No, it’s the word choice in the sentence as a whole. “Baseless claims” and “categorically denied” make it seem like the article was nonsense. “Controversy” acknowledges that there are different accounts of what happened, but doesn’t pick a side and “denied” feels like the most neutral choice to me, but I’m a layperson and there are entire classes in journalism programs dedicated to neutral phrasing. Calling the article “insightful journalism” is obviously biased and saying “continues to deny” sounds even more supportive of the journalist’s claims, because it implies that people are continuously asking Israel about it, which further implies that multiple people are unsatisfied with Israel’s account of the events.