The New York Times featured a scurrilous article by long-time opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof May 11 that promotes the lie that sexual violence against Palestinians is “widely practiced as part of an organized state policy” by the Israeli army, Shin Bet internal security agents, prison guards and West Bank settlers.
The article appeared one day before the release of Silenced No More: Sexual Terror Unveiled: The Untold Atrocities of October 7 and Against Hostages in Captivity. Based on 400 testimonies and abundant photographic and video evidence, the new report documents the rapes, sexual abuse and torture systematically carried out by the Hamas thugs who invaded Israel Oct. 7, 2023, murdering 1,200 people. It was the worst anti-Jewish pogrom since the Holocaust.
The timing of the publication of Kristof’s article was not accidental. The Times had been given a copy of Silenced No More before its official release.
It’s clear from the article and accompanying video that Kristof’s purpose is to undercut the impact of Silenced No More, help bury the truth about Hamas’ pogrom and shift the blame for the ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel onto Israel.
“Think of it this way,” Kristof says in the final paragraph of his column, “the horrific abuse inflicted on Israeli women on Oct. 7 now happens to Palestinians day after day.”
Perhaps Kristof needs to be reminded of what actually happened on Oct. 7. There is no comparison.
Hamas’ rapes were not isolated acts. They were part of Hamas’ plans from the beginning, taking place at the Nova Music Festival, on kibbutz farm towns and military bases overrun by Hamas that day, and other locations. The rapes, gang rapes and sexual abuse were part of a deliberate Hamas strategy to instill fear and dehumanize Jews — and Arabs and immigrants who worked with Jews.
Videos of the violence that day were filmed by Hamas operatives themselves, many proudly posted on their own websites, including one showing them parading the partially naked body of Shani Louk through the streets of Gaza Oct. 7.
The New York Times itself ran a Dec. 28, 2023, article that confirmed the brutality. The bourgeois liberal paper interviewed several eyewitnesses, and its reporters viewed the photo of a woman’s corpse from a kibbutz “with dozens of nails driven into her thighs and groin.” At the time, the Times concluded that “the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7.”
Kristof says he interviewed 14 Palestinians in the West Bank for his column. A majority of his sources are anonymous, making them uncheckable. When the Israeli government challenged the story’s accuracy, pointing out that some of those he quoted have ties to Hamas, the Times’ editors doubled down, saying that the article had been “extensively fact-checked, with accounts further cross-referenced with news reporting, independent research from human-rights groups.”
Outlandish charges
One of the most outlandish charges by Kristof speaks volumes about the Times’ fact-checking. He bizarrely claims an anonymous male Palestinian journalist was anally raped by a dog and that Israel trains dogs for that purpose. If Kristof and the Times editors take that fiction for good coin, is there a single fact in the article that can be trusted?
Kristof creates a modern-day version of the ancient blood libel that Jews drink Christian blood, this time to smear Israel. But that doesn’t mean that abuses have not been or will not be committed. Israel is a capitalist, class-divided country. The Israeli government itself has prosecuted some soldiers, prison guards and settlers for abusing Palestinians in the West Bank and elsewhere. But they’ve also turned a blind eye to brutality there.
In February 2025, an Israeli military court sentenced a soldier to seven months in prison for striking detainees with his fists and weapons while they were bound and blindfolded.
Thoroughly investigating charges of sexual abuse by Israeli forces against Palestinians and prosecuting the perpetrators strengthens the fight to defend Israel’s existence as a refuge for Jews.
In contrast, Hamas leaders boast to this day that they plan to carry out Oct. 7 “again and again.” Kristof’s column slandering Israel will be welcomed by Hamas apologists and Jew-haters everywhere.