New York Times shrugs off its ‘blood libels’ amid twisted genocide lies

Israel’s ambassador to the United States accused the New York Times on Sunday of publishing “blood libels” that helped set Jews up for persecution.

“There is no difference between what is being done to us today and what was done to our grandparents in the ghettos of Europe 800 years ago,” Yechiel Leiter told the 43rd International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries at the New Jersey Convention and Exposition Center in Edison.

Leiter told the shluchim that when he met with Times editors last year, they accused the IDF of genocide — and when he countered their assertion with facts, they discounted the truth.

Leiter said it was time for Jews to fight against the lies.

“This is not another antisemitic rant — this is a blood libel and a blood libel will cost lives.”

“We have to call it for what it is. We have to identify the problem. And we have to fight it,” he said.

This is an excerpt from Leiter’s remarks about his Nov. 10, 2025 Times meeting:

I

went into a room. They were the jury. They were the judge. They were the firing squad. Fifteen editors with another six on the screen, and they were accusing me, they were accusing the government of Israel, they were accusing chayalei tzahal of genocide, of starving people to death. And I gave them facts.

I told them how many trucks of humanitarian aid were coming in every day. I told them how we’re risking our own soldiers’ lives in order not to take the lives of non-combatants on the other side. I told them that the combatant to non-combatant ratio in the war was the lowest in modern history.

I gave them facts, and they gave me feelings.

Forty-five minutes into the conversation, one of the editors said, “Ambassador, everybody can’t be wrong.” Very deep intellectual argument.

I said, not everybody is wrong. Not everybody thinks that we’re committing genocide.

John Spencer is a leading expert on urban warfare. He teaches at West Point. He said that there’s never been a war that’s had a lower non-combatant ratio.

Douglas Murray is an accomplished journalist. He was embedded with our troops for four months. He said, “There’s never been a more morally fought war.”

So it’s not everybody.

But if you people think that it’s everybody, maybe it’s because of you, the New York Times. He said, “Ambassador, what do you mean?” Well, I said, [on July 25] you published a picture of a little boy by the name of Muhammad, 18 months old, and it was on a third of the front page of your paper. He was held by his mother. He had an emaciated body with a protruding spine.

Anybody who saw the picture immediately thought of the Holocaust. It conjured up images of the men hanging on the barbed wire in the concentration camps.

So now we were the perpetrators of genocide. Once we were the victims and now we’re the Nazis. And you neglected to mention that the little boy is suffering from a genetic disease, cerebral palsy and other illnesses. And you also cropped out from the picture his brother [who] was perfectly healthy.

And the senior editor of the New York Times said to me, “Ambassador, don’t you think you’re making too much of a misappropriation?” I said no. That’s not a misappropriation. That’s a blood libel! There is no difference. There is no difference.

Listen closely. There is no difference between what is being done to us today and what was done to our grandparents in the ghettos of Europe 800 years ago. This is a blood libel. This is very serious.

We have to know how to identify what the enemy is and who the enemy is. This is not another antisemitic rant. Please understand, this is a blood libel and a blood libel will cost lives. And the reason why they are accusing us of genocide is to prepare the next genocide against us.

Hitler didn’t just happen. It was decades in preparation — of demonizing and delegitimizing Jews — and now through the state of Israel, through the Jewish state, there is an attempt to delegitimize and disenfranchise Jews as Jews.

We have to call it for what it is. We have to identify the problem. And we have to fight it.