{"id":122837,"date":"2026-05-20T10:23:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T10:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/122837\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T10:23:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T10:23:14","slug":"reckless-accusations-against-israel-undermine-real-accountability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/122837\/","title":{"rendered":"Reckless accusations against Israel undermine real accountability"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two expos\u00e9s 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, \u201cSilenced No More.\u201d In heartbreaking detail, superstar lawyers, researchers, medical experts, and forensic professionals conclusively detailed the systematic barbarism of Hamas terrorists and other Gazans that day.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 even among American Jews<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If columnist Nicholas Kristof<\/a> and his editors at the Times cared about Israelis \u2013 and, frankly, Palestinians \u2013 they would have tried proving their allegations about Israeli torture by respecting basic journalistic standards, writing as rigorously as \u201cSilenced No More.\u201d Anyone seeking to solve the all-too-common global problem of prison sexual violence should make the case judiciously, using reliable sources.<\/p>\n

So when serious columnists like Kristof instead commit journalistic malpractice, you wonder, \u201cWhat\u2019s going on?\u201d He echoed Hamas operatives, ignored that some sources keep changing their stories, and made the biologically impractical charge that dogs raped prisoners \u2013 without even quoting one veterinarian willing to claim on the record that dogs can do such absurdities.<\/p>\n

Exaggerating so wildly is the tell of the bigot. The purpose is to delegitimize, joining the Bash-Israel-Firsters. That\u2019s why instead of a Reformer\u2019s Waltz, working with Israel to change, we saw the Delegitimizer\u2019s Dance, cha-cha-ing to the beat of haters, propagandizers, fabulists, and sexual sickos projecting their perverse fantasies of hurting Jews, onto \u201cthe Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PeoplePeople walk by The New York Times building in Manhattan, New York City, US, September 16, 2025. (credit: Reuters\/Kylie Cooper)Importance of taking accusations seriously<\/p>\n

Especially after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023<\/a>, many Zionists understand the importance of taking accusations of sexual torture seriously. The complicit silence of many leading feminists following Hamas\u2019s mass rapes and mutilations was particularly painful. Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, who chaired the October 7 Civil Commission, lamented that the barbarism \u201cwasn\u2019t just denied by social media trolls. It was denied by people like Prof. Judith Butler of UC Berkeley, who said, \u2018I\u2019m not sure; I haven\u2019t seen the evidence of the rape.\u2019 When is a rape victim ever questioned in that way by a feminist scholar?\u201d<\/p>\n

When first hearing that the New York Times alleged sexual torture against Palestinians, many Israelis were primed to take the charges seriously \u2013 even endorse an investigative commission. That\u2019s what democracies do when citizens commit crimes, which happens especially during wartime. That\u2019s 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 \u201cunwilling\u201d to prosecute any wrongdoers.<\/p>\n

Yet Kristof violated journalism 101 \u2013 and logic. His editors failed to vet ludicrous charges. That changed everything.<\/p>\n

First, the column had to be refuted. Second, I highlighted the Jew-hatred underlying the \u201cdog rape\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Finally, the column is so shoddy, reeking of the anti-Israel<\/a> lynch-mob mentality, that anyone taking even one sentence seriously risks delighting the haters who will declare Israel guilty of every charge \u2013 and more.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not defensive, it\u2019s reasonable. And it\u2019s not the thoughtful democrat\u2019s fault, but the vicious critic\u2019s recurring sin.<\/p>\n

Constructive critiques should pass \u201cThe Sweaty Palm Test.\u201d Embarrassing allegations should worry patriots that their beloved but inevitably imperfect nation has slipped. That should trigger our evolutionary \u201cflight\u201d response \u2013 which mature democrats then overcome to improve their society.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cThese people know Israel and the conflict,\u201d I thought. \u201cDid they write the kind of devastating critique I could write about us, if I were unhinged?\u201d<\/p>\n

While reading, my palms went stone cold dry \u2013 but my jaw clenched. These professorial propagandists spewed clich\u00e9-ridden oppressed-oppressor hogwash about Zionism as \u201cethno-nationalist\u201d shaped by \u201csettler colonial paradigms\u201d that imposed \u201cunjust, enduring, and unsustainable systems of Jewish supremacy,\u201d blah, blah, blah.<\/p>\n

I flipped from flight to fight. That foolish petition, which wouldn\u2019t have passed my freshman composition class, inspired Natan Sharansky and me to out the \u201cun-Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUn-Jews\u201d 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\u2019t thoughtful students struggling with Israel\u2019s difficult dilemmas, amid their peers\u2019 irrational pressure. It\u2019s those Jewish communal leaders and intellectuals joining a long tradition of Jewish underminers and worse \u2013 in this case, undoing the core consensus since 1948 that links Israel, Zionism, Judaism, and the Jewish people.<\/p>\n

In an ideal world, we would \u201cBen-Gurion\u201d it. The legendary Zionist leader urged Jews in the 1940s to fight the Nazis as if the British weren\u2019t harassing Jews in Palestine \u2013 and resist British harassment as if there were no Nazis. I wish we could fight the delegitimizers and perfect Israel simultaneously. But we\u2019re fighting a multifront war for survival. So, first, we must defeat our enemies, militarily and ideologically.<\/p>\n

Our American allies, Jewish and non-Jewish, should boycott the New York Times \u2013 canceling subscriptions simultaneously on one day. Synagogues, schools, and Jewish Community Centers should host seminars critiquing the article, showing its distortions \u2013 as part of a broader media training. And activists should pursue legal avenues, stock sell-offs, and other pressure points.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The writer is an American presidential historian and a senior fellow in Zionist thought at Jerusalem\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two expos\u00e9s of Middle Eastern sexual violence appeared last week. The Civil Commission on Oct. 7 Crimes by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[10725,2492,8555,9102,37,49,1413,6393],"class_list":["post-122837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-anti-zionism","tag-antisemitism","tag-david-ben-gurion","tag-international-criminal-court","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-the-october-7-massacre","tag-zionism"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116606415930924891","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}