It’s no secret that, over the decades, the editors of The New York Times’ opinion pages have earned every ounce of criticism leveled at them by supporters of Israel—and yet they persist in finding the most extreme writers to showcase. A column published on July 15 may go down as one of the worst hit pieces the Times has published since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.

In “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It,” Omer Bartov not only charges Israel with crimes it has not committed but also disgraces the memory of the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The essay is more than 3,500 words. A typical New York Times op-ed column is reported to be between 750 and 800 words long. The Times itself has stated, “(T)he suggested length is 650 words.”

Why, then, did the opinion editors at the Times publish such an exceptionally long article? If you’re thinking that maybe it’s because it broke new ground, you’d be wrong. Bartov doesn’t offer his readers any new information that would warrant his verbosity. Instead, the piece repackages the same polemics that have been echoing in academic and activist circles for months, laced with inflammatory language and selective framing that ignores critical context.