Soros, the NY Times and anti-Israel propaganda

Using the pretext of commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the New York Times Sunday Review published what Alan Dershowitz fittingly described as “one of the most biased, one-sided, historically inaccurate, ignorant and bigoted articles ever published by that venerable newspaper.”  The article, “Time to Break the Silence on Palestine,” is an unhinged anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian rant.  The newspaper and the article were aptly criticized by Ruth King in the American Thinker, and by Ira Stoll in the Algemeiner.

Vitriolic smears against Israel are nothing new to the NYT.  What is new about this slanted article is that it shows how George Soros’s propaganda machine works.

The essay’s author, Michelle Alexander, served as “a Soros Justice Fellow” in 2005.  She was among the first recipients of the Soros Justice Program, with a stipend of $35,000 to $97,000, “to complete a book called The New Jim Crow … about the so-called war on drugs and mass incarceration as the defining racial justice issues of our time.”

Since then, Alexander has been affiliated with numerous Soros-funded organizations, such as The Ella Baker Center for Hunan Rights, which promote “color justice” and “nationally organize[s] and coordinate[s] demonstrations for illegal-alien amnesty and manage[s] voter-registration campaigns for Democratic candidates.”

She was hired by the NYT in the fall of 2018, shortly after Soros invested more than $3 million in the paper.  And while the paper brags about its transparency, the 10,000-word profile of the billionaire in the NYT Magazine last July did not bother to disclose Soros’s holdings in the paper.

According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), last May, Soros Fund Management LLC purchased 126,400 shares, worth $3,046,000, in the New York Times Company.  This investment increased Soros’s holdings in the newspaper from the 470,000’s worth of shares he purchased in 2007.  Though this was not a big investment, it is nonetheless significant when the investor is Soros.

In 2011, Dan Gainor, vice president of business and culture at the Media Research Center, exposed Soros’s “funding/investment strategy” in media both in the United States and abroad.  By then, Soros had invested more than $48 million “in media properties, including the infrastructure of news – journalism schools, investigative journalism, and even industry organizations.”

Gainor further revealed “that Soros’ influence doesn’t just include connections to top mainstream news organizations such as NBC, ABC, The New York Times and Washington Post.  It’s bought him connections to the underpinnings of the news business.  The Columbia Journalism Review, which bills itself as ‘a watchdog and a friend of the press in all its forms,’ lists several investigative reporting projects funded by one of Soros foundations.”

Since then, Soros has directly and indirectly (often through members of his family) expanded his so-called “charitable” funding and investments to influence major media outlets, including book-publishing, films and documentaries, TV, radio, and social media.  But not American-based social media – an industry he has come to loudly criticize of late.

It is important to remember that Soros is not a philanthropist.  Take his word for it: “Philanthropy goes against the grain because our civilization is built on the pursuit of self-interest, not on any preoccupation with the interests of others,” he told Michael Lewis in 1994.

Dershowitz pointed out that “[t]he most outrageous aspect of the column is the claim by Alexander that Martin Luther King Jr. inspired her to write it.  But he was a staunch Zionist, who said, ‘When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews.  You are talking anti-Semitism.'” This is what to expect from anyone funded by Soros.  It should not come as a surprise to anyone following Soros’s investments and modus operandi, his attacks of Israel, and his support of BDS and the Palestinians.

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