of passive language to describe the impact of Israel’s military bombardment in Gaza clearly avoids assigning accountability and responsibility for who is harming who, and how, at this point in the conflict in Gaza (and increasingly the West Bank).

Examples:

Countless articles fail to acknowledge the direct cause of the humanitarian crisis. When the NYT writes that “Evacuees fleeing the anticipated invasion of northern Gaza struggled to find food, water and shelter in the south,” (10/14) there is no direct mention that Israel is forcing civilians to flee their home from indiscriminate bombing toward an area with a lack of access to resources due to the Israeli years-long blockade on Gaza and targeting of farms and bakeries.

Israel’s targeting of infrastructure and communications is phrased as if Palestinians are the ones to blame for this targeting. An example of this is “Palestinian telecommunication companies blamed Israel’s bombardment for the wide-scale communications blackout, which left most people in Gaza unreachable by phone,” (10/28) that is written so passively it neglects to name the objective fact that Israel caused this wide-scale communications blackout. 

When deaths are mentioned they are rarely contextualized as deaths from IDF soldiers and Israeli bombardment killing them(10/24). In the article “As Gaza War Enters New Phase, Israel Faces Pressure Over Civilian Deaths”, the headline alone points to lack of assigning responsibility by describing civilian deaths without saying they were killed by the IDF.