1942 - 2023 Covering and Connecting Jewish Detroit Every Week To make a donation to the DETROIT JEWISH NEWS FOUNDATION go to the website www.thejewishnews.com The Detroit Jewish News (USPS 275-520) is published every Thursday at 32255 Northwestern Highway, #205, Farmington Hills, Michigan. Periodical postage paid at Southfield, Michigan, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: send changes to: Detroit Jewish News, 32255 Northwestern Highway, #205, Farmington Hills, Michigan 48334 MISSION STATEMENT The Detroit Jewish News will be of service to the Jewish community. The Detroit Jewish News will inform and educate the Jewish and general community to preserve, protect and sustain the Jewish people of greater Detroit and beyond, and the State of Israel. VISION STATEMENT The Detroit Jewish News will operate to appeal to the broadest segments of the greater Detroit Jewish community, reflecting the diverse views and interests of the Jewish community while advancing the morale and spirit of the community and advocating Jewish unity, identity and continuity. DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 32255 Northwestern Hwy. Suite 205, Farmington Hills, MI 48334 248-354-6060 thejewishnews.com Publisher The Detroit Jewish News Foundation | Board of Directors: Chair: Gary Torgow Vice President: David Kramer Secretary: Robin Axelrod Treasurer: Max Berlin Board members: Michael J. Eizelman Larry Jackier, Jeffrey Schlussel, Mark Zausmer Executive Director: Marni Raitt Senior Advisor to the Board: Mark Davidoff Alene and Graham Landau Archivist Chair: Mike Smith Founding President & Publisher Emeritus: Arthur Horwitz Founding Publisher Philip Slomovitz, of blessed memory Editorial Director of Editorial: Jackie Headapohl jheadapohl@thejewishnews.com Contributing Editors: David Sachs, Keri Guten Cohen Staff Reporter: Danny Schwartz dschwartz@thejewishnews.com Editorial Assistant: Sy Manello smanello@thejewishnews.com Digital Manager: Elizabeth King eking@thejewishnews.com Contributing Writers: Nate Bloom, Rochel Burstyn, Suzanne Chessler, Shari S. Cohen, Louis Finkelman, Samantha Foon, Yevgeniya Gazman, Stacy Gittleman, Esther Allweiss Ingber, Barbara Lewis, Jennifer Lovy, Rabbi Jason Miller, Alan Muskovitz, Karen Schwartz, Robin Schwartz, Steve Stein, Nathaniel Warshay, Julie Smith Yolles, Ashley Zlatopolsky Advertising Sales Director of Advertising: Keith Farber kfarber@thejewishnews.com Senior Account Executive: Kathy Harvey-Mitton kmitton@thejewishnews.com | Business Office Director of Operations: Amy Gill agill@thejewishnews.com Operations Manager: Andrea Gusho agusho@thejewishnews.com Operations Assistant: Ashlee Szabo Circulation: Danielle Smith Billing Coordinator: Pamela Turner | Production By Farago & Associates Manager: Scott Drzewiecki Designers: Kaitlyn Iezzi, Kelly Kosek, Michelle Sheridan 6 | NOVEMBER 9 • 2023 J N PURELY COMMENTARY continued on page 7 essay Stop Helping Hamas Win Its Disinformation War Fake news and lies are flooding your feed. Do these four things before sharing that powerful war post. T he fog of war, a term often attributed to Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, describes the chaos that clouds a bat- tlefield commander’s vision. But in the digital age, this fog obscures everyone’s vision. Just ask Joe Kahn, the executive editor of the New York Times. For the first time since assuming the helm in June 2022, Kahn recently issued an editor’s note (read: apol- ogy) for a headline stating that an Israeli airstrike was responsible for 500 deaths at Gaza’s al-Ahli Arab Hospital, with an attribution to the “Palestinian Health Authority.” “Times editors should have taken more care with the initial presenta- tion,” he wrote. In the week between the Times’ head- line and Kahn’s statement, it has become clear that practically everything about the initial story was off. The blast hit the parking lot, not the hospital. There were far fewer deaths than initially reported. And video analyses point to the damage coming from a misfired rocket, aimed at Israel, launched from Gaza itself. Along with my colleagues at Stanford University, I have spent the last seven years studying how people learn to make better decisions about what to believe online. We can partially ascribe the Times’ confusion to conflicting reports in the immediate aftermath of this event. However, not only should the Times have known better than to swallow whole the claims of the Palestinian Health Ministry and its Hamas overlords — it did know. Before the banner headline went up, a senior editor on the inter- national desk warned colleagues on the Times internal Slack channel, leaked to Vanity Fair, that “we can’t just hang the attribution of something so big on one source without having tried to verify it.” The senior editor’s warning fell on deaf Sam Wineburg The Time of Israel