The US became Israel's committed ally after the latter's decisive victory over the Arabs in1967. Ever since, Israel has protected America's interests in the region instead of trying to find a place for itself which is acceptable to its neighbours and therefore provides it long-term security. America meanwhile steadfastly supports the Jewish state, and is outspoken about its commitment to protect Israel militarily.

Another important aspect of American support is the provision of an ideological and propaganda cover for Israeli policies, including the distortion of news reports from the Middle East in order to show Israel in a good light. Nearly the whole American press does this but the New York Times (NYT) does it more fervently than others. The book under review is the story of that systematic violation of truth.

The authors Howard Friel and Richard Falk have meticulously examined the NYT over the years and published their findings in a book form. Their critique is supported by the evidence they have drawn from their research.

According to them, the newspaper does not consider international law as applying to Israel's conduct. Nor does it confer upon Palestinians the normal human and national rights that all peoples have. It ignores the UN resolutions calling upon Israel to withdraw its troops to the line of 1967 and supports Israel's annexation of Palestinian territories.

The NYT focuses on Israeli casualties in the clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian civilians. Indeed it holds the victims of Israeli violence to be somehow responsible for their own deaths. For example, it explained the killing of a nine-year old Palestinian girl by Israeli soldiers as being due to her 'behaving in a suspicious manner reminiscent of a terrorist.' The publication even ignores the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz's reports of targeted killings of Palestinians — including children — and the peace organisation B'Tselem's detailed description of routine torture of Palestinians by the Israeli police.

Furthermore, the authors allege that in its reports about the Israeli attack on Hezbollah in 2006 the NYT never mentioned Israel's free use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians, though it reported the firing of ineffective rockets by the Lebanese as if it was a full-scale assault by a great power. The newspaper goes to the extent of excising from press reports portions which may indict Israel of war crimes. Needless to say, it criticises journalists and writers like Robert Fisk and Noam Chomsky who try to bring a balance to writings about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

There was a time when the two major non-European peoples in the continent were the Jews and the Gypsies. The Europeans killed six million of one and three million of the other in the 1940s. The three million Gypsies were apparently not worth remembering, but no one is allowed to forget the six million — although even one life extinguished is one life too many.

European Jews were traders, moneylenders and peasants. They were disliked as aliens but the moneylenders among them, especially the pawn-brokers, were detested as they represented money relations in a pre-capitalist economy. However money-lenders were needed, particularly by the penurious royalty and the landed class, as a source of loans since Christians were prohibited by the Church from lending on interest.

The advent of capitalism in the 15th century brought new oppression for them. As Christians took to the money trade, the moneylenders and pawn-brokers were squeezed out. Western Europe made steady progress in the new mode of production and accepted the Jews who went into modern banking. But the majority of Jews were forced to migrate to Eastern Europe which was at the time stuck in the process of capitalist transformation.

It was then that community leaders thought of the necessity of a Jewish state which could provide refuge to persecuted Jews everywhere.

It would be a place where, in the words of  Ben Gurion, 'a Jewish policeman would arrest a Jewish citizen.' They chose Palestine for sentimental reasons and thought nothing of displacing its million or so inhabitants.

The British government favoured the project of a settler state in Palestine as it would guard their route to India, and look after their interest in petroleum which had recently been discovered in the region. So a state founded on a forcibly occupied land by a Zionist leadership, claiming socialist convictions, became the guardian of imperialist interests in the Arab East.

And since every action has its own logic, Israel has followed an incredibly reactionary foreign policy from the beginning. When Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal, Israel spearheaded the Anglo-French invasion of the country to recover the canal; it was close to the apartheid South Africa and Pinochet's Chile and armed the Contras against the revolutionary Nicaragua. Now it daily threatens to attack Iran, the only regime in West Asia to issue from a popular revolution. And its attitude towards the Palestinians is plainly racist.

It is tragic that Israel is satisfied with this role instead of finding a place for itself in the region which would make it acceptable to its neighbours.

Israel-Palestine on Record How the New York Times misreports conflict in the Middle East

By Howard Friel and Richard Falk
Verso, London
ISBN 978-1-84467-109-0
309pp. Rs1,125