Hamas is winning the propaganda war against Israel. And it's picked up an important ally in The New York Times, supposedly America's newspaper of record.
Israel's founding document established a Jewish state in 1948 "for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex."
In contrast, Hamas was established not to found a state, but to destroy one. Its 1988 Covenant declares that the only solution to the Palestinian issue is holy war and quotes the Muslim Brotherhood's founder: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it."
The rape, butchery and murder of its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel furthered Hamas' aim. Founded with a mission of genocide, Hamas maliciously asserts Israel is the one guilty of it. Yet, Israel's Arab population has increased 13 times since 1948, and Gaza's Arab population has grown sixfold since 1967. Meanwhile, the combined Jewish population in the Arab countries of Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen has plummeted, from 850,000 in 1948 to under 4,000 today, a 99.5% decline.
The New York Times has repeatedly supported Hamas propaganda with misleading stories. Here are three egregious examples.
First, on Oct. 17, 2023, the Times ran a story headlined "Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say." Hamas' claim, validated by the Times, triggered protests in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt, Tunisia and the West Bank. Jordan's King Abdullah canceled a summit meeting with President Joe Biden and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el Sisi. Saudi Arabia, which had been moving closer to recognizing Israel's right to exist, now condemned the country.
Six days later, the paper published a nonapology apology acknowledging the paper "should have taken more care with the initial presentation, and been more explicit about what information could be verified." Two weeks later a Times columnist admitted that the Hamas-controlled health ministry had "deliberately told the world a false story." Physical evidence strongly indicated the missile was fired by Gazan forces, but the damage was already done.
Second, less than two years later, the Times ran a front-page photo of a Gazan mother holding a starving infant, Mohammed al-Mutawaq. The mother said he'd been "healthy" before suffering from malnutrition. It turns out the child suffered from cerebral palsy, a genetic disorder that drastically affected his development. The Times also cropped out his healthy-looking brother from the photo. The Times editors issued another nonapology apology reporting it had "updated our story to add context about (Mohammed's) pre-existing health problems." And again, that admission was too late to do much about the global outrage. As Jonathan Swift, the author of "Gulliver's Travels," wrote three centuries ago, "Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it."
Third, on May 11 of this year, the Times published an opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof headlined, "The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians." Kristof asserted, "Palestinians have recounted to me a pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, women and even children." He admits, "There is no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes." However, he then goes on to write, "Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based advocacy group often critical of Israel, concludes that Israel employs 'systematic sexual violence' that is 'widely practiced as part of an organized state policy.'" He also cited reports that the Israelis had taught dogs to rape prisoners.
It can come as no surprise that Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is headed by Ramy Abdu, who has longstanding ties to Hamas. In 2025 he wrote that Israel deserves "a million October 7ths." For years, he'd spread stories of Israelis using dogs to rape prisoners, occurrences that experts in canine behavior have deemed highly unlikely if not impossible. The article also relies on anonymous sources whose claims cannot be independently verified or cross-examined.
In the 2009 documentary "Reporter," Kristof himself said: "The challenge is to feel passion and outrage without losing your skepticism. Over the years, for example, I've learned that victims of human rights abuses lie and exaggerate as much as perpetrators do. It's very easy if you're passionate and outraged to listen to victims and not double-check and triple-check and listen to the other side." In this case, Kristof forgot his own lesson.
Multitudes of others agreed with the 2009 Kristof if not the 2026 version. Sitting federal judge Roy K. Altman wrote: "Kristof's article... disregards basic rules of evidence gathering; it refuses to investigate the opposing side's views; and it ignores logic and common sense." Former U.S. Special Envoy Deborah Lipstadt asked, "Have they — the NY Times — no sense of decency and journalistic responsibility?"
It cannot be a coincidence the Times ran the Kristof piece the day before the Civil Commission, an independent Israeli women's rights group, released "Silenced No More." This 298-page report was based on testimonies, photos and videos documenting the sexual violence committed by Hamas during its Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Endorsed by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton among others, the report found, "Victims endured brutal acts, including burning, mutilation, rape, restraining, forced insertion of objects into the genitalia, shootings to the faces and genital area, killings and abuses in front of family members, and executions." Kristof's unverified reporting pushed the Civil Commission's report, which the Times knew was coming, to the bottom of web pages and the inside pages of newspapers.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blusters he is about to sue Kristof and the Times in a case that has no chance of being heard under American law. (Better he should request an investigation by the Israeli judiciary.) Demands abound that the Times apologize for Kristof's story. Why bother? What will be remembered is the original story, not any weak apologies that follow.
In the case of the hospital bombing, then the starving child and now the alleged state policy of prisoner abuse, The New York Times printed untruths. As Ian Fleming's villain Auric Goldfinger said to James Bond: "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."
The word for what the Times is publishing is not news. It is propaganda.
A renaissance man, Keith Raffel has served as the senior counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, started a successful internet software company, and had six books published including five novels and a collection of his columns. He currently spends the academic year as a resident scholar at Harvard. You can learn more about him at keithraffel.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at creators.com.
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