Two exposés of Middle Eastern sexual violence appeared last week. The Civil Commission on Oct. 7 Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children issued the 300-page report, “Silenced No More.” In heartbreaking detail, superstar lawyers, researchers, medical experts, and forensic professionals conclusively detailed the systematic barbarism of Hamas terrorists and other Gazans that day.
The second, a 3,500-word New York Times hit piece wobbling on 14 questionable sources, made absurd claims, conveying animus, not authority. Sadly, guess which got more attention – even among American Jews.
If columnist Nicholas Kristof and his editors at the Times cared about Israelis – and, frankly, Palestinians – they would have tried proving their allegations about Israeli torture by respecting basic journalistic standards, writing as rigorously as “Silenced No More.” Anyone seeking to solve the all-too-common global problem of prison sexual violence should make the case judiciously, using reliable sources.
So when serious columnists like Kristof instead commit journalistic malpractice, you wonder, “What’s going on?” He echoed Hamas operatives, ignored that some sources keep changing their stories, and made the biologically impractical charge that dogs raped prisoners – without even quoting one veterinarian willing to claim on the record that dogs can do such absurdities.
Exaggerating so wildly is the tell of the bigot. The purpose is to delegitimize, joining the Bash-Israel-Firsters. That’s why instead of a Reformer’s Waltz, working with Israel to change, we saw the Delegitimizer’s Dance, cha-cha-ing to the beat of haters, propagandizers, fabulists, and sexual sickos projecting their perverse fantasies of hurting Jews, onto “the Jews.”
Importance of taking accusations seriously
Especially after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023, many Zionists understand the importance of taking accusations of sexual torture seriously. The complicit silence of many leading feminists following Hamas’s mass rapes and mutilations was particularly painful. Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, who chaired the October 7 Civil Commission, lamented that the barbarism “wasn’t just denied by social media trolls. It was denied by people like Prof. Judith Butler of UC Berkeley, who said, ‘I’m not sure; I haven’t seen the evidence of the rape.’ When is a rape victim ever questioned in that way by a feminist scholar?”
When first hearing that the New York Times alleged sexual torture against Palestinians, many Israelis were primed to take the charges seriously – even endorse an investigative commission. That’s what democracies do when citizens commit crimes, which happens especially during wartime. That’s why the International Criminal Court (ICC) operates by the principle of complementarity. If a governing entity investigates accusations properly, a case becomes inadmissible elsewhere. The ICC should respond when, as with Hamas and its October 7 crimes, the governing entity is “unwilling” to prosecute any wrongdoers.
Yet Kristof violated journalism 101 – and logic. His editors failed to vet ludicrous charges. That changed everything.
First, the column had to be refuted. Second, I highlighted the Jew-hatred underlying the “dog rape” charge. This anatomical mismatch joins a long line of lurid anti-Jewish accusations casting Jews in a weirdly sexual light. Those blood libels then rouse barbarians to justify assaulting Jews.
Finally, the column is so shoddy, reeking of the anti-Israel lynch-mob mentality, that anyone taking even one sentence seriously risks delighting the haters who will declare Israel guilty of every charge – and more.
That’s not defensive, it’s reasonable. And it’s not the thoughtful democrat’s fault, but the vicious critic’s recurring sin.
Constructive critiques should pass “The Sweaty Palm Test.” Embarrassing allegations should worry patriots that their beloved but inevitably imperfect nation has slipped. That should trigger our evolutionary “flight” response – which mature democrats then overcome to improve their society.
Five years ago, as Hamas rockets pounded Israel, I heard that some 250 Jewish studies and Israel studies professors signed a petition criticizing Israel. My palms went sweaty. “These people know Israel and the conflict,” I thought. “Did they write the kind of devastating critique I could write about us, if I were unhinged?”
While reading, my palms went stone cold dry – but my jaw clenched. These professorial propagandists spewed cliché-ridden oppressed-oppressor hogwash about Zionism as “ethno-nationalist” shaped by “settler colonial paradigms” that imposed “unjust, enduring, and unsustainable systems of Jewish supremacy,” blah, blah, blah.
I flipped from flight to fight. That foolish petition, which wouldn’t have passed my freshman composition class, inspired Natan Sharansky and me to out the “un-Jews.”
“Un-Jews” are Jews like these professors, on the Jewish dole, who, forgetting the basics of subtlety and solidarity, bovinely jumped on the bandwagon of anti-Israelism and often anti-Zionism. Un-Jews aren’t thoughtful students struggling with Israel’s difficult dilemmas, amid their peers’ irrational pressure. It’s those Jewish communal leaders and intellectuals joining a long tradition of Jewish underminers and worse – in this case, undoing the core consensus since 1948 that links Israel, Zionism, Judaism, and the Jewish people.
In an ideal world, we would “Ben-Gurion” it. The legendary Zionist leader urged Jews in the 1940s to fight the Nazis as if the British weren’t harassing Jews in Palestine – and resist British harassment as if there were no Nazis. I wish we could fight the delegitimizers and perfect Israel simultaneously. But we’re fighting a multifront war for survival. So, first, we must defeat our enemies, militarily and ideologically.
Our American allies, Jewish and non-Jewish, should boycott the New York Times – canceling subscriptions simultaneously on one day. Synagogues, schools, and Jewish Community Centers should host seminars critiquing the article, showing its distortions – as part of a broader media training. And activists should pursue legal avenues, stock sell-offs, and other pressure points.
Meanwhile, we will keep trying to make the best Israel possible, not because of external national-character assassins, but because of our internal old-new moral compass.
The writer is an American presidential historian and a senior fellow in Zionist thought at Jerusalem’s Jewish People Policy Institute. Last year, he published To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream, and The Essential Guide to Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, and Jew-hatred, available on the JPPI website. Next month, he will publish The Essential Guide to the US-Israel Partnership, the 250th Anniversary Edition.