Dear Mr. Slackman:

It's disappointing, to say the least, that The New York Times is doubling down on its traditional, systemic discrimination in its reporting about Israel with the hiring of Hiba Yazbek.

Yazbek has shown a strong animus towards Israel in her posts on social media, some of which also contained blatantly false information, either out of ignorance or bias. Such behavior calls into question her journalistic ethics and appropriateness for any position in the news media, but certainly disqualify her for a position in The New York Times bureau based in Israel's capital.

On the other hand, I can't say I'm surprised, considering the tradition of strong, anti-Israel bias that continues with your current Jerusalem bureau chief.

The slant in his recent article "Israel's Ukraine Policy Prompts Scrutiny of Russian-Israeli Oligarchs" was actually exacerbated by your headline writers, whose subhead averred that Israel had "avoided direct criticism of Russia." That subhead contradicted the content of the article, which perhaps inadvertently referred to at least one example of such direct criticism.

Perhaps the slogan "All the news that's fit to print" should be modified to read "All the news that's fit to print, plus lots of anti-Israel bias."

Sincerely,

Alan Stein