The New York Times Magazine did not print the genocide lie outright. Instead, it casually presented “fact” and opinion by a rabid antizionist who justified the Hamas-led terror attacks on Oct. 7, 2023: Professor Nimer Sultany.
The Times’ Michael Steinberger opened his piece, “‘This Could End Very Badly’: A Human Rights Lawyer Fears a New Age of Impunity” by acquainting readers with attorney Philippe Sands, who now represents Gambia in the International Court of Justice (“ICJ”) against Myanmar. Conveniently, The Times omitted mention of the fact that Sands also represents the “State of Palestine” at the ICJ.
Many are carefully watching the Myanmar case, explained Steinberger, believing the outcome will have implications for South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. He further elaborated that if Myanmar is cleared of genocide allegations, this could bode well for Israel and reduce the likelihood of the Jewish State becoming the first in the world to be found guilty of the crime.
Thus began Steinberger’s slow roll into the Gaza genocide libel.
Steinberger slyly insinuated that ICJ judges might have a different reason not to find Israel guilty, as judges “will be under considerable pressure, because the case against Israel could have onerous consequences for them.” In support, he referred to the Trump Administration’s sanction of “a handful of judges and one prosecutor” from the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) over its 2024 decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant. (Steinberger is incorrect; as of August 2025, the Trump Administration has actually sanctioned at least three prosecutors.) The “one” prosecutor Steinberger referred to, who issued the warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant, but who Steinberger did not identify in the entirety of his article, was Karim Khan.
As Steinberger did not bother to name Khan, it follows that he felt he owed no duty to his readers to give any background on Khan. Steinberger shockingly failed to mention the multiple sexual misconduct accusations against Khan, particularly since the prosecutor attempted to silence the first of his two accusers – who supported the ICC’s investigation of Israel and proposed warrants – by letting her know that the “Palestinian arrest warrants” could be at risk if she went public with the allegations.
While it has also been alleged that Khan issued the warrants – newsworthy because it was the first time in the ICC’s history a prosecutor sought such warrants for a democratically elected leader of a Western ally – in order to deflect from the sexual misconduct allegations, Steinberger did not mention this. He also did not advise readers that Qatar hired an intelligence firm to uncover links between Khan’s accuser and Israel (though the firm was unable to do so).
Why did Steinberger suggest ICJ judges will be under pressure due to the Trump Administration while remaining completely silent about the pressure Qatar could – and tried to – leverage?
Steinberger then moved on and upped the ante with commentary from a critic who accused Sands of insufficient courage: virulently anti-Israel Professor Nimer Sultany of SOAS [School of Oriental and African Studies] University of London, whose remarks served to legitimize the genocide libel. Times readers deserve to know who SOAS Professor Sultany is and how he justified the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel.
SOAS has a long, antisemitic and antizionist history, so much so that at times it was referred to as the “School of Antisemitism” or “School of Orchestrated Anti-Semitism.” Its checkered past is troubling, and includes the 1975 banning of the Jewish Student Society organization; the hosting of El Al hijacker Leila Khaled in 2002; a vote in support of a full academic boycott of Israel in 2015; and a 2020 finding by an independent appeals commission that SOAS fostered a “toxic, antisemitic environment.”
Nimer Sultany fits the SOAS profile perfectly. His titled works include “The Wrongs of Zionism,” and lectures include “The Question of Palestine as a Litmus Test for International Law and Human Rights.”
He also justified the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. As the massacre was still unfolding, Sultany, among other posts from that day, glorified Hamas’ attack as a “rising up against the colonizers.”
“Western civilization seems willing to stand by while they are exterminated. They, on the other hand, are rising up against the colonizers.” https://t.co/b9xuKr0k4c
— Nimer Sultany (@NimerSultany) October 7, 2023
In a 2025 video for Middle East Eye, Sultany alleged Israel committed genocide from the “beginning” and rejected attempts of “revisionism” to categorize it as a war. Not once in the 15-minute video did the Harvard-trained academic utter the words “Hamas,” “tunnels,” or “hostages.” He also alleged occupation and apartheid in Israel (despite being born in Israel and earning a law degree from Tel Aviv University). According to Sultany, people who do not believe Israel is committing a genocide are all propagandists. In a video for Al Jazeera, he accused the West as being complicit in the genocide.
The Times revealed none of this extremist’s ideology to its readers.
Instead, Steinberger used an “expert” who had openly defended the genocidal atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023 – committed by a genocidal terrorist organization – and treated that defense as relevant expertise on genocide. Steinberger presented as fact Sultany’s claim that, “by late 2024, there was consensus among scholars that Israel could credibly be accused of genocide.” Sultany went on to criticize the “State of Palestine’s” lawyer, believing Sands “had a moral obligation to speak out.”
Beyond Sultany as an antizionist and biased academic, which is how The Times seems to like its “scholars,” his claim that there was a consensus among scholars also ignores facts. Although a sensational headline briefly circulated worldwide – from the United States to the UK and Australia – claiming that the “world’s leading experts” had determined Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, The Free Press quickly debunked the claim when it exposed that the International Association of Genocide Scholars (“IAGS”) was an organization anyone could join with a $30 fee. Moreover, only 108 out of the 500 members actually voted for the resolution.
Sultany’s insistence there was a consensus also contradicts his own statement in the fall of 2024, when in a tweet he listed a total of five “experts on genocide” and lamented that others could not educate themselves and “take a stand.”
Because it did not fit The Times’ agenda, Steinberger did not tell readers that more than 500 scholars have publicly rejected allegations of a genocide by Israel in Gaza (a repeat omission by The Times). Instead, The Times Magazine allowed its readers to be ideologically captured by an academic who justifies terrorism.