It’s official: the LA Times hates Israel

That’s definitely the feeling out here.

I wrote two weeks ago about how I found it surprising that the LA Times had given a platform to a Hamas leader on its op-ed page. Then in Friday’s Jewish Journal, Tamar Sternthal complained about the same op-ed, asking why the Times neglected to mention that Mousa Abu Marzook had been indicted in 2004 in the U.S. on racketeering and money-laundering charges.

And in yesterday’s Opinion section of the Times, rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said it was “unconscionable” that the Times had given a soapbox to Hamas.

Memo to Al Qaeda’s Ayman Zawahiri: Forget the mule pack; give your video cam a rest. Our nation’s leading media outlets are making an offer you can’t refuse: If you can keep it to 1,250 words, the next time you want to communicate directly to the American people, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and New York Times want your byline.

Inconceivable? Consider Hamas’ summer hot streak. Not only has it driven Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas out of Gaza, threatened Israeli civilians and bombarded fellow Palestinians, but it has scored the ultimate media trifecta. First, the New York Times and the Washington Post simultaneously ran Op-Ed articles by Ahmed Yousef, a senior leader of Hamas who defended his group’s bloody putsch in Gaza. Now, the Los Angeles Times has opened its Op-Ed page to Hamas political bureau deputy Mousa Abu Marzook for his insidious take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

(Cartoon: CoxandForkum)