Watchdog slams NYT for 'spreading lies' by employing journalist accused of defending terrorist groups

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A media watchdog group focusing on Middle East reporting has criticized the New York Times for employing a journalist who has ties to CAIR and whose past reporting has defended terror groups Hezbollah and Hamas.

The "Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis" (CAMERA) released a statement last week calling out the major outlet for having hired Raja Abdulrahim as a New York Times correspondent in Jerusalem. 

Abdulrahim, who has published pieces for the Times since late 2021, covers the "occupied West Bank, Gaza and Israel with a special focus on Palestinian affairs," the Times states in her bio. 

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The New York Times Building in Midtown Manhattan.  (Fox News Photo/Joshua Comins)

CAMERA claimed that the journalist has been linked to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a non-profit group which the FBI recognizes as having ties with Palestinian terror group Hamas. 

The United Arab Emirates officially declared CAIR a terrorist organization in 2015.

In addition, the group noted Abdulrahim has a history of defending Hamas and other Islamic terror group Hezbollah. CAMERA also charged her with publishing "false reports on Hama’s conflict with Israel."

In the statement, CAMERA research director Alex Safian said, "In light of her habitually inaccurate claims, it’s worth noting that while in college Abdulrahim won a scholarship award from CAIR, the terror-apologist group that was an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terror-financing trial in US history."

He mentioned her defense of terror groups, saying, "she claimed in a letter to the campus newspaper that it was erroneous to refer to Hamas and Hezbollah as ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘terror organizations’ that have murdered innocent Israeli civilians."

Safian added his indictment of the paper for having employed her.

"It’s inconceivable that the New York Times would hire someone who, in a campus newspaper, had defended Baruch Goldstein, the perpetrator of the Hebron massacre. And yet the Times has no problem hiring someone who did far worse, defending Hamas and Hezbollah," he said. 

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Palestinian members of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, take part in a gathering on January 31, 2016 in Gaza city to pay tribute to their fellow militants who died after a tunnel collapsed in the Gaza Strip.  (MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images)

The media watchdog accused the paper of being "indifferent to Abdulrahim’s lack of impartiality and her connections to CAIR." 

CAMERA said "CAIR, like Hamas, is linked to the radical Islamist Muslim Brotherhood organization."

Adding onto their condemnation to the Times, CAMERA’s statement declared that by assigning "Abdulrahim to report on Hamas, the newspaper has spread provable lies and disinformation to its readership in a series of problematic articles."

It provided several examples of these alleged inaccuracies. Quoting CAMERA analyst Gilead Ini, the statement claimed, "Most recently, Abdulrahim published an article that ‘seems designed to leave readers in the dark about recent bloodshed in Israel and the West Bank, concealing or downplaying that Palestinians recently killed in the West Bank were gunmen, unlike Israeli civilians murdered in Palestinian terror attacks.’"

Also, "Abdulrahim falsely claimed that the IDF ‘never’ uses the word ‘civilians’ to refer to Palestinians injured or killed in military actions by Israeli defense forces." 

CAMERA said it responded to those claims by citing "multiple examples from IDF public statements that prove Abdulrahim is, at best, wrong."

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It also pointed to an "Editor’s note" that the paper had to place on one of her December 2022 pieces after CAMERA pointed out an error. It stated, "the New York Times was also forced to issue an Editors’ Note after CAMERA revealed that Abdulrahim had lied in an article that Gaza’s fishing industry was collapsing due to Israel’s security measures along the Mediterranean coast."

The statement provided a fact check of the offending piece, stating, "In fact, figures published by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics show that Gaza’s fishing industry over the last 15 years has thrived during its alleged ‘collapse.’"

Attorneys Shereef Akeel, left, Gadeir Abbas, and Lena F. Masri, right, stand as Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) national executive director Nihad Awad speaks during a news conference at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Monday, Jan. 30, 2017 in Washington.  (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)