The New York Times Under Fire for Opinion Piece by Mayor of Gaza

The American newspaper The New York Times has come under criticism from readers after publishing an opinion piece on Sunday (24) by Yahya R. Sarraj, the mayor of the City of Gaza, appointed by the terrorist group Hamas.

In the article entitled “I am the Mayor of the City of Gaza. Our lives and our culture are in ruins,” Sarraj writes that the “Israeli invasion caused the death of more than 20,000 people” and “pulverized the cultural riches” of the Palestinian territory.

“I still feel like I’m in a nightmare because I can’t understand how anyone in their right mind can participate in this horrible campaign of destruction and death,” the text says.

Sarraj says he was abroad when “Israel began its war in Gaza in response to the deadly Hamas attack” on October 7. He then interrupted his trip and returned to the territory “to help our people.”

The article states that Sarraj was appointed to the position of mayor of Gaza by the Hamas administration in 2019. Before that, he was the dean of the College of Applied Sciences in Gaza.

On social media, readers criticized The New York Times for publishing an article written by an authority linked to the terrorist group.

“Disgusting, vile, pathetic. These words don’t even begin to describe The New York Times these days,” wrote a user identified as Keegan Nazzari on the X social network.

“The New York Times is promoting one of the leaders of Hamas and allowing him to spread his propaganda,” said a message posted on X by the profile Mass Insanity, which describes itself as a page dedicated to “exposing radical Islam, Islamic terrorism, and the consequences of mass migration.”

Some readers recalled the controversy generated in 2020 when The New York Times published an opinion piece in which Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas advocated for a strong military response to anti-racism protests that spread across several cities in the US.

At the time, hundreds of New York Times journalists came forward to criticize the newspaper’s decision to publish Cotton’s article. After the internal uproar, Opinion editor James Bennet stepped down, and the newspaper issued a retraction stating technical flaws in the article.

In a recent article in The Economist, Bennet accused the leadership of The New York Times of giving in to the “illiberalism” of some of its journalists at the time.

The New York Times had not commented on the criticisms of Sarraj’s article as of the publication of this text.