MattyDaddy+972

I did not expect the last public editor of the New York Times to share my essay about Nicholas Kristof, but I’m glad to receive this (non-judgmental) share: open.substack.com/pub/henmazzig/…

Tuesday: ask Mamdani's comms team—why does Rama Duwaji appear to have a Spotify account with songs about greedy Jews and how “Israel gon’ die bitch”? Any comment? Wednesday: the account is totally shut down, made private

Strange in a city with 750,000 Israelis and fabulous Israeli restaurants, she didn’t rank a single one (or even visit one?): The 100 Best Restaurants in New York City in 2026 nytimes.com/interactive/20… via @NYTimes

Much has been written about @NickKristof's latest NYT opinion column over the past 24 hours, most of it focusing on the specific claims and their sourcing, but what I think deserves most attention is something broader: how this kind of journalism, whatever its intentions, ultimately makes accountability harder to achieve rather than easier, and harms the very people it claims to champion. The principle that Israeli abuses should be investigated and condemned is not in dispute, and nobody serious is arguing otherwise. Israel is not above scrutiny, and in fact it operates under more intense international scrutiny than almost any country on earth, routinely held to standards applied nowhere else. The problem here is something different entirely: the complete collapse of evidentiary standards the moment Israel is the subject. This piece reads less like rigorous reporting and more like a catalogue of hearsay, unverifiable allegations, and activist claims stitched together into a sweeping moral indictment. Its sourcing leans heavily on Euro Med Human Rights Monitor, an organisation repeatedly criticised over extremist ties, disinformation, and deeply questionable methodology, yet treated throughout as a credible authority while its leadership openly engages in pro Hamas propaganda on X. Worse, the same ecosystem of activists and self appointed “experts” that amplifies Euro Med’s claims online increasingly feeds narratives into more established organisations and media outlets, laundering deeply contested allegations into the appearance of institutional credibility. The most severe claims are anonymous, uncorroborated, and presented in the emotional register of established fact rather than allegation, despite lacking meaningful evidentiary backing. Yet Kristof largely adopts them without serious scrutiny, publishing the piece in the Opinion section because even the already diminished evidentiary standards often applied to reporting on the Israeli Palestinian conflict would likely not suffice for it to pass as straight news reporting. This approach doesn't strengthen accountability, it actively destroys it. When every allegation is immediately inflated into systematic rape and "standard operating procedure" before any serious verification, genuine investigation becomes harder rather than easier. Real abuses, if they occurred, get buried beneath maximalist narratives so extreme that large portions of the public simply stop trusting any of it, and the people who actually suffered pay that price. It also alienates the vast majority of Israelis and Jews worldwide, including the many who are perfectly capable of criticising Israeli policy and supporting investigations into misconduct, but who understandably recoil when accusations begin resembling modernised blood libels dressed up as human rights reporting. The framing matters enormously, and so does proportionality, and so does evidence. Nor does any of this serve Palestinians. Atrocity inflation entrenches both sides deeper into defensive tribalism, and every dubious claim amplified by a prestigious outlet makes legitimate criticism easier to dismiss when it actually matters. The timing compounds everything. On a day when documented reporting on Hamas sexual violence was again circulating, the NYT chose to run an opinion column built substantially on unverifiable anonymous testimony asserting that Israelis are conducting systemic rape campaigns, not as a rigorously evidenced investigative report but as an opinion piece with the imprimatur of the paper of record. Kristof is not a naive bystander in any of this. In 2014 he used the full credibility of the NYT to repeatedly platform Somaly Mam, a Cambodian anti-trafficking activist whose harrowing personal story he championed across multiple columns, until it emerged that her backstory was substantially fabricated and he was forced to issue a public correction. When challenged this time around on his sourcing, corroboration, and methodology, he defaulted to bad faith engagement on social media rather than addressing the underlying concerns seriously. It is the same pattern, playing out again in a different context. Real journalism requires skepticism, corroboration, and restraint applied consistently regardless of the subject, and when those standards disappear the moment Israel is involved, what remains is not human rights reporting but narrative activism wearing a journalist's costume that does far more harm than good to everyone it claims to serve.

To @piersmorgan You said on your show today that assertions that some Gaza journalists were actually Hamas combatants were merely IDF claims. This is not true; dozens are now admitted by Hamas & PIJ themselves in their own martyr notices. See below, many more cased have emerged.

This whole sequence gave me a headache

Kristof’s Unbelievable Tale in today’s @wsjfreeex wsj.com/opinion/free-e…

The New York Times recently published some of the most serious allegations imaginable against Israel: claims of widespread sexual abuse and torture of Palestinian detainees. Allegations this severe do not exist in a vacuum. Under international law, claims of systematic sexual violence can trigger war-crimes investigations, sanctions campaigns, international arrest efforts, accusations of crimes against humanity, and proceedings before bodies such as the ICC. That is precisely why claims of this magnitude require the highest level of evidentiary scrutiny. Instead, serious concerns have emerged about the article's sourcing, credibility, and factual consistency. One of the central figures relied on in the article was presented to readers as a freelance journalist, but critics have since pointed to his reported history of publicly glorifying terrorists and armed groups, including individuals tied to deadly attacks against Israelis. That is not a minor biographical omission. It goes directly to credibility, motive, and the reader’s ability to evaluate whether a source is a reliable witness, an ideological actor, or both. HonestReporting identified Sami al-Sai as one such source and accused the Times of failing to disclose his prior public praise for Hamas-linked violence. The article also appears to rely on testimony that critics say materially changed over time, with later accounts introducing graphic details allegedly absent from earlier statements. No serious person should dismiss abuse allegations simply because a survivor’s account is imperfect. But journalism and legal analysis both require scrutiny when narratives evolve significantly. The questions are obvious: what changed, when did it change, was the new account corroborated, and why were material inconsistencies not disclosed to readers? That scrutiny matters because accusations of systematic sexual violence published without rigorous evidentiary safeguards risk turning journalism into a vehicle for reputational warfare rather than factual accountability. None of this means abuse allegations should be ignored. Legitimate claims must be investigated thoroughly, independently, and impartially. But the standard cannot be outrage, activism, or emotionally-charged storytelling. The standard must be evidence. When major media institutions blur the line between verified fact, allegation, advocacy, and propaganda, they do not protect victims. They erode public trust, weaken legitimate human-rights reporting, and make it harder for real victims of abuse to be believed.

