The Making of the Kristof Column — with Matti Friedman

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Content warning: This episode includes discussion of sexual violence

How do unverified claims become a New York Times column?

On Monday, the New York Times published an opinion column by Nicholas Kristof titled "The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians" — an explicit attempt to draw a moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel by alleging that both equally engage in systematic sexual violence. The piece, based on interviews with 14 unnamed Palestinians, cited a Geneva-based NGO calling Israeli sexual abuse a "standard operating procedure" and described, among other things, trained dogs used to sexually assault prisoners. Kristof quoted former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appearing to validate the charges - but Olmert subsequently issued a statement clarifying that he did not, in fact, confirm the column's most serious claims, including that Israeli authorities directed the rape of children or that systematic sexual torture is state policy.

The morning after Kristof's column appeared, an Israeli civil commission released a 300-page report - built on more than 10,000 photographs, thousands of hours of video, and over 400 testimonies - concluding that Hamas's sexual violence on October 7th was systematic, widespread, and deliberate. The New York Times, which had been told the report was coming months in advance, published it nearly 24 hours after running Kristof's op-ed.

Reporters who spent the day going through Kristof's column claim by claim found it largely unverifiable - no dates, no locations, no names - recycled from dubious sources and in many cases almost certainly false. The deeper question this episode asks is not simply whether the column is fair, but how something like it gets published in the paper of record at all: what is the pipeline, from NGO to press release to Pulitzer Prize winner's byline, that turns unverified claims into fact? And why does that pipeline flow so reliably in one direction?

To answer that, Dan is joined by Matti Friedman, a former AP reporter and editor in Jerusalem, and author of the 2014 Atlantic essay "What the Media Gets Wrong About Israel" - who has spent years documenting the specific mechanisms by which NGOs hostile to Israel have shaped, and in some cases dictated, Western coverage of this conflict.

In this episode:

02:12 - What Kristof’s column alleged

09:39 - Which claims are documented, unverifiable, or implausible

14:21 - How NGO claims become mainstream coverage

17:21 - Euro-Med, activist sourcing, and the New York Times

23:47 - Matti Friedman’s warning about Western media

27:21 - The October 7th sexual violence report and the timing problem

This episode was sponsored by Birthright: Invest in the Jewish future today at onetripchangeseverything.com.

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Credits: Ilan Benatar, Brittany Cohen, Ava Weiner, Martin Huergo, Mariangeles Burgos, and Yuval Semo