The most remarkable thing about New York Times opinion writer Nicholas Kristof is probably his extreme cluelessness. It’s the reason he gets so many big stories wildly wrong, and tries to blame “sources.” It’s also why his short-lived run for governor collapsed (that’s in my next episode, out tomorrow). Anyone with the most basic interest in facts would have avoided his disasters.
“We journalists often rely to a considerable extent on people to tell the truth,” he once wrote, which is the exact opposite of the job of journalism. We should never rely on that. The job is to check claims and clarify people’s records of accuracy when passing along their assertions, not to assume they’re true.
So it’s not shocking that Kristof wrote a nonsensical, easily debunked attack piece against Israel this week. Fortunately, this is a case in which other people rushed to expose its insanity.
But there are key points about journalism here that you should know. First, the Times ran these horrific allegations in an opinion piece. If there were evidence, a legitimate news outlet would put it through rigorous editorial fact checking and run it as a news story.
Meanwhile, the Times runs Hamas claims as news all the time. And even the Times didn’t do so with this, which includes claims about dogs. Why run the allegations this way? Because it helps give the paper a shield against accountability. The Times can try to claim that this is just someone’s opinion.
Getting ahead of a landmark new study
Next, the timing speaks volumes. Today, a group called the Civil Commission is out with an extensive report detailing Hamas’ October 7 sexual violence.
The Times knew this was coming, but was not interested. Even CNN took a break from parroting Hamas lies to report on the gravity of these findings.
The Times also recently ignored findings by brave investigators in Gaza who dare to stand against Hamas. They found that the Islamist terror group routinely rapes Palestinians, including children.
Children in Gaza are being raped and then blackmailed into joining Hamas or having their sexual abuse made public, investigators in the enclave say. The Daily Mail has obtained filmed testimony from Jusoor News in Gaza showing the children’s disturbing allegations.
The Times also won’t tell its audience that when Hamas demanded its prisoners be released in exchange for hostages, it picked people like this:
Gaza demands child rapist and murderer freed
In the news, when a government takes an action, the shorthand is …
And the Times doesn’t tell you that Iran, Hamas’ backer, routinely rapes girls and women before executing them because of a twisted belief that doing so will prevent them from going to heaven.
A global scourge
Unlike the Times, I recently reported on the 50 million people in modern slavery, many of them part of sex trafficking.
Anywhere there’s a power imbalance, there are some people who abuse it. Everywhere in the world, some prisoners are mistreated, including sexually. It’s horrific. Anyone who engages in it should be stopped and punished.
As I reported in Episode 44, the occupation of Germany by Allied Forces after World War II was essential for denazification. And there were soldiers who took advantage of it to rape women. A nightmare.
In democracies, those behaviors are illegal and there are mechanisms to demand that people be held accountable. In anti-democratic places like Gaza and Iran, people in power act with impunity from the government. It’s up to the people in those places to reject their anti-democratic leadership and demand a better government.
Try telling that to the Times.
Supporters: Share thoughts, questions, and links you want fact checked by using the buttons below.
JL
P.S. In case you missed it:
Thank you for telling the truth. People who are kristof fans hang onto his every word. The 800+ comments on the piece he wrote yesterday were 99% against Israel, thanking him for writing that piece. They said terrible things about Israel (talk about "opinions"--wow! I never knew there was that much bottled-up hatred against Israel) and demanding that the U.S. stop funding anything in Israel.
There sure are a lot of antisemites out there who don't ask any questions at all about the beyond-the-pale claims Kristof wrote or his very iffy "sources."
It was terrible how the reality of October 7th violence was denied. Even the UN had trouble accepting direct witness accounts. The denial of horrible sexual violence was especially astounding. To this day, actions and speech against Israel and Jews continues unabated. I can only surmise that it's the continuation of the ancient hatred which is so ingrained that the perpetrators of violence against Israelis are being seen as heroes. The world just continues to spin like a crazy mobile.