On October 9, 2024, the Al Jazeera journalist Fadi Al-Wahidi was reporting on a Zionist massacre in the Jabalia refugee camp when an “Israeli” sniper shot him in the neck. The scene — Al-Wahidi collapsing on the sidewalk, his colleagues unable to reach him — was horrifyingly reminiscent of Shireen Abu-Akleh’s assassination by the IOF in 2022. Today, Fadi lies paralyzed in north Gaza, while the Occupation denies his requests for medical evacuation. His colleague and friend Anas Al-Sharif has described his condition as “a full-fledged humanitarian crime.” His mother is on hunger strike.

Since the beginning of the present genocide in Gaza, the Zionist entity has killed at least 192 Palestinian and Lebanese journalists, imprisoning and maiming many more. But they cannot kill the story. In Palestine and in Lebanon, the coverage continues. As Ismail Al-Ghoul said before he was martyred by the Zionist entity, “I have to live the same way the people live, to feel them, to be able to speak for them. This is what journalism is for.”

Meanwhile, a staggering majority of journalists in prestigious Western newsrooms — The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BBC, CNN — continue to report the IOF’s lies while smearing the Palestinian resistance. By ignoring the calls to protect the brave, untiring, and relentlessly targeted journalists of Gaza, these craven hacks reveal themselves to be unworthy of the designation “colleague.” By embedding with the enemy, they have become the enemy.

No one knows the enemy better than its victims. After more than a year of livestreamed genocide, the witnesses refuse to be intimidated into silence or coerced into playing nice with the perpetrators. “Western media is responsible for my suffering,” writes Abubaker Abed, plain as day, in the latest issue of The New York War Crimes.

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New York War Crimes

New York War Crimes

History

BRAZIL 1964

When the United States backed a military coup in Brazil, The New York Times helped build a narrative that the takeover was a triumph of democracy.
https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/media/pages/brazil-1964/851634639f-1709843497/history-brazil-header.jpg
March 14, 2024

In March 1964, Brazilian generals initiated a coup after powerful conservative forces in Brazil — supported by the CIA and President Lyndon B. Johnson — grew tired of moderate President João Goulart’s policies, particularly his push for land reform, his tolerance of domestic communists and his refusal to cut ties with Cuba.

The New York Times celebrated Goulart’s removal, and his replacement with a repressive military junta, as a victory for democracy. The publication’s front-page story the day after the coup peddled Red Scare–style conspiracy theory as fact, writing that “[Goulart] was believed to be planning, with Communist labor, peasant and student support, to disband Congress and to declare a syndicalist, Socialist regime.”

The new generals — whose military government denied Brazil’s democratic constitution until 1985 — were viewed by The Times as “supporters of moderate and constitutional governments.” The paper lauded the “Brazilian military’s support of democratic institutions.”

Shortly after the 1964 coup, The Times asserted that the takeover “followed Brazil’s constitutional procedure” and praised the “removal of the immediate Communist threat.”

Casting the right-wing military takeover as a popular movement toward democracy, The Times characterized the coup as “a powerful shot in the arm for the cause of democratic moderation in Latin America.”

Despite The Times’ remarkable contention that “if a single motivation could be detected in the coup . . . it was their concern to maintain the democratic framework in Brazil,” it marked the end of a short-lived period of democracy in Brazil. The country’s military leaders would go on to partner with the United States to sponsor anti-communist death squads and torture regimes across South America — and further open up Brazil to exploitation by Western corporations.

Illustration: A New York Times article, from a 1964 paper, is blown up so that it extends beyond the edges of the frame. The headline reads: “Brazil Coup Affects Whole Continent.”
Tad Szulc, “Brazil Coup Affects Whole Continent,” The New York Times (April 5, 1964).

As the military dictatorship began to arrest suspected communists en masse and violently clamp down on civil liberties, The Times justified these measures as necessary for the realization of democracy, writing that “a majority of the public, like most of the press, appeared to accept the extra powers as the only way to eliminate the Communist menace . . . and to get the economy moving again.”

Another article reads, “Obviously, a majority of Brazilians approved the overthrow of the demagogic President João Goulart, who was leading the country toward leftist extremes.” In reality, however, Brazilians at the time were broadly supportive of redistributive policies like the ones Goulart was trying to implement (in 1962, close to 70 percent of the country supported land reform).

Brazil’s military coup of 1964, cheered on by The New York Times, would inspire a series of copycat coups across Latin America. Chile’s Pinochet, Bolivia’s Banzer, Argentina’s Videla and Massera, Uruguay’s Bordaberry, and other military authoritarians gained from Brazil both inspiration and, later on, the actual tools and tactics of terror.