This May 18, 2026 “CAMERA Eye on the Media” Op-Ed by CAMERA U.S.’s Omri Tubi appeared in JNS.
Nicholas Kristof’s May 11 New York Times column, “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” charging Israel with systematic sexual abuse and rape of Palestinian prisoners, including the use of trained dogs in rapes, has ignited a firestorm. His critics have charged him with bad journalism and fomenting antisemitism.
Others, including media watchdog CAMERA, accused Kristof of both timing and designing the column to distract from a comprehensive Israeli report detailing Hamas’s widespread weaponization of rape and sexual violence on and after Oct. 7, 2023.
But the worst enemy of Kristof’s column is arguably Nicholas Kristof himself. Indeed, his pilloried piece betrays some of the most important lessons he himself claimed to have learned during his long career. In his 2024 memoir Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life, Kristof maintained that experience taught him to be cautious about interviewees’ accounts and warned that even stories from sympathetic speakers can be lies.
Read the rest of CAMERA’s Op-Ed at JNS.