Founder of group sourced for Kristof story proud of Hamas ties

Allegations contained in the May 11 New York Times article “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” by Nicholas Kristof, were repudiated almost from the moment the story was printed, with most of the sources shown to be Hamas-linked.

One of those groups, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, makes no effort to hide its affinity for the terrorist group.

Euro‑Med’s founder and chairman, Ramy Abdu, in a May 20 exchange with British writer and researcher Heidi Bachram, apparently in connection with a photograph of himself with now-deceased Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, said: “I am proud to engage with all segments of my Palestinian people. I do not see for their struggle for the freedom of their homeland anything that places them in the category of terrorism.”

Abdu’s group seems to be behind the most repellent and absurd of Kristof’s claims—that Israelis train dogs to rape Arab prisoners.

“Every piece of evidence points to the Hamas-run NGO as the originator and orchestrator of Nicholas Kristof’s grotesque sexual violence libel in the New York Times,” Gerald M. Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, told JNS. “Evidence similarly demonstrates that Euro-Med was created in 2011 to demonize Israel under the human rights facade. Abdu and others have many direct links to Hamas.”

Kristof, in his Times piece, referred to Euro-Med simply as “a Geneva-based advocacy group often critical of Israel.”

The Israeli government issued a report in May about Euro-Med’s activities.

“Euro-Med Monitor works with U.N. institutions to promote legal proceedings against Israel with the aim of motivating member states to impose sanctions and arms embargoes against Israel,” the report states.

In Jan. 2025, Euro-Med called for Israel to be included on the U.N. Secretary-General’s blacklist for sexual violence. The group claimed Israel engaged in systematic patterns of sexual violence against Palestinian Arabs. Euro-Med provided testimony that soldiers used dogs against a young Palestinian Arab in a manner that was described as rape, according to the report.

NGO Monitor reported that in Nov. 2020, then-Israeli Minister of Defense Benjamin Gantz signed an administrative seizure order against Euro-Med founder Ramy Abdu under Israel’s anti-terrorism law. Abdu also appeared on a 2013 Israeli list of Hamas’ “main operatives and institutions” in Europe.

Abdu has family ties to Hamas terrorists. His brother-in-law, Muhammad Daoud Ismail al-Jamassi, was a senior Hamas leader. His brother, Mohammed Saleh Ismail Abdu, is wanted in Italy for his part in a Hamas financial network, NGO Monitor reported.

On May 24, HonestReporting, a pro-Israel watchdog group, delved further into his brother’s activities based on the work of investigative journalist Eitan Fischberger.

“Under the alias ‘Abu Khaled,’ Ramy Abdu’s brother transferred €462,700 [~$539,000] to Hamas and was asked to arrange a meeting in Doha, Qatar, with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was eliminated by the IDF in 2024,” according to HonestReporting.

The Hamas network also sent some $8 million to Hamas, in part through the Associazione Benefica di Solidarietà con il Popolo Palestinese (ABSPP), or, “Charity Association of Solidarity with the Palestinian People,” according to the group. ABSPP is described by the U.S. government as a “sham charity.” The U.S. Treasury Department placed the man who runs it, Mohammed Hannoun, on its sanctions list on Oct. 7, 2024.

"[ABSPP] ostensibly raises funds for humanitarian purposes, but in reality helps bankroll Hamas’s military wing,” according to the U.S. Treasury.

Ramy Abdu may be involved in the sham charity as well. “A file found on the ABSPP server, believed to refer to Ramy Abdu, displayed extensive financial activity, showing more than $1.1 million received and approximately $1.2 million transferred outward through the network,” according to HonestReporting.

“In 2012, Ramy Abdu was photographed with Haniyeh in Gaza,” it noted.

Despite the revelations about Euro-Monitor and other sources included in the report, The New York Times has doubled down in defending the piece.

In a May 21 Q&A with Kristof and Kathleen Kingsbury, the head of Times Opinion, Kristof engaged in circular reasoning when defending the rape allegations, offering no additional evidence other than the same sources he had originally cited.

“I thought carefully about whether to include this. In the end I did because he had told his account previously and because what he described has happened before,” Kristof said of the inclusion of testimony from Sami al-Sai.

Al-Sai, described in the report as a “freelance journalist,” is actually a “confirmed Hamas operative,” according to HonestReporting’s Salo Aizenberg.

“Other Palestinian prisoners and human rights monitors have cited reports of dogs sexually assaulting prisoners,” Kristof added. The words “cited reports” were linked to a Dec. 20, 2025 BBC report that again featured al-Sai as the main source.