The New York Times and Israel’s ‘Collapsing Economy’

For months now, the New York Times, prompted by its quite unnecessary columnist, the World’s Greatest Authority, Tom Friedman, has been pushing the story that the judicial overhaul controversy in Israel is causing devastation to the Israeli economy. High-tech companies are said to be readying to move out of the country. Some of Israel’s tech leaders are quoted as saying they are “thinking of leaving” or “already planning to relocate to the U.S.” if the judicial overhaul passes. But now the overhaul bill has passed the Knesset. And yet so far, not a single Israeli start-up has moved out of the country, no Israeli scientist or entrepreneur has picked up stakes and lit out for the territories — that is, for Europe or the U.S. There may eventually be a handful of Israeli tech companies that do leave, or the whole brouhaha over judicial overhaul may die down without any noticeable defections to other countries. So far, those issuing the dire warnings about the collapse of the Israeli economy, with Tom Friedman in the lead, are all hat and no cattle. More on this sound and fury that to date signifies nothing, can be found here: “New York Times Finds $32 Billion in Israel High-Tech Investment Not Fit to Print,” by Ira Stoll, Algemeiner, August 14, 2023:

If there’s a single consistently emphasized theme of the New York Times coverage of judicial reform in Israel, it’s been that the effort may devastate the Israeli high-technology economy.

“Netanyahu’s Judicial Coup Could Destroy His Start-Up Nation,” was the headline over a February 14, 2023, Thomas Friedman column. “As a general rule, investors don’t like investing in countries roiled with protests and chaos. And that is why some have started pressing the pause button,” Friedman wrote.

In case any Times readers missed the point, the Times followed up with a February 23, 2023, news article, headlined “Tech Leaders in Israel Wonder if It’s Time to Leave.” The article itself pressed the claim beyond just wondering, declaring, “The luminaries of Start-Up Nation, as Israel has been known for decades, are eyeing the exits. Several have already announced that they are relocating or moving money out of the country…” The Times reported that people “are reappraising what it means to operate here and deciding that if the government retools the judiciary, it is time to leave.”…

In the last seven months, since the first dire predictions appeared in the New York Times about “luminaries of Start-Up Nation…eyeing the exits,” no tech luminary or tech company has left Israel. The first part of the judicial overhaul bill has now passed the Knesset, bringing it ever closer to adoption, yet none of those supposedly “eyeing the exists” has started to pack up. Could it be that the New York Times, aided and abetted by the World’s Greatest Authority, Tom Friedman, has misunderstood the political and economic resilience of Israel, and the deep loyalty and attachment of its entrepreneurs and scientists to the nation?

Doubtless plenty of Tel Aviv venture capitalists (and plenty of other people, too) indeed do find noxious elements of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition, its judicial reform proposals, and the way Netanyahu has advanced the plans. Honest journalism, though, involves leveling with readers about facts that don’t neatly match a narrative. By that standard, on this topic, the Times has flunked, by failing to inform readers of some significant developments….

The New York Times has remained silent about facts that contradict its oft-repeated claim that business confidence in Israel has been sinking as a result of the judicial overhaul proposal.

When the largest foreign investment in Israel,’s history, $25 billion from Intel, was announced in June, this spectacular vote of confidence in Israel’s economy was covered by stories in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and Bloomberg, but it was not even mentioned by the New York Times. Apparently it would only have confused readers, whom The Times had been intent on convincing that the Israeli economy is on the verge of collapse.

Nor was that the only lapsus in the Times’ coverage of Israel’s economy. In August, just two months after Intel’s announcement of a $25 billion investment in its Israel operation, another company — Amazon Web Services — said it would be making $7.2 billion investment in Israel. As before, this news was covered elsewhere — by Reuters, for example — but not by the New York Times, whose editors were determined to keep out news that contradicted their warnings about Israel’s impending economic degringolade. They simply ignored the Amazon Web Services story, just as they had done previously with the investment of $25 billion by Intel in Israel.

That’s more than $32 billion in total high-tech investment in Israel at a moment when the Times is falsely warning readers that the startup nation is on the brink of destruction. Maybe there’s some explanation—multinational giants like Amazon and Intel are less flighty than early stage companies, or something. But rather than venturing some sort of explanation that reconciles the reality with the predictions of doom, the Times just suppresses the good news. Maybe they think their readers won’t find out about it if they don’t tell them?

Since everyone interested in Israel’s economy would have certainly come across the stories of the Intel and Amazon investments, reported seemingly everywhere but in the Times, that paper simply looks petty in trying to suppress reports of these displays of confidence in Israel’s economy.

It’s especially noteworthy because when a big-tech employee whines about Israel, the Times gives it prominent play. When a Google employee complained about a $1.2 billon Google-Amazon deal with Israel, the New York Times devoted a whole article on the front of its business section to the situation, complete with a subheadline about supposed “anti-Palestinian bias.”

When there is what appears to be bad news about Israel — such as the Google employee’s complaint, based on his antipathy to Israel, about a $1.2 billion deal by Google and Amazon with the Jewish state — the Times will give it prominent mention. When there is good news — the $25 billion investment by Intel, the $7.2 billion investment by Amazon — the Times will try to minimize the story’s coverage, or even choose not to cover It at all.

It’s not as shameful as what the Times did in the 1930s and 1940s when the owners of the Times, the Sulzberger family, eager to avoid having it seen as “the Jewish paper,” chose to cover only glancingly — usually, with only a few short paragraphs buried deep inside the paper offered news from Europe on the murders of six million Jews. The Times never apologized for that colossal moral failure. Will it ever bring itself to apologize for how it has been covering Israel, or failing to cover it, these last two dozen years?