Gary Willig is a veteran member of the Arutz Sheva news staff.
Do Nicholas Kristof and his employers at the New York Times want to see more attacks on Israeli civilians and on innocent Jews around the world? They sure act like that’s exactly what they want to see.
Kristof committed a crime against journalism in his latest attack on Israel. Without bothering to verify a single source, he spread a blood libel that is guaranteed to be used to justify more attacks on Jews. At a time when Jews are being stabbed and whipped on the streets of London, when synagogues in New York are targeted by genocidal maniacs, he chose to publish blatant lies about the Jewish State that are only believable to those who are certifiable or see Jews as genetically evil.
The most egregious crime against the idea of truth of whiicih Kristof is guilty is spreading the ridiculous lie that Israel trains dogs to rape Arab prisoners, not only a lie but a biological impossibility. Yes, he actually put that canard in print. This is a conspiracy theory that was rightly laughed at by all intelligent observers for its absurdity and impossibility, until the “paper of record" decided to put its stamp of approval on the latest antisemitic blood libel.
What was Kristof’s primary source? 14 anonymous people, all of whom could easily have been lying with the quality of the “reporting," and the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a pro-Hamas conspiracy theorist hate group whose members the Israeli Defense Ministry has identified as Hamas operatives. It is run by people who were responsible for spreading the libels about organ theft in Gaza, who supported the October 7 massacre and denied the since-proven rapes of helpless Israeli women during the massacre.
This organization has made other absurd claims, such as attempting to spread the lie that the IDF has used science fiction weapons to vaporize the bodies of Gazans in an attempt to explain why there has not been any actual evidence of the fake “genocide" in Gaza.
This is the level and credibility of sourcing that is apparently acceptable nowadays at the New York Times. As long as the target is Jews, no lie is too outrageous or obviously fake. Every blood libel is fit to print. Jews are guilty even after being proven innocent, and Hamas is innocent even after being proven guilty.
How bad is Kristof’s “reporting?" Middle East analyst Eitan Fischberger called it “evil Hamas propaganda that would make Goebbels blush." Former U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism under the Biden Administration wondered in response to the piece: “Have they, the NY Times, no sense of decency and journalistic responsibility?"
This pattern is the same every time. From the fake “Jenin massacre" of 2002, the rush to parrot the Hamas lies after an Islamic Jihad rocket struck the parking lot of the Al Ahli hospital, the fake “expose" claiming that IDF snipers were shooting children, the deliberately misleading photographs of children with preexisting conditions to create a fake narrative of starvation, the left-wing media, and the New York Times in particular, is addicted to spreading blood libels against Israel and Jews.
The idea of journalistic integrity is never in play when the chance to lie about Israel is presented. Everyone who wants to murder Jews is to be believed without question, no matter how many times they lie about everything, while Jews are always suspect, the facts be damned.
The worst part of it is, they know that this contributes to the hostile environment Jews face around the world. They know that their amplification of blood libels plays a role in the attacks on synagogues, the stabbings, and the shootings. And they do it anyway. They lie with no regard for the victims of their lies, as if the attempt to bomb a Jewish preschool in Michigan or the massacre of Jews on an Australian beach is a small or worthwhile price to pay for catering to the Jew-hater demographic.
When the Times abandons every principle of journalism, let alone investigative journalism, when it reports lie after lie, when it refuses to ever learn after being caught spreading so many libels because it refuses to ever consider that genocidal Jew haters might have an interest in bending the truth even a little, that is more than an innocent mistake.
That is a malice so acute that it poisons every word that is published. That is a malice that has no regard for the lives of the victims who are targeted by the people who use those lies to justify their violence.
That is a malice in support of all who want to kill the Jews.
As Eve Barlow wrote: "Today, at least three journalists at the New York Times should lose their jobs for turning the Jewish state that survived October 7 into some ghoulish world-manipulating Satan. Their current edition will be paid for in Jewish blood."