By Peter Fernandez

Nicholas Kristof, a veteran New York Times opinion writer, wrote a controversial May 4 editorial titled “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians.” No doubt he was familiar with Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, who said, “Tell a lie long enough and people will believe it.” However, the origins of “the big lie” belong to Adolf Hitler, who wrote in Mein Kampf (My Struggle), 1925, that people cannot imagine anyone “having the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” This is the documentation Kristof requested but did not have; instead, it relied on questionable sources and represented them as freelance journalists.

Kristof claims that Israeli prison guards and soldiers engage in widespread sexual violence against Palestinian detainees. He also asserts that the Jewish state trains dogs to rape prisoners. This is a classic example of a “blood libel,” an antisemitic accusation. In medieval times, Jews were falsely accused of murdering Christian children and using their blood in the preparation of matzah. Of course, this was a fiendish fabrication—like the notion of “canine rapists”—yet through constant repetition, both orally and in writing (as in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion), such hatred has endured and morphed into modern variants. Today, it resurfaces in new forms, even in the pages of a world‑famous newspaper, The New York Times.

“A joint statement by Netanyahu (Israeli PM) and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar described the op-ed by Kristof, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner,” reads a May 14 The Algemeiner article, “ as ‘one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press’ and said the country would sue for defamation.” 

Queerly, on the same day Kristof’s May 11 op‑ed was published, an Israeli commission released an extensive report on the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023. That report, produced by the Civil Commission on October 7, Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children, an independent organization, is based on “an archive built over two years, with more than 10,000 photos and video segments, over 1,800 hours of footage, and more than 430 testimonies.”  The videos include footage filmed by Hamas terrorists using GoPro cameras. The report also drew on hundreds of testimonies and forensic investigations documenting mutilation, rape, gang rape, sexual torture, and executions throughout the autumn pogrom.

The contrast between Kristof’s ambiguous, unsubstantiated claims and the extensive body of videos, photographs, physical evidence, forensic analyses, and Hamas‑filmed footage collected by Israeli investigators could not be more stark.

The New York Times opinion piece is clumsily built on allegations derived from anonymous testimony and hearsay circulated by anti‑Israel activist organizations. It repeats the fantastical claim about “trained rape dogs,” a charge critics note is unsupported by credible evidence and appears to originate from sources linked to Hamas‑aligned advocacy groups. According to canine experts, training a dog to rape a human, especially a male, is immensely dubious if not impossible.

Kristof based part of his op-ed on information “gathered” by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based non-governmental agency that watchdog NGO Monitor alleges has ideological and operational ties to Hamas.

The New York Times appeared intent on constructing a false moral equivalence between Israeli soldiers and Hamas terrorists, despite the vast disparity in the quantity and credibility of evidence supporting each side’s claims.

Allegations of sexual violence deserve scrutiny, investigation, and truth, not simply a political activist-reporter’s narrative. Major media outlets, including the NY Times, were slow, guarded, and reluctant to acknowledge the evidence of sexual violence against Israeli women pertaining to the horrific October 7th Hamas invasion. “Where are you?” asked Bibi  Netanyahu, referring to the usually outspoken media proponents of feminism and women’s rights. But when accusations of sexual abuse against Israel were heralded, skepticism seemed to suddenly vanish. Allegations of sexual violence deserve scrutiny, investigation, and truth—not the unchallenged repetition of a political activist’s narrative. Major media outlets, including The New York Times, were initially slow, guarded, and reluctant to acknowledge the evidence of sexual violence against Israeli women during the horrific October 7 Hamas invasion. 

Western progressive activism has built its politics of recognition around catchphrases and mantras such as “believe women.” Activist organizations, universities, corporations, and celebrities have insisted that every accusation of abuse be treated with acute seriousness and severity. But where were Hollywood, Planned Parenthood, our universities, and the usual progressive protesters when Israeli women were gang raped and murdered by Hamas terrorists? Where were the feminist marches in support of Israel’s mothers and daughters? It was apparently too politically inconvenient to support them because they were Zionists, and doing so might damage their pro-Palestinian cause. Selective human rights is an anathema—especially when it becomes a political weapon. Political ideology is overriding basic humanity.

The videos, forensic reports, photographs, eyewitness accounts, and recordings made by the assailants and gathered by Israel continue to receive less sustained global attention than a single opinion piece published in The New York Times. Much of Western journalism has abandoned professional objectivity, allowing it to be displaced by left‑wing activism.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert publicly stated that Kristof’s column distorted and repackaged his remarks to support claims he never made. Fully aware of this pattern, the current Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, declined to respond to what he regarded as Kristof’s paranoid and antisemitic commentary.

Finally, it is a moral error to imagine Hamas as “freedom fighters” since freedom fighters do not gang rape women and mutilate their corpses and laugh about it. Nor do they sexually torture teens at music festivals, burn families alive, and livestream it online.

Israel is a tiny country, approximately the size of New Jersey, surrounded and vastly outnumbered by a sea of enemies educated to hate it. See: WEST BANK AND GAZA: State’s Reporting on UN Efforts to Address Problematic Textbook Content Had Gaps Before Funding Ended. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-107708  

IMPACT-se is another watchdog organization that monitors the Palestinian Authority’s school curricula and has identified antisemitism, incitement, and the glorification of violence. The George Eckert Institute (GEI), a German academic institute, likewise reviews PA textbooks and has also found them problematic.