On July 30, 2025, a group of autonomous actionists redecorated the New York Times building in midtown Manhattan, dousing the façade in blood-red paint and spraying the words “NYT LIES, GAZA DIES” in white on the exterior glass. The following communiqué was printed on leaflets left on the sidewalk outside, spelling out the rationale for the action.
THE NEW YORK TIMES IS STARVING GAZA.
In the past week, more than 100 Palestinians in Gaza have died of starvation. Six hundred and fifty thousand children have reached the fifth stage of malnutrition, which means those who do not die will likely suffer permanent organ damage. Since May, over 1,000 aid seekers queuing in cages set up by the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” — a U.S.-Israeli front for the continuation of the genocide — have been murdered in broad daylight while waiting for food.
Who is responsible? You’d never know from reading the so-called “paper of record.” On Saturday, July 26, The New York Times finally published a front-page story about the famine, only to give it the headline “Israel to Allow Aid Drops Amid Starvation.” But “Israel” engineered the starvation, a fact the NYT persistently elides. On Sunday, the Times reported Israeli officials finally admitting what we’ve always known: There is no proof Hamas stole aid. What the NYT left out of the story was their own complicity in being the first mainstream outlet to promote the lie of aid theft, a genocidal lie used to justify months of brutal siege and forced starvation.
According to research recently published by Writers Against the War on Gaza, both the NYT’s Jerusalem bureau and its newsroom here in NYC are filled with reporters and editors who have direct, material ties to “Israel.” One of these reporters is Johnatan Reiss, who wrote in the NYT this past week that the murders at aid sites are “a crude form of crowd control.” It is no longer enough to say that the NYT is merely covering up Israel’s crimes.
THE NYT IS AN ACTIVE ACCOMPLICE IN THE ONGOING GENOCIDE.
The New York Times has long served as the chief propaganda organ of the U.S. empire and its colonialist proxy, “Israel.” Their editorial board has never opposed a U.S. war. They lied about WMDs to justify a brutal war in Iraq. They lied again about “weaponized mass rape” in 2023 to justify the genocide of Palestinians. Their reporters in Jerusalem peddle lies, live in stolen houses, and embed with the same Occupation soldiers who kill their fellow journalists in Gaza. The pages of this imperial tabloid drip with unacknowledged guilt, cloaking violence in civil tones and outright lies in the guise of objectivity.
It is our responsibility as people who live in this city to hold The New York Times to account. May life and peace return to Gaza, while conse-quences visit the home of every genocidaire.