Two weeks ago in this space, I wrote about the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, and how its defenses of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was making even some of its most radically anti-American and anti-Israel voices uncomfortable. In my most recent column for Ha'aretz, I write about a laudatory profile that the New York Times published about the paper less than 2 years ago. Times reporter Robert F. Worth interviewed Al-Akhbar

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At the end of his 2010 article, Worth recounted a conversation with Amine, in which the paper's editorial chairman reels off his "fondest hopes," a list culminating with the desire, in Worth's words, to "remove Israel from the map and send the Jews back to Europe - they would be more comfortable, after all, in a capitalist environment."

Try to imagine the Times publishing a profile about a white supremacist newsletter in Mississippi, whose editor tells the paper of record that he wants to see all of the black citizens in the Mud-Cat state "go back to Africa." Such a profile would probably not laud the publication as having "more of the feel of a college newspaper than a major daily," and "youthful energy and conviction."