Israel has rejected all of the allegations in Kristof\u2019s column, which included claims that guards inserted objects into Palestinian detainees\u2019 rectums, beat detainees\u2019 genitals and subjected them to systematic humiliation. The Israeli Foreign Ministry described his writing as \u201cone of the worst blood libels ever to appear in the modern press.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn an unfathomable inversion of reality, and through an endless stream of baseless lies, propagandist Nicholas Kristof turns the victim into the accused,\u201d the ministry said in a statement<\/a>, adding that the country would \u201cfight these lies with the truth \u2014 and the truth will prevail.\u201d<\/p>\n Several progressive Jewish groups and Israeli human rights organizations welcomed the scrutiny the column has placed on Israel\u2019s treatment of the Palestinians. But many others in the Jewish community have expressed outrage over reporting they consider dubious and agenda-driven.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tGet The Times of Israel’s Daily Edition \t\t\t\tBy signing up, you agree to the terms<\/a><\/p>\n The American Jewish Committee echoed the foreign ministry\u2019s condemnation, calling the allegation that Israel trains dogs to rape prisoners a \u201cmodern-day blood libel,\u201d<\/a> a reference to historic antisemitic myths accusing Jews of ritual murder.<\/p>\n \t \u201cAllegations of abuse toward Palestinians deserve serious, rigorous investigation,\u201d the AJC continued. \u201cYet this piece, while opinion, appeared to be presented as an investigative report and fell alarmingly short of that standard while amplifying inflammatory narratives that have real-world consequences in a time of surging hatred toward Israelis and Jews worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the most widely circulated allegations from the piece came from an anonymous Palestinian journalist, who said Israeli guards had ordered a dog to mount and penetrate him while he was blindfolded and handcuffed. The column also cited conversations with over a dozen former Palestinian detainees, who described sexual abuse or humiliation by Israeli settlers or security forces.<\/p>\n In the wake of the column\u2019s publication, some pro-Israel voices are renewing their campaign against The New York Times, which they believe is biased against Israel. Pro-Israel groups, including EndJewHatred, Stop Antizionism, Hineni and the Movement Against Antizionism, are planning a protest outside the newspaper\u2019s New York City headquarters on Thursday.<\/p>\n Michelle Ahdoot, EndJewHatred\u2019s director of programming and strategy, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the column had been \u201churtful and angering,\u201d adding that she believed it was \u201cdirect cause of true incitement and violence against the Jewish people.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been calling on The New York Times and other media sources to stop the lies and stop the incitement that\u2019s a result of this horrific reporting, and this, frankly, was the straw that broke the camel\u2019s back,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The column\u2019s critics, who also include a handful of Palestinian voices who have previously condemned Hamas, have pointed to Kristof\u2019s reliance on a report issued by an NGO that Israel has alleged for more than a decade serves as a Hamas propaganda operation.<\/p>\n \t While Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian writer and advocate in the United States, wrote that he had \u201cno doubt\u201d that \u201cincidents of sexual abuse have occurred in Israeli prisons,\u201d he criticized the sourcing used in Kristof\u2019s piece, writing in a post on X<\/a> that Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based NGO, and others have \u201ctroubling records on accuracy, conduct, and associations.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey are not credible sources, even if the article relied on others as well,\u201d Alkhatib wrote. He said that other Palestinian testimonies were \u201canonymous due to shame and fear of retaliation for reporting sexual torture, which complicates verification but does not automatically invalidate their claims.\u201d<\/p>\n Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, the senior envoy for Europe at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, similarly criticized Kristof\u2019s use of Euro-Med\u2019s report in a post on X<\/a>. Euro-Med\u2019s leaders have long drawn accusations from Israel of being Hamas operatives, and the NGO has faced scrutiny for referring to the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas as having been \u201carrested and moved to the Gaza Strip\u201d<\/a> and for claiming that Israel steals the organs <\/a>of deceased Palestinians.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not a human rights organization with a bias,\u201d Rodan-Benzaquen wrote. \u201cIt is an organization whose leadership has documented family and organizational ties to Hamas, operating under institutional cover at the heart of our democracies, and is cited by the @nytimes.\u201d<\/p>\n \t Hen Mazzig, an Israeli activist, also maligned Kristof\u2019s citation of a tweet by Shaiel Ben-Ephraim in a Substack post<\/a>, pointing out that he left UCLA <\/a>amid accusations of sexual harassment in 2020. (Ben-Ephraim has acknowledged that he engaged in \u201cinappropriate behavior\u201d<\/a> at the time.)<\/p>\n Ben-Ephraim\u2019s viral tweet<\/a> from April, which Kristof linked to in his claim that Israel had trained dogs to rape Palestinian detainees, listed a series of alleged testimonies from Palestinians\u2019 unnamed Israeli guards who claimed they had experienced or seen the practice.<\/p>\n \u201cThe accusations against Israeli settlers and security officials deserve serious investigation,\u201d Mazzig wrote, later adding, \u201cBut if you are willing to platform a man accused of sexual harassment, and an organization that calls Jewish rape allegations propaganda, to make your case on the same topic, the conversation is over.\u201d<\/p>\n Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert told the Free Press<\/a> that his comments in the column appearing to validate the allegations, appeared out of context. Many have also questioned the timing of Kristof\u2019s column, which came just a day before a widely anticipated report from an Israeli civil commission about the extent of sexual violence<\/a> during Hamas\u2019s bloody October 7, 2023, onslaught on Israel.