New York Times Denounced for Publishing Opinion Article Claiming Israeli Officials Have Trained Dogs To Rape Palestinian Prisoners

The New York Times is facing backlash over an op-ed detailing a “pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence” against Palestinians, including a claim that Israeli officials have trained dogs to rape prisoners. Noting that many countries experience a scale of sexual violence “far greater than anything committed by either Hamas militants or Israeli guards, the Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, said America is “complicit” in the allegations made by Palestinians because of its support for Israel. The shocking allegations of abuse have generated significant attention and have become a source of controversy as critics question its sourcing, specifically focusing on the charge that Israeli officials trained dogs to rape prisoners. The timing of the op-ed has also been questioned as it was published a day before the release of a disturbing 300-page report by an independent commission that documented Hamas’s “systematic sexual violence” on October 7, 2023, and against captives held hostage in Gaza for two years. Mr. Kristof detailed several alleged instances of sexual assault, including one from an unnamed “Gaza journalist” who recounted a story of being held down and stripped naked after he was detained in 2024.“With encouragement from a handler in Hebrew, he said, [a] dog mounted him,” Mr. Kristof wrote. “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,” Mr. Kristof wrote. The column alleges that Israeli officials warned the journalist not to speak to the media if he wanted to “stay alive.”Mr. Kristof noted in his op-ed that he did not find evidence that “Israeli leaders order rapes.” He also said that in “many cases” he was able to corroborate allegations, but “in other cases it was not possible, perhaps because shame left people reluctant to acknowledge abuse even to loved ones.”Israel’s Foreign Ministry called the article “one of the worst blood libels ever to appear in the modern press,” and alleged it was “part of a false and well-orchestrated anti-Israel campaign aimed at placing Israel on the U.N. Secretary-General’s blacklist.”The Israel Prison Service also denied the allegations, telling the Times of Israel that “all prisoners are held in accordance with the law, while safeguarding their basic rights and under the supervision of a professional and skilled prison staff.”A senior editor at the Free Press, Peter Savodnik, wrote on X that he does not have “trouble believing that some Israeli forces have curbed or even violated the rights of some Palestinians.” But he said Mr. Kristof’s column was “a well-laundered bit of Hamas propaganda.”An Israeli journalist, Haviv Rettig Gur, called the op-ed “horrifying.” He said while it is “guaranteed” that some Palestinians may have faced abuse in the prison system, Mr.Kristof “quotes people who celebrated October 7 and want Israel destroyed, and will lie to achieve that goal.”“Dogs did not rape anyone. The people who invented that particular inanity claimed it without evidence, knowing that no one, certainly not self-appointed moral arbiters like Nick Kristof, would ever bother checking the provenance of the claim,” he said.Other journalists noted that dog trainers have suggested it would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to train dogs to commit targeted acts of sexual violence in a manner that could be repeated.A media watchdog organization, Honest Reporting, which says its goal is to expose “anti-Israel bias,” said that the allegation of dogs being trained to rape humans has been circulating since at least 2024. It noted that the claims have been promoted by Euro‑Med Human Rights Monitor, which it said frequently publishes “extreme, unverified accusations against Israel” and was used as a primary source in Mr. Kristof’s column.Honest Reporting questioned the credibility of the individuals interviewed. It noted that one of the interviewees, Sami al-Sai, celebrated the October 7 massacre, calling Hamas “heroes” after the attack. Israel’s Foreign Ministry also accused the Times of publishing the article to distract from the publication of the report detailing Hamas’s “systematic sexual violence” on October 7.“Months ago, the Civil Commission approached the New York Times with a report on Hamas’ systematic sexual violence on Oct. 7 and after. The @nytimes said it was not interested,” the Foreign Ministry said. “Aware of the report and its release date, the night before its release the NYT ran a shameful attack on Israel, belittling Hamas’ sexual crimes. That tells you everything about the NYT’s agenda.”As commentators have attacked the credibility and timing of Mr. Kristof’s op-ed, journalist David Shuster wrote that editors are already in discussions about retracting the column. Mr. Kristof denied that claim, writing, “Sorry, but your tweet is completely untrue.” A spokesman for the New York Times, Charlie Stadtlander, later issued a statement saying of Mr. Shuster’s post that “there is no truth to this at all.”“Nicholas Kristof is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has reported on sexual violence for decades, and is widely regarded as one of the world’s best on-the-ground reporters documenting and bearing witness to sexual abuse experienced by women and men in war and conflict zones,” Mr. Stadtlander said. “He traveled to the region to report firsthand on the stories of Palestinians who suffered abuse and his article collects accounts in the victims’ own words, backed by independent studies.”While the newspaper stood by the op-ed, a former prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, who was quoted in the story, said that Mr. Kristof mischaracterized his statement by paraphrasing that the prime minister was “not surprised” to hear such accounts.“Mr. Kristof’s article includes claims of extraordinary gravity,” Mr. Olmert told a longtime editor for Commentary magazine, Eli Lake. “I did not validate these claims. I have no knowledge supporting these claims as I said to Mr. Kristof. Therefore, the positioning of my quote after pages of such allegations misrepresents my views.”

New York Times Denounced for Publishing Opinion Article Claiming Israeli Officials Have Trained Dogs To Rape Palestinian Prisoners

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