Over four decades, Nicholas Kristof has been a highly respected, humanitarian and compassionate journalist for The New York Times. However, he has totally sullied his reputation by crafting a libelous column on May 11 titled “The Silence that Meets the Rape of Palestinians.” With this piece, he has left the world of effective journalism and has entrenched himself in anti-Zionist activism.
I am also a former journalist who has been widely published. I made a public decision to dedicate my life to the struggles of Israel and the Jewish people long before I founded EMET in 2005. Prior to that, I was the executive director of foreign policy and governmental relations for the American Jewish Congress, and before that, national policy coordinator of the Zionist Organization of America.
Like all of us, I realize that I have my own biases. Unlike Kristof, I recognize that I would never put aside my objective and journalistic integrity to recycle blood libels or lies about any people—not the Palestinians, not the Jews, no one.
None of Kristof’s sources has a shred of evidence to prove their allegations. Where is this man’s journalistic integrity?
In this case, there is none.
It’s no different from when William Norwich accused Jews of murdering a young boy in 12th-century England. No different from the blood-libel campaign the Nazis used to demonize Jews, based on Soviet propaganda. No different from the KGB and their hateful smears against Jews. No different from the terrorist murder in Israel of 10-month-old Shalhevet Pass in 2001 or the two young red-headed Bibas boys—Ariel and Kfir—in October 2023.
How does Kristoff dismiss the fact that exactly one day after his smear story was released, a painstaking study was to be revealed after almost three years on the barbaric, brutal Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023? It was authored by Dr. Cochav Elkayam Levy and her team of experts in international law and historic documentation, appropriately titled “Silenced No More.”
She stated, “Very early, when we saw the denial happening, we understood that this historical archive must be documented in the most rigorous, legal way.” They examined more than 10,000 videos. They conducted 430-plus interviews and realized that this had happened in a cynical, criminal way. They were all experts in international law and historic documentation.
To be able to tolerate the strategic weapon of sexual violence that was used by Hamas against women, men and children required amazing resilience.
What is happening in that depraved society where a son can call his mother on Oct. 7 after slaughtering human beings and say, “Mom ... I killed 10 Jews today with my own bare hands.”
And the mother responds with “Allah, be praised.”
Fourteen of the witnesses interviewed by Kristoff have well-known ties to Hamas. It is also a known fact that the Euro Human Rights Monitor is chaired by Ramy Abdu, who was the media coordinator for the “Freedom Flotilla” and is the Palestinian coordinator of a highly biased Palestinian policy paper, Al- Shabaka. It is also co-chaired by Richard Falk, who has authored the highly controversial U.N. Commission of Inquiry into the Palestinian Territories in 2001, consistently accusing Israel of “war crimes,” of “crimes against humanity,” of “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing.”
What has happened to a people who have been bred on one-sided propaganda to despise the Jew, the Zionist, the Israeli and the “apostate Christian” to such an extent that they will stop nowhere in fabricating such outrageous stories? People capable of such vile atrocities as burning children in ovens in front of their parents, or murdering and raping parents in front of their children, will not hesitate to humiliate themselves if it helps them to win global sympathy.
To allege that dogs raped Palestinians in Israeli prisons, as Kristof does in his article, is such an obvious fabrication that it is beyond repute. All the scientific literature denies that this is possible. For example, “Science Direct” states that “spontaneous sexual assault of a human by a canine has never been described in the human or veterinary medical literature, nor is such a thing likely.”
It is a recognized fact that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (as well as the Palestinian Authority) have been dedicated to the sole objective of the eradication of Israel. Hamas was founded in 1987, with the fundamental goal of eliminating the Jewish state and replacing it with an Islamist, Palestinian one.
The Hamas Charter of 1988 is dripping with antisemitism in each one of its 36 Articles. For example, Article VIII states the slogan of Hamas: “Allah is its target; the Prophet is its model; the Koran is its constitution; Jihad is its path. And death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.”
Yet when it fits his purpose and that of his editors, Nicholas Kristof portrays these people as dupes—vulnerable, hapless, innocent children. A line in the sand was crossed almost three years ago. Terrorists and Palestinian Arabs who went along for the murderous ride are responsible for their actions. And the attempt by anti-Israel activists, Jew-haters, and yes, irresponsible journalists, to transfer such atrocities onto the Jewish people is just one more horrific crime.