<\/p>\n Neither The New York Times nor Kristof responded to questions from JTA. But a spokesperson for the newspaper, Charlie Stadtlander, defended the column and its author late Tuesday, writing<\/a> online about a viral claim that it could be retracted, \u201cThere is no truth to this at all.\u201d<\/p>\n On Wednesday morning, he also rejected claims that Kristof\u2019s column had been timed in relation to the October 7 sexual violence report, which he said the Times had not known about before its release. The newspaper covered the report late Tuesday.<\/p>\n Kristof, too, has waved off concerns, dismissing criticism<\/a> that the piece ran in the Times\u2019 opinion section rather than its news pages. He also greeted skepticism about the possibility of training dogs for sexual assault with \u201cexasperation.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI appreciate the intense interest in my column,\u201d Kristof wrote in a post on X<\/a>. \u201cFor skeptics, why not agree on Red Cross and lawyer visits for the 9,000 Palestinian \u2018security\u2019 prisoners? If you think these abuse allegations are false, such monitoring visits would be protective. So why not?\u201d<\/p>\n \t Allegations of abuse against Palestinian detainees in Israel surfaced repeatedly before and during the war in Gaza, including in testimonies by detainees and prison guards by Reuters<\/a> and the Associated Press<\/a>, albeit not necessarily in as much detail as many of the cases described in Kristof\u2019s piece. In January, reports obtained by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel from the country\u2019s Public Defender\u2019s Office found evidence of widespread, systematic abuse in Israeli prisons against Palestinians.<\/p>\n In March, Israeli military prosecutors canceled indictments against five IDF reserve soldiers who were accused of sexually assaulting a detainee<\/a> at the Sde Teiman detention facility, a case that was caught on video and sparked international outcry.<\/p>\n And in January, Israeli human rights group B\u2019Tselem released a report alleging sexual abuse in Israeli prisons. The group cited the column in a post on X <\/a>Tuesday, writing that \u201cthe international community continues to stand by and allow Israel to commit crimes against the Palestinian people\u201d even as the column and others report on them.<\/p>\n \t Kristof\u2019s column is indeed prompting some to give new attention to the conditions in Israeli prisons, its ostensible purpose. Some Jewish critics of the column are emphasizing that they find the broad allegation of abuse in Israeli prisons plausible, troubling and deserving of scrutiny and action. Many point to comments boasting of poor conditions in prisons<\/a> by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right minister who has overseen the Israel Prison Service since late 2022, to say they believe that abuse may have worsened, and the consequences diminished, in recent years.<\/p>\n Jeremy Ben-Ami, head of the liberal Zionist advocacy and lobby group J Street, wrote on Substack<\/a> that while \u201cdisputed\u201d details in the piece must be \u201crigorously investigated,\u201d the report\u2019s \u201cserious allegations of systemic abuse cannot simply be waved away because they are painful or politically inconvenient.\u201d<\/p>\n The Nexus Project, a liberal-leaning antisemitism watchdog, took aim at the Israeli Foreign Ministry\u2019s assessment of the column, writing in a post on X<\/a> that \u201cto weaponize the term \u2018blood libel\u2019 to dismiss Kristof\u2019s thorough reporting is dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n Other progressive Jewish groups have also called for the allegations in the piece to be investigated, including the rabbinic group T\u2019ruah, which demanded<\/a> \u201can impartial, independent investigation, so the perpetrators can be brought to justice.\u201d<\/p>\n Elissa Wald, a Jewish activist living in Oregon, argued in a Substack essay<\/a> late Monday that while she believed The New York Times had a \u201cstrong anti-Israel bias,\u201d many things could be true at once.<\/p>\n \u201cThe wide[s]pread, knee-jerk denial of everything Kristof wrote by many of my fellow Jews is incredibly troubling to me,\u201d she wrote, adding, \u201cJust as we don\u2019t know enough to immediately believe everything written in this piece, especially given the context we\u2019re all familiar with, I also don\u2019t think we know enough to immediately discount and dismiss it all.\u201d<\/p>\n Others worried that Kristof\u2019s approach might set back the effort to get to the bottom of these allegations. Israeli policy analyst and pro-Israel influencer Eli Kowaz argued in a Substack post<\/a> that Kristof had foregrounded the most sensational allegations in his piece and neglected claims that were more documented, including Ben-Gvir\u2019s rhetoric and a recent report <\/a>by the Israeli Public Defender\u2019s Office documenting systematic violence from prison guards.<\/p>\n \u201cBy Thursday, the conversation will be about Euro-Med\u2019s credibility and whether unverified accounts can be trusted,\u201d Kowaz wrote. \u201cThe documented case \u2014 the one that required no advocacy org, no anonymous source, no unverifiable claim \u2014 will be largely beside the point. That is what this kind of journalism costs, and someone should say so.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t
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\n\t\tJournalist Nicholas Kristof speaks during the Goalkeepers Conference on September 20, 2017, in New York. (AP Photo\/Julio Cortez)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/profile-hot-ahmed-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tAhmed Fouad Alkhatib, March 2024 (courtesy)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Hen_Mazzig_on_Anti-Defamation_League-300x480.jpeg\")
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\n\t\tHen Mazzig at the Anti-Defamation League\u2019s 2024 Never is Now summit. (Screenshot\/ ADL)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/F251018CGFILE57-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tMembers of the Red Cross watch while Israel Prison Service officers prepare Palestinian prisoners for release as part of a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas, at Ktzi\u2019ot Prison in southern Israel, February 26, 2025. (Chaim Goldberg\/Flash90)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_2849-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tReserve soldiers indicted for abusing a Palestinian security detainee at the Sde Teiman military detention center speak to the media outside the Supreme Court in Jerusalem on November 2, 2025 (Jeremy Sharon\/ Times of Israel)<\/p>\n