Like many leftists living in social media bubbles, New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof is obsessed with Israel. And because he has a risible understanding of the Middle East, he’s also highly susceptible to believing unhinged conspiracies aimed at the country.
This week, however, in a pseudo-journalistic piece headlined “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” the columnist excavates conspiracies so unhinged that no marginally reputable media outlet has ever touched them. Even the New York Times relegates it to its op-ed section, since the piece breaks every rule of objective journalism. But even columnists have an obligation to abide by the basic standards of evidence. Kristof does not.
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For example:
Kristof tells the story of an unnamed 23-year-old Palestinian woman who contends she was arrested after Oct. 7, strip-searched, mocked, tied up, beaten, and then molested and likely raped by Israelis. The Israelis, the woman tells Kristof, wanted to “crush her spirit,” a curiously political statement for an alleged rape victim.
In any event, Kristof not only fails to provide the woman’s name, but he offers no other witness, no complaint, no medical evidence from an Arab doctor, no photos of bruises, nothing but the accusation. Did the columnist ever verify that the woman had been detained? Because Kristof doesn’t tell us in which prison this woman was purportedly held, or why she was arrested, or even when. Any competent journalist would have heard blaring sirens when a story leaves out any detail that could be used to launch a genuine investigation. It’s difficult to believe that’s an accident. Yet, Kristof treats all the allegations as fact.
Then again, even the named sources Kristof relies on are highly problematic.
Sami Sai, an introspective “freelance journalist” according to Kristof, is actually a Palestinian activist who publicly celebrated on Oct 7. Sai, who has been arrested numerous times for violent incitement, has an evolving story about allegedly being raped.
Another “source” is longtime Palestinian activist and media favorite Issa Amro, who also has an ever-changing story about his time in an Israeli prison. In a 2024 Washington Post piece, for example, Amro very specifically claimed that he was threatened with sexual assault while in Israeli detention. In Kristof’s column, he has morphed into a victim of rape.
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But Kristof’s most cartoonishly evil accusation contends that the Israelis use trained dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners. This hoax is the favorite of online antisemitic podcaster types. Not only has there never been a shred of evidence that this has happened, but it’s also probably “biologically and cognitively unfeasible” for humans to train dogs to rape people.
The dog rape claim originates with the EuroMed Human Rights Monitor, a pro-Hamas Qatari-based group. It was spread by, among other shady types, conspiracy theorist Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, a former postdoctoral fellow at UCLA who was forced to leave the school after sexual-harassment allegations involving minors.
Palestinians have spent over 70 years pulling hoaxes on gullible Westerners to gain sympathy. Anyone who’s followed the Middle East situation for more than five minutes is aware that Israel’s enemies are constantly making up ludicrous claims about trained animals. Israelis are apparently the greatest animal trainers in history. The country has been accused of deploying sharks, rats, lizards, cows, dolphins, hawks, and pigs by its enemies. The only difference here is that a Western journalist was credulous or despicable enough to spread the conspiracy.
It’s probably no accident, incidentally, that Kristof ran his victim-blaming propaganda the week we got a 300-page report detailing first-hand testimony and verifiable evidence that rape was “systematic” and “integral” to the Hamas Oct. 7 terrorist attack. Another recent report finds Hamas using international aid to sexually exploit women, especially widows and divorcees.
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Of course, it’s not implausible that some Israeli soldiers acted immorally or criminally in prisons against enemy combatants. Israel is a country like any other. The blood libel pushed by Kristof, however, is that the government systemically approves of rape and torture — the very things Hamas embraces and joyfully records on their GoPros, body cameras, and phones. This isn’t journalism. It’s not even opinion journalism. It’s just part of a smear campaign meant to turn Americans against the Jewish state.
The only question now is whether Kristof is a dupe for Hamas apologists who can’t be trusted to apply basic journalistic standards to his writing or a willing participant who doesn’t care about them. Either way, he doesn’t deserve to be a journalist anymore.
