#opinion section

A prophetic cover from The New York Times’ opinion section has gone viral on the anniversary of its original publication.

The year-old page came from a Sunday edition published in October 2024—a week-and-a-half before President Donald Trump won his return to the White House. In all caps, it warned what a second, clearly darker, Trump presidency would entail.

Chaim Lax

Key Takeaways:

A group of over 300 public figures has announced that they will not publish in the Opinion section of The New York Times unless the newspaper meets their three anti-Israel demands.

Only half of the signatories have ever been published in the newspaper. The rest are either too extreme or fringe to ever be considered relevant for the pages of the Opinion section. Nevertheless, the inclusion of 150 former contributors calls into question the opinions presented in The New York Times.

The list of those who support this movement includes feminist writers and activists, even though one of the demands is for the newspaper to retract its report on the sexual violence that occurred during the October 7 attacks, effectively turning their backs on Israeli women. 

Imagine a group of extremists trying to dictate a mainstream news organization’s editorial policy.

Imagine a group of feminists who openly whitewash sexual violence because of who the victims are.

This is no mere fantasy.

This is exactly what the movement to boycott The New York Times’ Opinion page has been publicizing over the past few days.

A group of “more than 300 writers, scholars, and public figures” have publicly announced that they will not provide opinion pieces for The New York Times until the newspaper agrees to their three radical demands.

They call for the newspaper to:

“Conduct a review of the anti-Palestinian bias” that these activists claim is endemic to The Times’ newsroom;

Retract its December 2023 exposé on the sexual violence that occurred during Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel;

Openly call for an American arms embargo on the Jewish state.

However laughable it is to claim that The New York Times has a pro-Israel bias, the most serious and disturbing aspects of this boycott call are that:

Roughly 150 former New York Times Opinion contributors have joined hands with extremists in attempting to turn a mainstream media organization into essentially a mouthpiece for Hamas;

A litany of “feminists” have allowed their own prejudices and political radicalism to deny the sexual violence that occurred during the October 7 attacks because they sympathize with those who perpetrated this violence and disparage the victims.

Who Are the Extremists Who Have Joined This Boycott Call?

The New York Times’ Opinion section is one of the most influential news sections in the United States, helping to shape the views of the public and policymakers. To be featured in the Opinion section is to have the ear of influential people in the United States and around the world.

This is why it is so absurd for so many of the extremists who have joined this boycott campaign to ever believe that their radical, violent, and fundamentalist voices would ever appear in this section to begin with.

Equally absurd is the fact that close to 150 former contributors to the Opinion section have lent their names and prestige to this outlandish boycott call, making absurd demands while also justifying extremist personalities and rhetoric.

To fully understand the absurdity of this boycott call, the following are just a few of the most fanatical names to have signed on to it, including those who have somehow ludicrously been featured in the “paper of record”:

Plestia Alaqad – Alaqad uses her position as an “aspiring journalist” to spread Hamas propaganda in the Western media, including the false claims that Israel killed 1,000 people in an attack on Al-Ahli Hospital in October 2023 and that 186,000 Palestinians have been killed during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Mohammed El-Kurd – The darling of certain Western literary circles, El-Kurd has openly admitted that he lies about Israel being an “apartheid” state, has shared Nazi-style imagery of Jewish people on social media, and has both celebrated and whitewashed Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians.

Mosab Abu Toha – Earlier this year, HonestReporting campaigned for Abu Toha’s Pulitzer Prize award to be withdrawn after it came to light that he justified the abduction of Israelis on October 7, compared Israel to the Nazis, and called for journalists to cover the Israel-Hamas war solely from the Palestinian perspective.

Susan Abulhawa – A Palestinian-American scientist and writer, Abulhawa’s social media features calls to destroy Israel, celebration of Iranian attacks on Israeli cities, and baseless claims that Israel is heavily involved in global child and sex trafficking. She has also celebrated Hamas’ “unyielding resistance” and “mind-blowing persistence.”

