DAVID HARSANYI: Nick Kristof’s grotesque journalistic malpractice.
Kristof’s most cartoonishly evil accusation contends that the Israelis use trained dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners. This hoax is the favorite of online antisemitic podcaster types. Not only has there never been a shred of evidence that this has happened, but it’s also probably “biologically and cognitively unfeasible” for humans to train dogs to rape people.
The dog rape claim originates with the EuroMed Human Rights Monitor, a pro-Hamas Qatari-based group. It was spread by, among other shady types, conspiracy theorist Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, a former postdoctoral fellow at UCLA who was forced to leave the school after sexual-harassment allegations involving minors.
Palestinians have spent over 70 years pulling hoaxes on gullible Westerners to gain sympathy. Anyone who’s followed the Middle East situation for more than five minutes is aware that Israel’s enemies are constantly making up ludicrous claims about trained animals. Israelis are apparently the greatest animal trainers in history. The country has been accused of deploying sharks, rats, lizards, cows, dolphins, hawks, and pigs by its enemies. The only difference here is that a Western journalist was credulous or despicable enough to spread the conspiracy.
It’s probably no accident, incidentally, that Kristof ran his victim-blaming propaganda the week we got a 300-page report detailing first-hand testimony and verifiable evidence that rape was “systematic” and “integral” to the Hamas Oct. 7 terrorist attack. Another recent report finds Hamas using international aid to sexually exploit women, especially widows and divorcees.
In a column at Commentary titled “The End of Our Illusions,” Seth Mandel adds:
We want Kristof and his defenders to be like us. But they are not like us—and they punish us for our good faith.
Serious allegations—and there are few allegations more serious than the ones being alleged here—deserve heaps of evidence and careful scrutiny. The report delivered by the Israeli commission is a model of such investigation. The Times’s rumor mill is the opposite.
There is another reason the timing is important. The Times’s evidence-free allegations against Israelis dulled outrage about the evidence-packed report of sexual violence perpetrated by Gazans against Israelis. The only beneficiaries of this timing are the Hamas foot soldiers who raped and tortured innocent civilians. Only the very worst people in the world have gained.
And there’s another reason we want to believe that Israel’s critics are morally intact. Plenty of them are. Those are probably the ones we don’t hear from. Unfortunately, the ones we keep hearing from don’t believe this conflict has anything to do with where Palestinians live but rather that Israelis live at all.
Exit quote: “We’re going to have to learn to treat the rumor-mongers differently than those who possess a shred of honesty, decency, and good faith. We’re going to have to draw a line and be wholly unsentimental about who belongs on which side of it.”
