Mark Goldfeder responds to Nicholas Kristof & NYT

Mark Goldfeder

Enough with the evasion. The criticism was never that sexual abuse allegations should be ignored. The criticism is that you published grotesque, incendiary claims while leaning on sources and allegations that demanded extraordinary scrutiny, not sanctimonious hand-waving.

Kristof interviewed 14 people. He says that in each case, he corroborated the account through either a witness, a family member, a lawyer, a social worker, or a prior public statement by the same person. Those are not all the same thing. In his original piece he admits that finding witnesses was hard; “more commonly” he spoke to people victims had confided in. “In other cases, it was not possible.” So his new defense, i.e. they were all independently corroborated, does not hold up for 2 reasons: 1. it contradicts the process that he himself described last week; and 2. the things he describes (a prior statement for example) is not independent corroboration at all. Note that he very carefully omits just how many actual witnesses he spoke to, or for which claims. And note that he never actually uses the words independent corroboration, because he can’t. He just lets you assume that is what he means because of course that should be the line. “Deeply reported” is a made up phrase. “Corroborated when possible” is not corroborated enough to support claims of a “pattern of widespread” sexual violence. Then there is the Euro-Med problem, and the deeper sourcing problem it represents. Kristof acknowledges the organization made statements in support of the October 7 attacks. His response is that he did not rely on Euro-Med alone. That is a dodge. The question was not whether Euro-Med was his only source. The question was whether, knowing those statements, the Times found it appropriate to cite the organization’s data at all and whether the column disclosed that context to readers. It did not. What readers weren’t told is that Euro-Med’s chairman has publicly called for “a million October 7ths,” is affiliated with Hamas, and has peddled claims that Israel harvests organs, allegations so discredited they serve as the old benchmark for anti-Israel fabrication. Hold my beer, says Kristof. I have a dog-shaped bridge to sell you. Nor were readers told that when Euro-Med itself, in 2024, pushed the claim about Israel training dogs to rape prisoners, the organization did not independently corroborate the allegation. It made it up. Kristof cites the org that manufactured the claim as evidence for the claim itself. That is not independent sourcing. That is circular. How is he a reporter? But Euro-Med is not even the worst of it. Sami al-Sai, one of Kristof’s named sources and a central witness in the piece, celebrated October 7 the day after it happened, praising “heroic fighters” operating under the Hamas banner while Israelis were still identifying their dead. He admitted to compiling lists of Palestinian prisoners for Hamas, work that Palestinian intelligence characterized as recruitment for a terrorist organization, and defended himself by arguing there was “no law that forbids journalists from working with political organizations.” The Israeli Supreme Court, reviewing his detention petition, found credible evidence of his affiliation with Palestinian terror groups and denied his release. The Times presented him to readers as an independent freelance journalist. None of his background appeared in the column. There is also the small matter of what al-Sai’s testimony actually said — and when. Shortly after his detention, he filed a petition with the Israeli Supreme Court. He complained about the quality of the food. He did not mention sexual assault. Not once. By the time he spoke to B’Tselem months later, the account had grown to include guards inserting “something hard” into his body. By the time he spoke to Kristof, it had become dramatically more elaborate still — vivid, cinematic details entirely absent from every prior telling. The pathetic defense piece acknowledges that its central sources “provided additional details over time” and offers this as reassurance. It should not be. Details that emerge later, after a source has had time to develop a narrative and acquire an audience, are a reason for heightened scrutiny, not reduced scrutiny. AT THE VERY LEAST, address the issue. And yet: The Times never explains the discrepancies, or asks why the most extreme details appear only in their version, or why al-Sai never mentioned the assault to the court deciding whether to free him, the one forum where such an allegation would have been immediately consequential. The same applies to Issa Amro. In a February 2024 Washington Post interview, Amro described being threatened with sexual assault during a ten-hour detention. In the Times column, he appears as an established victim of sexual assault, part of a documented pattern of Israeli abuse. That is not elaboration. That is a categorical shift — from threat to act — and the Times offers no explanation for it. No new evidence cited. No independent verification described. No acknowledgment that the two accounts differ. Kristof never asks. Because Krisof doesn’t care. The Olmert citation deserves its own treatment. Kristof quotes the former Israeli prime minister saying “Do I believe it happens? Definitely” and “There are war crimes committed every day in the territories.” What Kristof did not tell readers is that Olmert told Kristof himself that he had no specific knowledge of the abuses alleged. After publication, Olmert issued a public statement: “Mr. Kristof’s article includes claims of extraordinary gravity: that Israeli authorities have directed the rape of children, that dogs have been used as instruments of sexual