They Knew. They Chose Not to Tell You.
I am the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. I was born in Israel. I have spent my career working to ensure that the Jewish people not only survive the present but thrive in the future. And I have learned, over and over, that one of the greatest threats to that future is not only the hatred directed at us, it is the willingness of powerful institutions to look away from that hatred, or worse, to invert it.
This week, I saw that inversion play out in real time, in the pages of the world’s most influential newspapers. Two stories appeared within a single day – one in the New York Times and the other in the Daily Mail. Together, they reveal something deeper, not only about journalism or this war, but about whether Jewish lives, Jewish pain, and Jewish truth are permitted to matter in the public square. The New York Times was offered the Civil Commission on October 7th, Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children report. They allegedly declined to cover it.
The Report They Didn’t Want
On Tuesday, May 12, the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children released a landmark report called “Silenced No More.” It is the most comprehensive investigation ever conducted into the sexual atrocities of October 7. Two years of independent work. More than 430 interviews with survivors, witnesses, first responders, returned hostages, and experts. Over 10,000 photographs and videos reviewed, more than 1,800 hours of footage, including material so brutal the researchers themselves acknowledged it was “almost unbearable.”
The findings are unambiguous. Sexual violence was not incidental to October 7. It was deliberate. Coordinated. Embedded in the attack itself. Hamas and its collaborators used rape, gang rape, sexual torture, and mutilation as a calculated strategy across homes, shelters, roads, military bases, and the Nova music festival. They filmed it. They sent the videos directly to the families of the victims. They continued the abuse against hostages held in Gaza, including, the report documents, two minors who were forced to commit sexual acts on each other in captivity.
The report was endorsed by Hillary Clinton. By former UN genocide adviser Alice Wairimu Nderitu. By former UN Special Court chief prosecutor Professor David Crane. By former Israeli Supreme Court president Aharon Barak. Every piece of evidence was cross-referenced, geolocated, and corroborated. The lead author, Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, built it this way on purpose because she knew, from two years of watching, that deniers would come for every fact. The New York Times was allegedly offered this report weeks in advance. They said they were not interested.
The Column They Chose Instead
On the eve of the report’s release, the New York Times published a column by Nicholas Kristof titled “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians.” The column alleged that Israel has created a system where sexual violence is routine and widespread. It claimed Palestinian prisoners were raped. It even included an accusation that a Gaza journalist was assaulted by a police dog, supposedly trained by Israel for this purpose.
I want to be careful here because I believe in precision. If there are documented cases of abuse in Israeli prisons, Israel should not be immune, and those cases deserve serious investigation. I say this as someone who loves Israel, who was shaped by Israel, and who has spent years building a movement dedicated to its future. Love does not require the suspension of honesty.
But Kristof’s column was not serious journalism. His main NGO source, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, was founded by someone photographed with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Its chairman dismissed the testimonies of Israeli women raped on October 7 as “fabricated lies,” the same chairman whose organization Kristof relied on as an authority on sexual violence. The column’s most prominent named witness, described as a “freelance journalist,” publicly celebrated the October 7 attacks and praised jihadi groups on social media. His account included new, dramatic details, such as the carrot incident and the dog, which did not appear in his earlier testimony to another human rights group. The same people who spent two years denying the rape of Israeli women now ask us to accept anonymous accounts from Hamas-linked sources. This was never about concern for sexual violence. It was about advancing a narrative.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was quoted in the column as saying he was “not surprised” by the abuse accounts, issued a statement that his words had been misrepresented by their positioning alongside pages of graphic allegations. The media watchdog HonestReporting called it “journalistic malpractice.” Israel’s Foreign Ministry called it “one of the worst blood libels ever to appear in the modern press.” The Times defended Kristof by citing his Pulitzer Prizes. As if credentials were a substitute for verified sources.
The Timing Is the Story
Consider what this means. The paper of record knew that the most thorough documentation of Hamas’s sexual crimes against Jewish women and children was about to be released. Their editorial decision was that this was not a story worth telling.
This is not an accident. It is a pattern. For two and a half years, the testimony of October 7 survivors has been doubted, minimized, and ignored by major institutions. Women who endured rape and torture have been forced to prove it repeatedly to a world that had already chosen its sympathies. The Civil Commission built its report with geolocated evidence, cross-referenced testimonies, and forensic corroboration because it understood that, for these victims, the standard of proof would always be higher. Dr. Elkayam-Levy said it clearly: “Recognition is part of justice. Believing the victim is part of justice.” Our women have waited two and a half years for that recognition.
What This Means for the Jewish Future
I lead an organization called the Jewish Future Promise. Our mission is simple: to ensure that the Jewish people not only survive, but thrive, for generations to come. We ask Jews to commit to allocating at least half of their charitable giving to Jewish causes and/or the State of Israel. But the work is never only about dollars and estate plans. It is about what we pass forward, what stories we tell, what we refuse to let be erased, what we insist on remembering.
This week was a test. The story of what Hamas did to our people on October 7, now documented with more evidence than almost any atrocity in recent history, is at risk of being overshadowed by a column built on sources tied to those who committed the crimes. A paper that once claimed to print “all the news that is fit to print” decided that the truth about Jewish victims was not fit to print, but an accusation about trained rape dogs was.
I want to speak directly to the Jewish community, especially to younger people watching these narratives take shape: your feelings are justified. The confusion you feel, the sense that the world has turned upside down, that victims are being cast as perpetrators, that evidence is judged differently depending on who was harmed, this is not paranoia. It is a clear reading of reality.
The answer is not to withdraw. It is not to abandon institutions or the public conversation. The answer is to know the facts, to hold them, and to refuse to let them be buried. The Civil Commission’s report exists because Dr. Elkayam-Levy and her team refused to let the evidence be denied, erased, or forgotten. That same refusal to accept erasure as neutrality, to treat silence as anything other than a choice, is what this moment requires from all of us.
When the New York Times publishes anonymous accounts from Hamas-affiliated organizations, including a witness who publicly celebrated October 7, and presents them as equivalent to a 290-page verified report on genocide, it is not journalism. It is narrative.
The question every reader should ask is why the standard of evidence for Jewish victims is higher than for those accused of abusing them. Why were 430 interviews, 10,000 photographs, and two years of independent investigation not enough for the Times, while 14 anonymous accounts from a Hamas-linked NGO were given a homepage video?
That double standard is not accidental. It is a choice. Choices like this have consequences, for truth, for justice, and for the future we are building. The women of October 7 waited two and a half years for their stories to be told with the weight they deserve. Now, that report exists. It has been endorsed by respected voices in human rights and international law. It cannot be denied, minimized, or buried, as long as we refuse to let it be. That refusal is our work. It has always been our work.
