Jewish coalition protests New York Times over Nick Kristof anti-Israel piece that cited sources who praised Hamas

A Jewish coalition announced its intention to mobilize outside of The New York Times headquarters on Thursday to protest the publication of a recent opinion piece detailing allegations of widespread sexual abuse of Palestinians in Israeli prisons. The group claims the NYT did not disclose the cited sources' ties to the Hamas terror group, or their celebrations of the October 7 massacre.

The grassroots coalition, EndJewHatred, is demanding that the NYT issue a full retraction of the May 11 article written by Nicholas Kristof, titled "The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians," citing ethics violations due to multiple alleged improper source disclosure failures, according to a letter obtained by The Post Millennial sent by the group's legal counsel, The Lawfare Project.



Kristof highlighted in the piece what he claimed was a frequent pattern of Israeli sexual assault of Palestinian captives and encouraged supporters of both Israel and the Palestinian territories to stand together against rape. The author began the article by highlighting the strong international condemnation of the Hamas terror group's sexual violence against Israelis on October 7, 2023, and urged that the same moral standard be applied to Palestinian victims. He provided no evidence that Israeli leaders ordered such crimes, instead citing a United Nations (UN) report saying that sexual violence is a "standard operating procedure" in Israel's detention system.

The author also used the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor as another primary source, which has a history of being critical of Israel. The Lawfare Project noted in the letter that Euro-Med's founder and chairman, Ramy Abdu, celebrated the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre of Israelis on social media and shared a post justifying Israeli women being raped by Hamas because of Israelis' alleged "assaults" on Arab women. Additionally, Euro-Med characterized the October 7 rape allegations as a "propaganda tool" used by Israel to "manufacture consent for its full-fledged, live-streamed genocide," which was a statement attributed to Abdu. 

This is "the organization's official institutional position," the Lawfare Project said, calling on the NYT for a full retraction.

"This demand is grounded in the New York Times's own published standards for journalistic ethics and source disclosure - standards your institution has publicly committed to uphold and has, on prior occasion, applied to compel retroactive corrections when violations were identified," wrote Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at The Lawfare Project, in the letter. "The column as published contains multiple material source disclosure failures that, under the Times's ethical guidelines, require correction at minimum and retraction on the facts presented herein."

The letter also states additional "sourcing failures" in the column pertaining to two individual sources, who the group claims represent a documented conflict of interest, as well as material testimony inconsistencies. "The Times did not disclose and, on the evidence available, did not investigate," these two individuals, before publishing, the letter reads.

"The Times has previously applied its sourcing standards to compel retroactive disclosure," the letter reads. "When it was revealed that columnist David Brooks had failed to disclose paid work for an organization he wrote about, the Times acknowledged the conflict of interest, required his resignation from the paid position, and issued retroactive disclosures on previously published columns."

"The threshold in the present case is materially higher across multiple dimensions: the primary institutional source of a column making accusations of systematic sexual violence against a US-allied government was led by an individual who celebrated the terrorist massacre that is the predicate for the entire conflict, specifically denied the sexual violence the column purports to document, and appeared on Israel's own list of Hamas operatives in Europe," the letter continues. "The column's lead main victim had publicly glorified the October 7 attackers the day after the massacre - a fact undisclosed to readers. A second named source's account materially changed between a prior documented testimony and the Times version, without explanation. An expert cited to validate the column's most extreme claims had undisclosed sexual misconduct allegations involving minors. If an undisclosed consulting relationship compelled retroactive disclosure and column corrections, the cumulative sourcing failures documented above compel retraction."

EndJewHatred, a grassroots coalition comprised of multiple Jewish advocacy groups, plans to protest outside the NYT HQ located on 8th Avenue at 5 pm EST.