Dear Mr. Kingsley:

I just listened to The New York Times' "The Daily" podcast, "A Reporter's Journey Into Gaza" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2yyHmWULMI) and was struck by the contrast between the way every bit of evidence presented by Israel was treated with extreme skepticism and the way the statistics put out by Hamas were accepted without question.

I found that particularly puzzling since to call "information" provided by Hamas - as well as other Palestinian Arab sources, including the Palestinian Authority - to be highly unreliable would be a gross understatement, while Israel has been very careful about avoiding putting out false information, even inadvertently. Perhaps the examples of the supposed but non-existent Jenin massacre and the more recent case of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket hitting a parking lot next to the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza are the most prominent, but they are far from alone.

At the very beginning of the podcast, Sabrina Tavernise referred to a death toll approaching 13,000 in Gaza. She did casually note the figure came from "Gaza health officials." Yet that "information" was given in a way that implied it was not to be questioned. There was no explanation that those "Gaza health officials" work for Hamas and there's absolutely no way of knowing whether the figure they gave is even close to accurate, nobody has any idea of how many of those killed were terrorists and how many were civilians, in previous conflicts half or more of those killed in Gaza were known to be terrorists, with the actual proportion likely significantly higher since the terror groups don't publish membership lists, and the proportion of civilian casualties was actually extremely low when compared to other post-World War II conflict, despite the way the Gaza terror groups embed themselves within and under civilian areas, using civilians as human shields.

She also refers to Al Shifa hospital being at the heart of Israel's argument regarding its war strategy, falsely implying Israel is fighting this war because Hamas uses Al Shifa as a command and control center.

Israel is fighting this war because it has realized that it is impossible to live with the barbaric terror groups next door in Gaza, threatening to repeat their 10/7 pogrom again and again. Israel is fighting this war because it has no choice, its strategy of leaving Gaza alone as much as it could until the terror groups periodically forced it to take action to deter them for a few years - not totally deter them, since they never completely stopped their rocket and other terror attacks - was a failure and those terror groups had to be permanently stopped.

It's been known for many years that Hamas has operated out of hospitals, schools, mosques, playgrounds and residential buildings and its leadership had directed at least some of the previous mini-wars from Al Shifa hospital, either inside or underneath.

In the interest of brevity, I will just parse two example from the podcast.

Around the four minute mark, you said: "If Israel can prove that it [Al Shifa] was military infrastructure then many Israelis think that it help justify and help sustain international support for its invasion. But if they can't, then to Palestinians and others it will prove their point that Israel's conduct of the war is illegal and justified.

There is no question but that for Israel, the war is totally justified - one would be hard pressed to come up with examples of wars that were more justified. Israel also doesn't have to prove Al Shifa is part of Hamas' military (more properly, terror) infrastructure; that's long been both known and proven many times over.

What Israel is trying to do is expose so much that only the most closed-minded, bigoted, fanatical, immoral haters are able to pretend to not recognize the truth and be able to keep at bay those who almost immediately started pressing for a cease-fire that would once again save Hamas, let it rearm and perpetuate even greater atrocities in the future.

As for the Palestinian Arabs, they can't prove "that Israel's conduct of the war is illegal and justified," since Israel's conduct is both legal and totally justified. They just want to be able to keep spreading their lies and get fellow travelers to exert enough pressure on cowardly leaders to get them to save Hamas and the other terror groups in Gaza.

Around the 28:10 mark, you said: "Lots of intriguing evidence is coming out, but from a journalistic point of view, if this was a New York Times investigation, our editors would say to us go back and gather more evidence; this is not a conclusive slam dunk that you're saying it is and indeed that is what our editors are saying right now."

Even ignoring the fact that the evidence for Hamas using Al Shifa as a command and control center was a "slam dunk" for years before the Simchat Torah Massacre, you have tacitly admitted even the small amount of additional evidence provided during this journey of yours into Gaza was overwhelming, which makes even more puzzling the contrast between the way you continually expressed skepticism and did your best to cast doubt on everything shown to you by Israel while accepting without question the statistics given, without any substantiation, by Gaza. And this only weeks after The New York Times repeated the lie put out by Hamas that Israel had struck Al-Ahli hospital and killed more than 500 people, even ignoring the fact that Hamas put out that misinformation so soon after the PIJ rocket had hit the parking lot that it could not possibly have had any idea of how many people had gotten killed.

This double standard is truly astounding!

Sincerely,

Alan Stein