The fact is that the actual mood among New York City’s Jews is that the phrase “two Jews, three opinions,” still applies. And if the opinions quoted in this piece matter enough for the Times, then so should other Jewish voices.

It should include someone like Audrey Sasson, executive director of the New York–based Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ). In a statement (10/7/23) issued days before the Times piece, she said that while she grieved for the [neocolony’s] dead and feared for the hostages, her group was “fearful about what’s to come,” and were “angry that leaders continually choose extremism, violence and occupation, and dismayed that official [neocolonial] and U.S. statements are calling for massive escalation.”

It could have quoted someone like Arielle Angel, editor-in-chief of the New York–based Jewish Currents, who gave anything but a simple response (10/12/23) to the ongoing trauma in the Middle East, grappling with how left-wing and progressive Jews sought to channel their grief in the face of a mounting catastrophe in Gaza.

The Times knows who Angel is, as the paper profiled her (12/30/22) last year, and it interviewed her (10/10/23) for a response to a pro-Palestine rally in Manhattan that came under heavy press criticism (Politico, 10/10/23; New York Post, 10/11/23).

[…]

The paper could have, at the very least, included coverage of the Jews protesting outside of Senator Schumer’s house for the print edition, and provided an update in the online version, in order to present a much fuller and more nuanced picture of how New York’s Jewish communities were responding to the situation.

This rally was important, because Schumer is perhaps the most powerful Jewish American in the federal government and his spur-of-the-moment trip (The Hill, 10/13/23) to [the neocolony] is widely seen as strong U.S. support for [neocolonialism’s] fierce military assault on the people of Gaza. The fact that Jewish activists took to his home to protest this move shows that Jewish opinion in New York City is nowhere near the univocal scene painted in the Times.

(Emphasis original.)