Gullible New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, always willing to see the best side of Saddam Hussein and fanatical Islamic radicalism and the worst side of democratic Israel, penned a long investigative column, “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” alleging without corroboration that Israel soldiers, settlers, and especially prison guards have long committed sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners. The most fantastical charge: Israel prisons train dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners.
It’s a simple proposition: Whatever our views of the Middle East conflict, we should be able to unite in condemning rape.
Supporters of Israel made that point after the brutal sexual assaults against Israeli women during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu and many U.S. senators, including Marco Rubio, condemned that sexual violence, and Netanyahu rightly called on “all civilized leaders” to “speak up.”
And yet in wrenching interviews, Palestinians have recounted to me a pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, women and even children — by soldiers, settlers, interrogators in the Shin Bet internal security agency and, above all, prison guards.
Online outrage came quickly over what was called a “blood libel” against Jews -- inflammatory claims that Israel trains dogs to rape Palestinians (an anatomic impossibility, besides all the other problems with the claim).
The easily led Kristof has chosen his sources badly, like Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which has made bizarre claims against Israel in the past, including the accusation that Israel harvesting organs from dead Palestinians.
….A report out last month, from the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based advocacy group often critical of Israel, concludes that Israel employs “systematic sexual violence” that is “widely practiced as part of an organized state policy.”
Yet Euro-Med founder Ramy Abdu was identified by Israel in 2013 as one of Hamas’ “main operatives and institutions” in Europe, and Euro-Med officials have been photographed with senior Hamas figures.
Kristof wildly claimed:
Yet our American tax dollars subsidize the Israeli security establishment, so this is sexual violence in which the United States is complicit.
He boasted of having “conversations with 14 men and women who said they had been sexually assaulted by Israeli settlers or members of the security forces.”
Kristof strained to establish moral equivalency between the government of Israel and the rapists of Hamas.
The Israeli government rejects suggestions that it sexually abuses Palestinians, just as Hamas denied raping Israeli women. Israel welcomed a United Nations report documenting sexual assaults against Israeli women by Palestinians but rejected the report’s call to investigate Israeli assaults against Palestinians….
After the bad-faith slurs came the insane charges of dog rape, showing Kristof’s gullibility in reverse, believing the worst of Israelis from the mouth of a detained “Gaza journalist.”
On one occasion, he said, he was held down, stripped naked, and as he was blindfolded and handcuffed, a dog was summoned. With encouragement from a handler in Hebrew, he said, the dog mounted him.
“They were using cameras to take photos, and I heard their laughs and giggles,” he said. He tried to dislodge the dog, he said, but it penetrated him.
Other Palestinian prisoners and human rights monitors have also cited reports of police dogs being coached to rape prisoners. The journalist said that when he was released, an Israeli official warned him: “If you want to stay alive when you return, do not speak to the media.”
Kristof ridiculously defended his position on X: “….to those who say that canine rape is impossible, despite the many Palestinians who have described it, I'd note that at least three different medical journal articles discuss rectal injuries in humans from anal penetration by dogs. Sigh.” A doctor in Kristof’s X timeline pointed out that Kristof was misinterpreting those findings (graphic details here):
Kristof then suggested Israel is morally inferior to Hamas (a point he doubled down in his video):
Think of it this way: The horrific abuse inflicted on Israeli women on Oct. 7 now happens to Palestinians day after day. It persists because of silence, indifference and the failure of American and Israeli officials alike to answer Netanyahu’s query: Where the hell are you?
An accompanying Kristof video was more blunt about his belief in the dog-rape tales, which included an overlaid tweet by Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, who has his own credibility problems, besides eagerly awaiting the end of Israel.
Some are suggesting this propaganda, with pro-Hamas sourcing behind it, was put out in order to neutralize a comprehensive report about actual rapes – the rapes and massacres committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023, documented in “Silenced No More, The Untold Atrocities of October 7th and Against Hostages in Captivity,” a report apparently turned down by the Times, which would rather run dehumanizing anti-Israel propaganda like Kristof’s.
