Adam Kredo writes for the Washington Free Beacon about the latest case of journalistic malfeasance from one of the worst characters in the legacy media.
Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times‘s famously credulous columnist, may finally be facing his Waterloo after he published a 3,500-word column on Monday making lurid and bizarre allegations of “widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, women and even children.”
The exposé—which readers began picking apart within moments of publication—recalls other Kristof follies over the last 25 years, including botched reporting on the 2001 anthrax attacks and child sex trafficking (which have led to Kristof apologizing and correcting himself). Through thick and thin, as many other columnists cycled in and out of the Times—even after an abortive attempt to run for governor of Oregon while living primarily in New York City—Kristof has persisted.
Experts and analysts say that Kristof’s new opus—which accuses the Israelis of violating Palestinian detainees with carrots and having a trained dog somehow rape men—makes little effort to verify claims that relied heavily on a Hamas-tied advocacy group and a former Palestinian prisoner who has publicly celebrated terrorism against Israel and has shifted his story multiple times.
Kristof—who famously penned a lengthy mea culpa in 2014 after his articles about a Cambodian activist who was trafficked in brothels as a child turned out to be fictitious—has a history of embracing dubious narratives from his perch at the Times‘s opinion pages, which are edited separately from the news pages, though most readers will not realize the distinction. The two-time Pulitzer-winning author’s Monday column claimed that Israel has “built a security apparatus where sexual violence” is encouraged, and contains the kind of sensational details that are hallmarks of Kristof’s much-contested reporting on sex trafficking and other sex crimes over the years.
The column—and subsequent fallout from those challenging Kristof’s narrative as a “blood libel” against Jews—will likely raise new questions about the credibility of the Times‘s reporting on Israel, and the generally anti-Israel stance of its opinion desk.
