The New York Times has repeatedly lied to its audience about Israel and the Palestinians through its shoddy journalism. Its deranged coverage may have finally hit a peak with the paper going all in on the conspiracy theory that Israel has trained dogs to sexually assault Palestinians.
The New York Times published an opinion piece from Nicholas Kristof headlined “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians.” The purpose of the piece was almost certainly to blunt the release of a civil commission report about Palestinian sexual violence against Israelis during the Oct. 7 massacre. As my colleague David Harsanyi detailed, Kristof’s piece contains no evidence whatsoever of Israeli rapes of Palestinian prisoners, instead relying on claims from “sources” with terrorist ties or an otherwise existing motive to lie about Israelis. An Israeli “source” Kristof relied on has already disputed the characterization of his quotes.
FALSE PRO-PALESTINIAN NARRATIVES
The most jaw-dropping part of the piece, though, is the assertion that Israel is using trained dogs to rape Palestinians. This utterly deranged conspiracy theory has bounced around the gutters of social media for years, too laughably stupid even for more mainstream antisemites to run with. And yet, Kristof and the New York Times have gone all-in on the claim, pushing it mainstream with, you guessed it, no evidence whatsoever. To call the concept biologically dubious would be a dramatic understatement. On a related note, the outlet was careful to place this supposedly groundbreaking reporting in its opinion section, rather than labeling it as news.
This follows a trend for the New York Times, which has repeatedly botched coverage of Israel (at best) or lied to its readers (at worst). The outlet was one of many to push the falsehood that Israel bombed a Palestinian hospital, killing hundreds of Palestinians, pushing the story viral before it was revealed that the few dozen Palestinians killed were killed by a Palestinian missile. The outlet famously presented a Palestinian child dying of genetic disorders as the face of Palestinians dying from supposed Israeli-imposed starvation, a lie that it had to issue a correction for (and still won a Pulitzer Prize for anyway).
NICK KRISTOF’S GROTESQUE JOURNALISTIC MALPRACTICE
But, it cannot be understated that the nation’s supposed premier newspaper going all-in on “Israeli government dogs are raping Palestinians” is utter lunacy. This isn’t just about Kristof, who regularly whitewashes the world’s worst actors. The outlet’s editors, fact-checkers, publishers, and top brass all helped push this piece to the public and have stood by it. This assertion is more ridiculous, more absurd, and more sinister than any claim of stolen elections (from both Republicans and Democrats). How does a newspaper survive such a claim?
Running with this insane conspiracy theory with no evidence but “some Palestinians said so” should be the death knell for “The Gray Lady.” It shows that there is neither a bottom that the outlet won’t sink to nor standards that the outlet will uphold in its coverage. Whatever credibility the New York Times had going into this week, the institutional promotion of this conspiracy theory, with not even a halfhearted attempt at journalism to back the story, should have killed it once and for all.