Israel’s firebrand consul general in New York exclusively shared with The Post that he’s fed up with the hostile New York Times — and canceled all of the Upper East Side consulate’s subscriptions to the publication.
“Ofir Akunis, Israel’s Consul General in New York, ordered a cancellation of the Israeli Consulate’s New York Times subscription on Friday,” according to a statement exclusively shared with The Post.
“The cancellation comes after what he described as the paper’s series of false blood libels and ongoing incitement against the Jewish state,” the statement added.
Akunis himself minced no words.
“The New York Times has crossed every red line. This is no longer ‘journalism’ but a well-oiled, coordinated machine spreading blood libels against the Jewish state. Enough is enough!” he said in a statement shared exclusively with The Post.
“The New York Times is a newspaper that routinely publishes false blood libels and has, over many years, consistently incited *hate* against the State of Israel,” Akunis continued.
“It hides behind the cover of ‘anonymous sources,’ which on several occasions have been exposed as terrorists and Hamas operatives. I have instructed the consulate staff to immediately cancel our subscription to this newspaper,” he concluded, without elaborating on the number of subscriptions involved.
“We respect and accept criticism, but we will not lend legitimacy to the spread of hatred and falsehoods against the Jewish state. This incitement and these blood libels are fueling the surge in antisemitism and the rise in violent attacks against Jews in the United States.”
The Times was cool on the Israeli consulate’s subscription change.
“The New York Times’s breadth of coverage on Israel and the Middle East has been deeply reported and fair,” a spokesperson for the paper told The Post.
“The consul’s office is obviously free to cancel any subscriptions it likes, but the main result of turning one’s back on independent news reporting is ultimately knowing far less about consequential events.”
Akunis has been a fierce critic of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has become notorious for his controversial rhetoric about the Jewish state.
The Times has come under fire for its reporting in the wake of terror group Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks — particularly its columnist Nicolas Kristof, who explosively accused Israel of widespread abuse of Palestinian prisoners, including the training of rape dogs.
Netanyahu threatened to sue the Gray Lady in May over the roundly maligned Kristof column. The move came after 2025 threats to sue over the paper’s defamatory claims about Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza.
In January, The Post reported that a Gaza “doctor” who penned blistering anti-Israel op-eds in the Times following Oct. 7 was actually a colonel with Hamas. “We are suffering and paying the price of the genocide that is happening to our people here in the northern Gaza Strip,” Hussam Abu Safiya, who was seen wearing a Hamas camo military uniform while at a gathering of Hamas elites in 2016, wrote in one piece.
International calls for Safiya’s release persist after Israel arrested him in 2024 on suspicion of being a “Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists,” according to the Israel Defense Forces.
