New York Times poetry editor resigns over 'warmongering lies' on Gaza

By Emre Basaran

ISTANBUL (AA) - The poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine on Friday that she is quitting over "warmongering lies" she said the major daily is telling about Israel's attacks on civilians in the besieged Gaza Strip.

"The Israeli state's US-backed war against the people of Gaza is not a war for anyone," Anne Boyer said in an open letter.

"There is no safety in it or from it, not for Israel, not for the United States or Europe, and especially not for the many Jewish people slandered by those who claim falsely to fight in their names. Its only profit is the deadly profit of oil interests and weapon manufacturers," she added.

Hailing Palestinians as a people "who have resisted throughout decades of occupation, forced dislocation, deprivation, surveillance, siege, imprisonment, and torture," she added that "this is not only a war of missiles and land invasions" but also "the ongoing devastation of the people of Palestine."

"Because our status quo is self-expression, sometimes all artists have left is to refuse. So I refuse."

Boyer also said she will not "write about poetry alongside the 'reasonable' tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to unreasonable suffering."

"No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more sanitized hell-worlds. No more warmongering lies," she added.

"If this resignation leaves a hole in the news the size of poetry, then that is the true shape of the present."

Last week pro-Palestinian demonstrators held a sit-in in the lobby of The New York Times, accusing the paper and the US media of biased coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Protesters read off the names of thousands of Palestinians killed in Gaza, including dozens of journalists, and handed out a mock “New York War Crimes” newspaper, charging the media with “complicity in laundering genocide.”