Abubaker Abed – A “journalist” from Gaza, Abed works for Press TV, a propaganda organ of the Iranian state. On social media, he has celebrated October 7, absurdly claimed that only Israeli soldiers were killed during the attack, glorified Hamas and its former leader Yahya Sinwar, and called for a curse to fall upon the Jews.

Aaron Maté – A journalist for the alternative news site, The Grayzone, Maté has denied the sexual violence that took place on October 7, downplayed the treatment of Muslims by China, whitewashed the gassing of Syrian civilians by Bashar Assad, and sanitized Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. His father, Gabor Maté, also no stranger to wild anti-Israel statements, also joined the boycott of The New York Times.

Steven Salaita – Salaita is an academic who was the source of controversy in 2014, when the University of Illinois withdrew a job offer after a slew of tweets were discovered, including celebrating the abduction of three Israeli teens and claiming that Zionists have turned antisemitism into “something honorable.” Since then, he has continued to post on social media, accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” and even referring to October 7 as a “remarkable offensive.”

Nerdeen Kiswani – Kiswani is the founder of Within Our Lifetime, a radical anti-Israel organization that celebrated October 7 and has targeted Jewish institutions. Kiswani, herself, has justified celebrating anti-Israel terror attacks, called for Israel’s destruction, and advocated for a boycott of the Jewish state.

The Hateful Hypocrisy of Feminists Erasing Hamas’ Sexual Violence

Along with the legitimizing of extremist and radical rhetoric, this boycott movement also seeks to deny the sexual violence that took place on October 7 by having The New York Times retract its seminal piece, “Screams Without Words.” Despite all the evidence pointing to the occurrence of sexual assaults and rapes by the Hamas-led hordes, this movement seeks to exculpate the terrorists who perpetrated the attacks by erasing any evidence that sexual violence took place.

Despite the anti-women nature of this siding with those who committed sexual violence, several feminist activists have hypocritically signed on to this boycott movement and its whitewashing of rape for political purposes.

The following are some of the feminist activists who have lent their names to this boycott movement:

Rupi Kaur – Known for her feminist poetry online and in print, Kaur’s work has been described as “boldly tak[ing] on issues of femininity, sexual assault, body image and racial discrimination.”

Audrey Wollen – An artist and writer, Wollen has been described by The Huffington Post as a “feminist art star” and was the brains behind the development of the popular “sad girl theory.”

Hannah Einbinder – A Jewish-American actress who gained 15 minutes of fame when she called for a free Palestine at the 2025 Emmys, Einbinder’s work has been described as a “fresh feminist perspective.”

Mariame Kaba – An activist and educator, Kaba has co-founded the Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls and Young Women and the Rogers Park Young Women’s Action Team. She has also co-chaired a committee at the Chicago Metropolitan Battered Women’s Network and served on the editorial board of the journal, Violence Against Women.

dream hampton – A self-described feminist, hampton (yes, she spells her name without capitals) was the executive producer for the film “Surviving R. Kelly,” which brought to light the sexual assault allegations against the singer and ultimately led to his imprisonment.

It is unlikely that The New York Times will kowtow to this radical boycott movement. In any case, the paper’s editorial policies are already problematic enough without it tipping into the hardline hate propaganda that these 300 signatories are demanding.

However, the fact that 150 former contributors to the paper’s Opinion section have signed onto this extremist crusade should alarm everyone concerned with whose opinion The New York Times chooses to publish.

Page 4 • Don't chicken out! Your opinion matters

In this section, we take the streets of the Island because we know that a good CONCERNED bird has always a big bunch of Opinions™.

Today we have three very important questions:

Branch prices.

Elections winner.

New magazine (us!).

Today, Jeff Bezos, the second richest person in America, who bought the Washington Post in 2013, announced that the paper’s opinion section would henceforth focus on defending “personal liberties and free markets.”

Reminder: When billionaires take control of our communication channels, it’s not a win for free speech. It’s a win for their billionaire babble.