Friends of Israel know they are in trouble when they have to look to the New York Times editorials for more favorable treatment than the Times news columns are giving the Jewish state. So it's illuminating this morning to read the lead Times editorial, which says, "Yesterday the pope visited Quneitra, a city in the Golan Heights that Syria chose for political reasons. It maintains that the city was razed by Israel in 1974 before being returned to Syria, which Israel disputes."

Oh -- so it turns out that the razing of Quneitra is just something that Syria "maintains" and that Israel "disputes." That must come as news to those who rely on the news columns of the Times for their information.

Here is how a New York Times news article from Damascus on May 6, 2001, described Quneitra: "a city in the Golan Heights captured by Israel in the 1967 war and destroyed before it was returned in 1974, and which Syria has preserved as a museum of Israeli brutality." Nothing there about the facts of the matter being disputed. No attribution, even. The Syrian claim is stated as simple historical fact.

Here is how a New York Times news article from Damascus on May 7, 2001, described Quneitra: "a city on the Golan Heights that was captured by Israel during the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war and destroyed just before the area was returned under a 1974 agreement. Syria has left it ruined as a museum of Israeli aggression." Again, nothing about the facts of the matter being disputed. Again, no attribution.

The claim that Israel "razed" the town before returning it, in a demonstration of "aggression" or "brutality," is false. The town was destroyed by war, not by Israelis deliberately wrecking it before giving it back to Syria. As the book "Myths and Facts" notes, in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Quneitra "was shelled and captured by Syrian troops, retaken by Israelis, and then defended against intense Syrian counter attacks. Tanks roamed through the town, between and through buildings." The book also reports that Quneitra "also suffered damage from 81 days of artillery duels that preceded the disengagement." The book also cites a May 5, 1974, dispatch from Quneitra published in the Times of London, which reported the town "is in ruins and deserted after seven years of war and dereliction. It looks like a wild west town struck by an earthquake. . . Nearly every building is heavily damaged and scores have collapsed." That dispatch is dated weeks before the May 31, 1974 separation-of-forces agreement between Israel and Syria that provided for an Israeli withdrawal from Quneitra.

If the Times news department is going to pass along these groundless Syrian allegations of Israeli brutality and aggression, the least it could do is be as fair as the editorial writer (which is to say, minimally) and report that Israel disputes them.