A taxi passes by in front of The New York Times head office, Feb. 7, 2013. Photo: Reuters / Carlo Allegri / File.

A New York Times columnist is rising to the defense of Pramila Jayapal, the Democratic member of Congress who was roundly denounced by her colleagues after calling Israel a “racist state.”

Michelle Goldberg, a New York Times columnist who in her previous gig at the Nation magazine was an ambivalent defender of the movement to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel, steps up with a piece headlined “The Hysterical Overreaction to Jayapal’s ‘Racist State’ Gaffe.”

Goldberg commends Jayapal’s clarification, writing, “It’s good to be as precise as possible when discussing an issue as fraught and complex as the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.” Yet Goldberg herself flunks the “precise as possible” test, misleading Times readers with false and context-free claims about Israel and the Arabs.

Goldberg writes, “Today, there are nearly equal numbers of Jews and Palestinian Arabs living in Israel and the occupied territories. For Palestinians living under occupation, there is no pretense of equal rights: They are subject to regular land seizures and home demolitions and constant restrictions on their freedom of movement.” Actually the numbers are only “nearly equal” if you count Gaza as “occupied,” which it hasn’t been since Israel withdrew in 2005. The actual numbers are more like 7.1 million Israeli Jews, 2 million Israeli Arabs, 3 million West Bank Palestinian Arabs (though that may overestimate the numbers by as many as 1 million) and 2 million Gaza Palestinian Arabs.

Goldberg makes it sound like the Israelis are demolishing homes for racist fun rather than as a response to terrorist attacks aimed at killing Jews and wiping Israel off the map. In fact, the Goldberg column makes no mention at all of terrorism or of the Islamic world’s longstanding desire to wipe Israel off the map.

The reference to “restrictions on their freedom of movement” is also lacking in context to the point of inaccuracy. Is it a restriction on the freedom of movement of Mexicans to prevent them all from immigrating to the US at will? Is it a restriction on the freedom of movement of members of ISIS or Al Qaeda to prevent them from boarding airplanes into the United States? Is it a a restriction on the freedom of movement of the Russian army to prevent it from rolling over Ukraine? Sometimes when you have a nation state with borders, you have to restrict freedom of movement, especially when you have enemies that are trying to obliterate you.

The Goldberg column also falsely claims that Israel’s 2018 nation-state law “downgraded the official status of Arabic, the language of about a fifth of Israel’s population.” That may have described an initial draft of the legislation but does not accurately describe the law that finally passed. In fact, according to the text of the law as available on the Israeli parliament’s website: “Arabic has a special status in the State. Regulation of the use of Arabic in state institutions or in contacts with them shall be prescribed by law. Nothing in this article shall compromise the status given to the Arabic language in practice, before this basic-law came into force.”

If Goldberg really genuinely believes, “It’s good to be as precise as possible when discussing an issue as fraught and complex as the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians,” she should be more precise herself, with her own language.

If the Times had more integrity, it might publish corrections on the population and Arabic language points, which are clear factual inaccuracies. Until and unless it does, readers will be justified in concluding that the Times is more interested in falsely smearing Israel as racist than in providing its readers with an account that is accurate.

Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.