Context or Content in Responding to Kristof in NYTimes
Regarding Nicholas Kristof’s recent, May 11 New York Times column, “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/opinion/israel-palestinians-sexual-violence.html?unlocked_article_code=1.i1A.XHJF.Trv8oS6TBv3J&smid=em-share .)
Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times column of May 11, 2026 addresses alleged abuse, including sexual abuse, against Palestinian men, women, and children by prison guards, police, and settlers. The content of the column is disturbing. My rabbi gave a sermon about the column, correctly saying that we must speak out against the abuses. She acknowledged in the beginning of her sermon the fraught timing of the column, its blood libel, and its questionable sources, but these issues were raised in passing, effectively dismissed as inconsequential to the main allegations of the column.
I cannot disagree with the conclusions of the sermon, that we should speak out against abuse, yet I found myself uncomfortable and thinking about puzzle pieces. How do we put puzzle pieces together to tell a story? Which is the story we want to tell—the timing and blood libel of Kristof’s column and the further undermining of the impact of October 7 and support for Israel? Or, our moral responsibility to Palestinian prisoners and residents in the West Bank to be free from abuse by guards, soldiers, and settlers? I would have put the puzzle pieces together differently, yet each are important stories. To borrow from Yehudah Amichai’s compelling poem “Tourists”[1] – “… redemption will come only if their guide tells them, “You see that arch from the Roman period? It’s not important: but next to it, left and down a bit, there sits a man who’s bought fruit and vegetables for his family” – I think both the arch and the man have a story.
Timing: Kristof’s column was published one day before the release of the Civil Commission’s report, “Silenced No More,” documenting the Hamas attack of October 7 and its sexual violence. (The report is the result of over two years’ work by Cochav Elkayam Levy and her team, formerly called The Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children. For the report, see https://www.civilc.org/silenced-no-more.) I think this timing was by ugly design, seeking to relate the story of abuse of Palestinians to the abuse of Israeli women on October 7, as if there is parity in the two. The conclusion in Kristof’s column was that Hamas inflicted horrific abuse on Israeli women but “this now happens daily to Palestinians.” This makes explicit my assumptions about the timing. According to Kristoff, whatever happened on October 7 was very sad, but old news. This is now, and abuses are going on right now against Palestinians. Even the title of the column is taken from our lament about the silence we experienced in response to October 7. The attempt is to overwhelm our story before it is even told, to seize control of the telling of our story and, thereby, diminish it. This is an old story too.
The blood libel: The allegations were made that a dog mounted a man and that dogs are being trained to sexually attack humans. (Of course, this raises the questions, who are the trainers? And on whom are they trained? These questions alone undermine the credibility of the charge.) I call these allegations “blood libel” because they are irrational, defying reason and experience, designed to turn people against Jews or Israelis. Here I am borrowing Gavin Langmuir’s definition of irrational thought as ideas that conflict with empirical evidence and with reason.[2] No one has reported participating in or being invited to train animals to mount humans.
Yet another point raises skepticism about the truth of the allegations, both as to the abuse and the number of victims: the absence of information about the injuries. Cutting blood supply to the penis or scrotum can soon result in serious, permanent injury.[3] Yet no injuries were described by the alleged victims. No hospitals are cited for the number of related injuries they have seen, which would have tended to prove the allegations.
Returning to Amichai’s imagery, the context is the arch’s story; the abuse is the man’s story. Abuse and sexual violence against Palestinians by prison guards, soldiers, and settlers is unacceptable. Full stop.
Given the concerns about the veracity and good faith of Kristof’s column, context deserved more time than content. Context gives us tools for evaluating stories about Jews or Israel so we know how to evaluate allegations, how to respond appropriately to them, and how to answer good-faith questions. People of good faith will have questions, and we need to treat the questions with respect.
As to content, I agree with Haviv Rettig Gur, we must address any mistreatment of prisoners and violent behavior by the settlers, whatever the truth or bad-faith timing of Kristof’s column. (See Haviv Rettig Gur, “Ask Haviv Anything,” Episode 115, May 12, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNfLVk3Kjvg .) Without a doubt, there is abuse in Israeli prisons as there is in any prison around the world—in the U.S.; in El Salvador, to where the U.S. is sending detainees; and in Arab countries. And we know there is settler violence. Any abuse must stop, and people should be held accountable, everywhere.
We can hold two truths at once: the column was intended to injure Israel, and abuse of prisoners and Palestinians by prison guards, soldiers, and settlers is unacceptable and deserves our criticism.
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[1] “Tourists,” by Yehuda Amichai, https://matthewsalomon.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/yehuda-amichai-tourists/ .
[2] Gavin Langmuir, History, Religion, and Antisemitism (1990, Los Angeles and Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press), Chapters 13, “Religious Irrationality,” p. 252.
[3] “Penile Zipper and Ring Injuries,” by Stephen W. Leslie, Hussain Sajjad, and Roger S. Taylor, found in the National Center for Biotechnology Information of the National Library of Medicine (an official website of the U.S. government), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK441886/
