Dr. Shiloh Lieberman, a dentist, traveled six hours from Schenectady, in upstate New York, to attend a rally outside the Times Square headquarters of the New York Times on Thursday evening.
He was one of about 300 people who came at rush hour, crowding on the sidewalk outside the building to protest a May 11 Nicholas Kristof column accusing Israel of sexually abusing Palestinian inmates, including training dogs to rape them. Dog experts have said such a thing is impossible, and the Jewish state has said that it plans to sue the Times for defamation.
“A column like this does horrible damage, normalizing anti-Zionism and antisemitism,” Lieberman told JNS. “It skews the facts, lies and misrepresents what’s going on in the world and hides the evil that supports it.”
The Times published the article by its longtime columnist on the eve of an extensive report, published by an Israeli civil commission, documenting Hamas’s rape of Israelis during the Oct. 7 attacks that it led and, subsequently, of hostages whom it abducted and took to Gaza.
The Israeli government has said that the Times was offered an opportunity to cover the report but that it declined to do so. The Times has said that charge is inaccurate.
Advocates for Israel have said that Kristof’s column was intentionally timed to undercut the report’s impact.
“To release it at the same time as a 300-page report on sexual violence by Hamas in Israel is transparent,” said Will Meyerhofer, wearing a black t-shirt bearing the word “Zionist.”
“It’s nefarious. It’s despicable. I honestly can’t believe that they put this in print. This is disgraceful,” the Manhattan psychotherapist told JNS at the rally. “The New York Times should have apologized immediately. Where is their outrage? Where is their shame?”
“This is one of the most outrageous things they’ve ever printed,” he said.
The rally at the Times headquarters was organized by the grassroots groups #End Jew Hatred, Hineni: Grassroots Zionists Now, Stop Anti-Zionism and Movement Against Anti-Zionism.
Israeli and American flags were held aloft on tall poles, and many participants carried signs calling out the dangers of anti-Zionism.
Some pre-printed signs said “J’Accuse!,” recalling Emile Zola’s open letter in a French newspaper after Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish military artillery officer, was wrongly convicted of treason in 1894. The Dreyfus Affair, as it has since been known, divided French society.
At one point, the crowd sang Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem, whose words sing of the longing of 2,000 years to return to Zion.
Zach Sage Fox, who co-owns a film and social media production company, was hoisted onto a friend’s shoulders at the rally so that he could be heard in the crowd and over the traffic in one of the busiest spots in New York City.
“The New York Times was the paper of record and downplayed Hitler’s propaganda, his murder of Jews in the 1930s and ‘40s, and they are doing it again,” he yelled to cheers from the crowd.
“History is repeating itself, and now, with social media, it is re-posting itself. We will not stand for this,” he said. “There are a million of us in New York. We are going to demonstrate what a peaceful protest looks like, because we love America, we love New York City, and we love the NYPD, who are protecting us here.”
Fox told the audience that Jews make up one-fifth of a percent of the world population, compared to billions of Muslims.
“We are the minority that needs protection in this city and all around the world, and we will not be silent,” he said.
Kristof’s column sparked widespread protest in the pro-Israel community. The Israeli prime minister’s office said on Thursday that following the publication of “one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press, which also received the backing of the newspaper,” that Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, and Gideon Sa’ar, the foreign minister, “have instructed the initiation of a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times.”
Danielle Rhoades Ha, senior vice president of communications at the Times, told JNS that “this threat, similar to one made last year, is part of a well-worn political playbook that aims to undermine independent reporting and stifle journalism that does not fit a specific narrative.”
“Any such legal claim would be without merit,” she told JNS.
At the rally, Fox led the crowd in chanting, “We will not be silenced, and we will not be afraid.”
“They may come after us with mobs, but we will come after them with our minds, our hearts and our actions of peace and love,” he said, “because we are the light in the darkness that is God’s command and that is what we will give the world.”
While on his friend’s shoulders, Fox told the audience that “the New York Times is spreading lies that are scientifically impossible.”
“Dogs do not rape people, but Hamas does,” he said.
