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| Nicholas Kristoff (left) |
The New York Times this past week published graphic, largely unverified allegations of systematic sexual abuse, including claims that Israeli guards used dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners, in a column that Douglas Murray has condemned as one of the most grotesque and timed libels against Israel in modern media.
In an opinion piece this week, longtime Times columnist Nicholas Kristof cited anonymous Palestinian detainees alleging routine rape, sexual torture, and animal-assisted assaults by Israeli soldiers and prison staff. Murray, writing in
The New York Post, described the article as a deliberate fabrication designed to preempt and overshadow an upcoming Israeli commission report documenting Hamas’s widespread and systematic use of sexual violence during the October 7, 2023, massacre.
The timing was not accidental, Murray argues.
Kristof’s column appeared just one day before the expected release of evidence showing Hamas’s “integral” policy of gang rapes, mutilations, and sexual assaults on both living victims and corpses, crimes backed by extensive video footage, forensic findings, and eyewitness testimony. By flooding the information environment with even more lurid and implausible accusations against Israel, the Times piece aimed to block any public sympathy or understanding for the Jewish state’s security needs.
Murray dismantles the core claims as fantastical. No credible evidence exists in veterinary, military, or law-enforcement practice for training dogs to rape humans, he notes. The story relies on hostile, anonymous sources and recycles a pattern at the Times of elevating unverified anti-Israel narratives while minimizing well-documented jihadist atrocities. The effect, he writes, is to portray Jewish soldiers as uniquely demonic sadists, language that licenses real-world antisemitic violence and harassment against Jews in New York and elsewhere.
The human consequences are immediate: such coverage erodes trust in Israel’s justice system, which holds October 7 perpetrators under basic but necessary security conditions because many have attempted to kill their guards. Murray, who has visited Israeli facilities holding these terrorists as well as U.S. and other detention centers, contrasts the sparse reality with Kristof’s grotesque inventions.
At its root, Murray concludes, the decision to publish reflects institutional bias at the Times. Rather than correct course when facts contradict the preferred narrative, the paper manufactures or amplifies new ones, contributing directly to the surge in global antisemitism while later publishing puzzled editorials about that very rise. Retractions remain unlikely, as the same editors who greenlight such pieces oversee corrections.
Murray believes the episode fits a broader information war in which elite Western outlets appear compelled to invent parallel horrors by Israel to avoid confronting the documented depravity of Hamas’s October 7 crimes. Murray’s rebuttal underscores a simple truth: when reality does not serve the narrative, some publications simply rewrite it.
