{"id":791879,"date":"2026-05-12T20:59:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T20:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/791879\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T20:59:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T20:59:14","slug":"hen-mazzig-on-the-n-y-times-two-israel-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/791879\/","title":{"rendered":"Hen Mazzig on the N.Y. Times’ Two Israel Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOn May 11, as the Eurovision<\/a> Song Contest was opening its 2026 edition in Vienna, The New York Times<\/a> published two major pieces about Israel<\/a> in a single day. The first, a page A1 investigation headlined \u201cIn Eurovision, Israel Used Soft Power to Burnish Its Ailing Image,\u201d<\/a> alleged that the Israeli government had spent over $1 million coordinating a campaign to influence Eurovision voting.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was a finding the paper\u2019s own reporting ultimately undermined, however as the piece acknowledged no rules had been broken, no bots deployed, no votes manipulated. The online headline was, \u201cHow Israel \u2018Co-opted\u2019 Eurovision \u2014 and Nearly Broke the World\u2019s Biggest Song Contest.\u201d That was quietly changed to \u201cHow Israel Turned Eurovision\u2019s Stage Into a Soft Power Tool.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe second piece, an opinion column by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof, was harder to dismiss as a slow news day. Headlined \u201cThe Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,\u201d<\/a> it alleged a pattern of systematic sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners by Israeli soldiers, settlers and prison guards \u2014 including the claim, sourced to an advocacy group, Euro-Med Monitor, whose leadership has been criticized for being sympathetic to Hamas\u2019 aims \u2014 that Israeli guards had trained dogs to rape detainees.<\/p>\n

\n\tKristof acknowledged in the piece that there was \u201cno evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes.\u201d Following its publication, the Israeli Foreign Ministry called it \u201cone of the worst blood libels ever to appear in the modern press\u201d and former U.S. Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt asked publicly whether the Times had \u201cno sense of decency and journalistic responsibility.\u201d The paper has stood by Kristof and its comms team issued a statement saying there was \u201cno truth\u201d to the idea that the column would be retracted. <\/p>\n

\n\tBoth pieces landed the same day a 300-page report \u2014 \u201cSilenced No More<\/a>\u201d \u2014 was released documenting Hamas\u2019s sexual violence on October 7, based on 430 interviews and more than 10,000 photographs and videos. The Times did not cover it.<\/p>\n

\n\tHen Mazzig<\/a> is an Israeli author, activist and founder of the Tel Aviv Institute, which tracks antisemitism and anti-Israel disinformation. He spoke with The Hollywood Reporter the day the pieces published.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Eurovision investigation ran on the front page of the Times and its website. What did you make of it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThey had to soften the title. I think that\u2019s the story, really, because papers don\u2019t change headlines on pieces they\u2019re fully confident in. And if you read the piece itself, you see that throughout, they\u2019re trying to find any evidence of Israel violating the rules and they can\u2019t find any. There wasn\u2019t any evidence of bots. Even the head of Eurovision himself, Martin Green, said that Israel\u2019s campaign was a bit excessive but that no rules were violated.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe piece found Israel spent about $1 million promoting its entries over several years. That\u2019s the big number they lead with. Does that strike you as scandalous?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tEvery country uses Eurovision for exactly that. Sweden is doing it. France is doing it. The UK has spent millions of dollars on Eurovision. Ukraine, especially in 2022, invested so much. It\u2019s only when Israel is doing it that there must be something shady. And the Times itself, even in the article, mentions that Malta and Greece and Albania and Poland and France all ran similar campaigns \u2014 with no scrutiny. So what really was the goal here? I think many readers were left dumbfounded, not understanding why this was a front page article.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe word \u201chasbara\u201d appears in the piece, described as a euphemism for overseas propaganda. How does that land?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tHasbara just means a public relations campaign that Israel is doing \u2014 just like every other country, like the U.S. and France and Qatar. So many countries are investing in it. The fixation is really bizarre.<\/p>\n

\n\tBoth pieces ran the same day. Do you think that\u2019s a coincidence?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI don\u2019t want to use the term media bias, especially when speaking to other members of the media, because I think there is justified scrutiny and Israel should be held to account when it does things that are wrong. But it\u2019s extremely bizarre to see the Eurovision article and then the Kristof article alleging that Israel sponsored mass rape of Palestinian prisoners \u2014 both coming out a day before Israel releases a report about sexual assaults on Israelis on October 7th that is actually based on evidence, on testimonies, on medical examinations, on facts. It leaves me with questions. The New York Times really needs to conduct some serious reckoning.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the Kristof piece \u2014 does it hold water?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWere there cases of sexual assaults of Palestinian prisoners? I\u2019m pretty confident there were, and I think that\u2019s something everyone in Israel is probably aware of. But there wasn\u2019t any institutionalized order to conduct rapes. And if you read the article itself, it\u2019s based on testimonies from a Hamas-affiliated European organization. From someone like Kristof, who is a serious journalist, who has won Pulitzer Prizes and conducted incredible investigative reports \u2014 to see his article, I couldn\u2019t find any evidence other than that Hamas-affiliated organization. And then there was this bizarre claim about dogs being trained to rape prisoners, which is medically and scientifically not possible.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Times has defended Kristof and his piece. Is that the last they will address this? And if so, what now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThe Times has very rarely apologized for Israel coverage. The institutional pattern is quite resistant to correction. They changed the headline on the Eurovision piece \u2014 they didn\u2019t apologize. It doesn\u2019t seem like they\u2019re going to retract the Kristof piece either, partly because it was filed under opinion, so there\u2019s much more freedom there. <\/p>\n

\n\tBut the damage is already done. I know that if they want to restore their credibility \u2014 and Jewish readers have been a big and loyal part of this newspaper for generations, and it\u2019s really heartbreaking \u2014 the Times needs to ask itself this question: Do they want to do something to restore their standing, or just give up? Because right now it\u2019s not heading anywhere good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On May 11, as the Eurovision Song Contest was opening its 2026 edition in Vienna, The New York…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":791880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,27200,110922,99,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,15353,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-791879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-eurovision","10":"tag-hen-mazzig","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-newyork","15":"tag-newyorkcity","16":"tag-ny","17":"tag-nyc","18":"tag-the-new-york-times","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-united-states-of-america","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116563619214012219","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}