It’s a simple proposition: Whatever our views on the Middle East conflict, we should all be able to agree that dogs cannot be trained to rape human beings.
Yet this is exactly what a New York Times “opinion” piece posing as an in-depth journalistic investigation, perhaps to avoid any real journalistic accountability, published on Monday claims, based on anonymous testimonies and a report by a well-known anti-Israel organization that has proven ties to Palestinian terror.
Putting aside the bias of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based advocacy group that the NYT gently points out is “often critical of Israel,” the newspaper’s long-time columnist Nicholas Kristof seems to have become confused about whether he is an opinion writer or a news reporter, and has gone ahead and dabbled in a bit of field reporting himself.
And why not? In a post-factual world, it seems, anything is acceptable. An opinion piece can be an investigation with unverified claims and a half-hearted attempt to get a response from the accused party. It can also feature clearly bogus claims that Israel has trained dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners held in its jails.
While the impossible assertion about dogs has been shared broadly in recent weeks by anti-Israel conspiracy theorists on social media, to see it displayed front and center in a New York Times article, peddled by one of its most-trusted columnists and featured prominently on the powerful media outlet’s website, is mind-blowing.
In this tumultuous post-October 7 period of war and violence, there are Palestinian prisoners – many of whom were involved directly in the atrocities carried out in Israel on that horrific day – who report being treated roughly, abused, and even raped.
It must also be said that Israel’s prison service, now under the command of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a proud racist, has been called on to take a harsher stance in its handling of Palestinian prisoners, and, likely, any such despicable acts have gone either unacknowledged or unpunished.
Yet Sari Bashi, an Israeli-American human rights lawyer who is the executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, and who was interviewed for Kristof’s opinion column, points out that there is no “evidence that it has been ordered.” She said she believes, however, that there is “persistent evidence that the authorities know it’s happening and are not stopping it.”
'It's impossible to know how common sexual assaults against Palestinians are'
And even Kristof himself admits that “it’s impossible to know how common sexual assaults against Palestinians are” - though that does not stop him from going on for almost 4,000 words about the total certainty that Israelis “systematically employ rape and sexual torture” to humiliate Palestinian prisoners and that Israel allows, even enables, Israeli settlers to sexually assault Palestinian civilians in the West Bank.
The famed New York Times columnist even goes so far as to call on the US to “condition arms transfers on an end to sexual assault,” arguing that “we could send a moral and practical message that sexual violence is unacceptable no matter the identity of the victim.”
Maybe it would also send a message to other departments of his own newspaper that the Israeli victims of Hamas’s systematic sexual violence and rape on October 7, and afterward, as Israeli hostages languished in Gaza, also deserve to have their stories told?
Kristof’s column was published and promoted prominently on the NYT’s website, even including a separately produced video clip, one day ahead of a monumental Israeli report into Hamas’s systematic sexual crimes on October 7, which over the past two-and-a-half years have been downplayed or outright denied by a multitude of human rights and women’s rights activists, organizations, and officials.
The report by the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children was distributed to media outlets in Israel, including the NYT, weeks ahead of its publication on Tuesday. It was picked up by many journalists and platforms, but was somehow skipped by The New York Times.
It’s disappointing that the newspaper prefers baseless claims of Israeli rape dogs over actual reports on atrocities.