Just when you thought that the New York Times could not stoop to lower levels, the Times outdoes itself by issuing an editorial that implicitly blames Israel for the recent conflagration in the region.  In its November 14 editorial, "Another Israel-Gaza War," the Times suggests that Israel's position vis-à-vis Gaza would be easier to justify if Israel demonstrated seriousness in negotiating with Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction.  The Times presupposes that Abbas is a willing interlocutor but ignores the fact that Abbas has stymied Israeli efforts of engagement and has instead embarked upon a pattern of systematic unilateral actions aimed at undercutting prior written agreements and understandings.

The recent violence in Gaza was sparked by a Hamas anti-tank missile attack on an Israeli jeep on patrol along the Israel-Gaza border that left one soldier permanently blinded.  That attack came on the heels of another that left an Israeli soldier with one arm.  Both attacks were unprovoked and occurred on Israeli soil.  Of course, the Times chooses to omit this information from its editorial -- and we've come to expect no less from a once-respectable newspaper that's morphed into an amateur blog for the radical left.

The editorial refers to Israel's previous Gaza military campaign, Operation Cast Lead, and notes inflated casualty figures that are disputed by Israel.  It also fails to mention that most of those killed in the previous campaign were Hamas combatants or their affiliates, a fact corroborated by Hamas itself.  The Times editorial goes on to state that Cast Lead was "widely condemned internationally," but it fails to note that most of those condemnations emanated from the so-called Non-Aligned states, who would argue that the earth is flat if their Arab masters ordered them to.

Citing another reason to criticize Israeli defensive actions, the Times almost comically states that the current operation has provoked "new waves of condemnation against Israel in Arab countries, including Egypt."  Does the New York Times really think that Egypt, a nation permeated with systemic anti-Semitism from the head down, needs an excuse to condemn Israel?  In December 2010, the Sinai's regional governor accused Israel's intelligence service, the Mossad, of sending sharks into Egyptian waters to kill tourists.  And more recently, Egypt's Islamist President Morsi was seen mouthing concurrence to a sermon in which the imam called for the destruction and dispersion of Jews.

Arab condemnation in response to Israeli defensive action is no surprise.  What is surprising is the New York Times's deliberate attempts to gloss over government-sanctioned anti-Semitism in the Arab and Muslim world.

The New York Times's sanctimonious drivel would be taken more seriously if it applied equal standards to all.  Sadly, the Times continues to find fault with the only democracy in the Middle East while giving everyone else a free pass.