To our friends and comrades,

The New York Times’ brazen support for Zionism and genocide in Gaza must be countered through concerted campaigns of delegitimization. 

Our campaign against the New York Times is now two years old, almost as old as our (very young) organization itself. This October, we relaunched that campaign — Boycott, Divest, Unsubscribe — as part of a broader coalition, signaling the true mass character of Times hatred.

Hundreds have answered the call to boycott the Times, including Ms. Rachel, the educator and children’s influencer whose belief that “children shouldn’t be murdered” have made her a target of vicious Zionist attacks, including from the Times. Ms. Rachel announced her boycott of the Times a series of posts to her millions of Instagram followers.

Why do we target the Times? 

The paper positions itself as a bastion of journalistic rigor, independence, and liberalism. But even a cursory read of any story on Palestine (a word mostly banned from the Times’ style guide) exposes these values as a lie. 

The Times’ coverage of genocide in Gaza erases history, paints Palestinians as subhumans deserving of death, uncritically publishes IOF propaganda, and ignores obvious, material conflicts of interests. Its reporters and editors defend their ahistoric and violent writing from behind the walls of the stolen Palestinian home they call their “Jerusalem Bureau.” 

But the paper’s platform remains immense. If its millions of subscribers, increasingly addicted to its reactionary Trump beat, found time to read its coverage of Palestine, they’d only learn Zionist lies and propaganda. And many in western journalism follow its example and hold its work up as a model to emulate. 

That is why we focus on the Times. We must push back on this beast of an enemy. We must expose its lies and double standards and break the hold it has on millions of readers. 

• Cancel your subscription

• Delete the app

• Unsubscribe from the newsletters 

• Stop playing its games

• Reject its recipes 

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Expose generations of Times/Zionism complicity 

In 1985, the New York Times’ executive editor Abe Rosenthal wrote two letters after his visit to occupied Palestine: one to Ariel Sharon, then Israel’s minister of trade and industry, and another to the settler state’s prime minister Shimon Perez. Each note is filled with effusive gratitude for the men who’d hosted him in Jerusalem during his 10 day stay. In both letters, Rosenthal writes of “being struck by the fact that despite all the problems and all the sorrows and difficulties ahead, there was not an atmosphere of high tension or anything approaching despair.”

This relationship continued into the next decade. In 1997, Sharon wrote to Rosenthal thanking him for his uncritical support of the Zionist project, calling him “one of the last warriors for Israel.” By that time Rosenthal had moved over to the paper’s opinion section as a columnist adding his decades-long tenure at the Times, where he worked overtime to institutionalize Zionism and anti-Palestinian racism. 

Rosenthal, like many of his colleagues, joined the chorus pushing the U.S. to destroy Iraq, and humiliate and starve its people. Today, as we see the likes of Thomas Friedman and Bret Stephens debating the meaning of genocide and the humanity of Palestinians in the Opinion, we know his death-loving legacy lives on.

The paper has kept on mission advancing the expansion of the Israeli settler state at any and all cost to Palestinian life.

Withhold contributions from the Opinion Pages 

Following the October launch of No Opinion, a multi-organization coalition-led campaign against contributing to the Times opinion section, more than 500 writers, scholars, and public figures have made a collective commitment to hold the New York Times accountable for its complicity with Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.

The signatories included: Rashida Tlaib, Catherine Lacey, Kaveh Akbar, Noura Erakat, Gabor Maté, Sally Rooney, Greta Thunberg, Kiese Laymon, Hannah Einbinder, aja monet, and Viet Thanh Nguyen.

Journalists, novelists, essayists, scholars, lawyers, poets, political analysts, and various public figures — including over 200 past NYT contributors — pledged to withhold contributions for the NYT Opinion section until the Times commits to three demands: 

1. Conduct a review of anti-Palestinian bias in the newsroom and produce new editorial standards for Palestine coverage. 

2. Retract the widely debunked investigation “Screams Without Words.” 

3. Publish an editorial calling for a U.S. arms embargo of Israel.

These reasonable and actionable demands have been outlined by a coalition of organizations including Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG), the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), the Palestinian Feminist Collective (PFC), PAL-Awda: The Right to Return Coalition, National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), the US Palestinian Community Network, Palestine Solidarity Working Group (PSWG), Healthcare Workers for Palestine (HCW4P), the Adalah Justice Project, and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

We call on past contributors to the Times, as well as potential contributors — those invited to write or covered in its pages — to use their leverage such that the Times can never again manufacture consent for mass slaughter, torture, and displacement.

To sign the pledge, read their statement, or view the full list of signatories, go to the link in our bio or boycottdivestunsubscribe.com

Justice for the Abu Shaaban Family 

We stand with the Abu Shaaban family in demanding the Times review its racist coverage and report truthfully on the October 17 massacre and the ongoing genocide. Read the family’s full statement here.

Expose New York Times conflicts of interest

Researchers with WAWOG have built on decades of work in leftist media to expose conflicts of interest among the journalists at the Times. Here are some examples from our dossier: 

• Executive editor Joe Kahn’s father served on the board of the Zionist media watchdog CAMERA.

• CEO Meredith Kopit Levein served on the advisory council of B’nai B’rth youth organization, whose goal is to foster support for Zionism among Jewish Youth.

• We found several reporters and editors who served in the IOF or who have children serving in the IOF. 

Support Kholoud Hammad

Kholoud Hammad, a 21-year-old visual artist and graphic designer whose work was featured in the Two Year Edition of the New York War Crimes, is fighting for survival. After numerous displacements and losses, Kholud and her family are now in a tent and, like everyone else in Gaza, managing from minute to minute. A new book, Imperial Abhorrences/For Palestine [forthcoming from Birds LLC], features Kholoud’s art alongside poems by Ammiel Alcalay. You can support Kholoud Hammad and her family via Spotfund, or purchase prints of her work to raise more funds to support Kholoud, her family, and her community as they try to piece their lives back together.

We leave you with the words of Mohammed el-Kurd

“We should purge their prestige in our minds, the prestige that renders a New York Times’ acknowledgement of an eyewitness account more valuable than the account itself. Our existence within their halls and conference rooms isn’t without a price — and we shouldn’t be the only ones paying it.”