assault, that systematic sexual torture is state policy. I did not validate these claims.” When a columnist’s own quoted source publicly accuses him of misrepresentation after publication, that is not a detail the Times can wave away by noting that editors found no errors. That is an error. That is the error. How the hell do you claim there was no error? The dog rape allegation receives the most careful non-answer in the Times’ non-defense. Kristof says the source confided his account to the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel before speaking to him, that the Pinochet regime allegedly used dogs this way, and that peer-reviewed medical literature documents rectal injuries from canine penetration. None of these things constitute corroboration. First and once again, an advocacy organization receiving an allegation is not independent verification of it. Second, the existence of analogous atrocities in Chile does not establish that this atrocity occurred in Israel. Third, the medical literature Kristof cites describes injuries resulting from human-initiated bestiality — not trained assault animals deployed as instruments of state policy. These are non sequiturs dressed as sourcing. The Times calls this rigorous. It is, in fact, bullshit. The timing question also has no real answer. The Times denies knowing in advance about the Civil Commission’s report documenting Hamas’s systematic sexual violence on October 7. The Israeli Foreign Ministry says otherwise. Reporters I have spoken with at other news sites have shown me the embargoed copies and the timeline they were given. It boggles the mind to believe that every news outlet except the NY Times had this info. The defense never addresses the most basic asymmetry. Kristof advanced a claim not that some Israeli guards sometimes behave illegally, which is true of every prison system, but that sexual violence is standard operating procedure, a systemic state policy. That is an extraordinary claim. It requires extraordinary evidence. Instead, the Times offers anonymous sources with no dates, no locations, no named perpetrators, and no footage reviewed despite the fact that Israeli prisons are extensively surveilled. It offers named sources whose testimony evolved dramatically over time, whose prior accounts contradict the versions told to Kristof, and whose backgrounds the Times concealed from readers. It offers an organization whose chairman advocates for Hamas and whose prior output includes claims the Times would never publish about any other country. When asked to defend this, the Times answers a bunch of charges nobody made. The criticism is not: “Never investigate abuse allegations against Palestinians.” It is: you published an explosive claim of widespread Israeli sexual violence, including unbelievable allegations, and you have not shown the evidentiary basis for making that claim at that scale. Not: do Palestinians deserve dignity? Of course they do. Not: should abuse claims be investigated? Obviously. Not: can Israeli officials ever be criticized? Please. The question is whether the Times had the evidence to tell millions of readers that Israel engaged in a pattern of widespread sexual violence, including some of the most lurid allegations imaginable. If it is “deeply reported” then show the work. “Believe victims” is not a substitute for journalism. “Human rights groups say” is not a substitute for corroboration. “This is painful to discuss” is not a substitute for evidence. And “Israel is trying to silence me” is not a response to the charge that you published a modern blood libel without meeting the burden that such an accusation requires. The dodge is obvious. Kristof wants to move the conversation from “Did you prove this?” to “Why are you so upset that I asked?” Well that trick is over. When you accuse a democratic state and its soldiers of systematic rape, you do not get credit for moral courage merely because the accusation is ugly. The uglier the allegation, the higher the obligation is to verify it. Especially when the accusation lands in a world where Jews are already being demonized, and every unverified atrocity claim is instantly weaponized against Jewish students, businesses, synagogues, and communities. The false symmetry with October 7 is perhaps the most morally obscene part. The obvious subtext is: if we report Hamas sexual violence, we must also report Israeli sexual violence with comparable force, otherwise we are hypocrites. No. That is not how evidence works. The question is not whether every side can be accused of something awful, it is whether the evidence supports the charge. Oct 7 sexual violence was tied to a mass invasion, murdered bodies, eyewitness accounts, forensic and investigative materials, and a terror organization that took videos and published them. The Times should really read that whole report. Bottom line, Kristof’s answer is no answer at all. Nobody asked whether sexual abuse allegations should be investigated. Of course they should. The question is whether he had the evidence to accuse Israel of a widespread campaign of rape and sexual violence. “Deeply reported” is not proof. “Corroborated when possible” is not proof. Advocacy-group claims are not proof. And moral throat-clearing is not proof. The uglier the accusation, the higher the burden. Kristof keeps trying to turn a demand for evidence into a lack of empathy. That is the dodge, and it should not work. You do not get to publish a blood libel in the language of human rights and then call it courage when people ask for the evidence. Kristof did not answer the criticism. He changed the subject. And when the accusation is this grave, changing the subject is not journalism, it is a confession that you are not really a journalist.