Oh. The Community Notes… @NickKristof, as any decent person would recommend, you may want to surrender this as not your best work. Not sure what the standard of your other work is, but this certainly must be the worst of it. You either got seriously played, or you’re getting paid off somehow, but this is absurd and everyone knows it. Choose humility, pick up whatever dignity you have left off the floor, and apologize to your Editors, the NYT (@NYT), the entire state of Israel, and most importantly, your readers. Issue an apology like someone with a decent conscience would. You’ll be respected far more for it 10 years from now.

Amazing that they published this piece, which includes obviously farcical claims (dogs raping men?!) the day before the largest collection of evidence of Hamas's mass rapes was published. It's atrocity inversion—painting Israel with the crimes perpetrated against Israelis.

I’ve written and researched the whole seven front war since 7th October. It has been my whole professional life. I’ve written many papers and have just finished my book. I have written both positive and negative critiques of the war. All of that feels irrelevant in this context. The most meaningful thing I have done since 7th October is bear witness and relay the horrors done that day. I have seen part of the sexual crime evidence in this report (above and beyond the 47 minute reel) and it remains the most horrific thing I have seen in my life. Nothing Israel has done in Gaza comes remotely close to the horrors of 7th October. The Gaza war and 7th October don’t deserve to be in the same conversation when it comes to atrocity. No comparison. The rapes are the thing Hamas and their supporters are most scared of being exposed to the world. Every time I have written about what I have seen, 5x the usual amount of bots descend upon my replies. Abuse and outright denial. Now, the evidence I have seen, and more, is out there. When Yoav Gallant said Israel was fighting human animals in Hamas, he was absolutely correct. Read it for yourself: civilc.org/silenced-no-mo…

Absolutely horrific, and even worse than we already knew, which I didn’t think possible. Including clear evidence of appalling sex crimes by Hamas which their deluded defenders have always denied.

A while ago, I watched the infamous 47-minute video documenting the atrocities of October 7th — the one not made publicly available, to protect the privacy of the victims. The worst part of this video is not what it displays, but who is displaying it: the perpetrators themselves. Gleefully. Sadistically. Unabashedly. Most of the footage was filmed by Hamas terrorists on their GoPro bodycams, some also by ordinary Gazan civilians on their cellphones. Even the Nazis tried to cover up their atrocities, but Hamas brags about theirs for the entire world to see. The killers are euphoric throughout the massacre, and their relentless, ecstatic cries of "Allahu Akbar" (punctuated by the occasional "Kill the Jew!") are simply nauseating. Some images are seared into my memory forever. I will never forget the two boys in their underwear — one with his eye socket hanging out of his face — asking his brother whether he thinks they're going to die, while the Hamas monster who had just thrown a grenade in their saferoom helps himself to a drink from their fridge, taking a casual break from the slaughter. Neither will I ever forget the terrorists playing football with a severed head. Or the Thai migrant worker whose head is viciously hacked off with a garden hoe — another "Zionist colonizer" getting what he deserved, right?quillette.substack.com/p/what-did-you… Or the throngs of Gazans crowding around pickup trucks loaded with the mutilated corpses of Jewish women, filming and spitting on the bodies. Or the woman in Kibbutz Mefalsim, crouching and begging in vain for mercy. There is some evidence of sexual violence in the video — the charred corpse of a young woman with her legs splayed and her genitals exposed — but not much. Apparently even Hamas draws a line somewhere: they are not as proud of raping Jewish women as they are of murdering them. Or, more likely, they simply didn't want to embarrass the delicate sensibilities of their legions of useful idiots in the West. But yes — there was rape. Not "rape" in scare quotes, as the apologists would have it, but sadistic, murderous sexual violence, documented in a new damning new report by The Civil Commission, an independent Israeli women's rights NGO. (video summary here: youtube.com/watch?v=K7fJuz…) Across its 180 pages, the report describes "a recurring pattern of rape and gang rape; sexual torture; mutilation; targeted shooting to the face, head and genital area; forced nudity; binding and restraint; genital burning; objects inserted into intimate areas; post-mortem sexual humiliation; and execution during or after sexual assault." And it was premeditated and organized. The terrorists crossing into Israel carried printed Arabic-to-Hebrew phrasebooks with handy expressions like "take off your pants," "lie down," "spread your legs," and "don't make trouble." I wonder why they expected to need those particular phrases? I know one thing: no civilized country on earth would tolerate the existence of an organization like Hamas on its border after October 7th. Not one. This includes every self-righteous Westerner currently lecturing Israel from thousands of kilometres away, without an inch of skin in the game. dailymail.com/news/article-1…

A harrowing look at how Hamas militants and their allies raped, assaulted and sexually tortured their victims during and after the October 7, 2023 terror attack on southern Israel “to maximize pain and suffering," according to a new report cnn.com/2026/05/12/mid…

I understand that Noam heard the anti-Israeli chants from members of the audience, he tried to ignore them by focusing on the Israeli flags in the crowd. He did an absolutely brilliant job! What a performance 🇮🇱

@EliLake A Jew hating hit job from @NickKristof, typical approach from @nytimes for Jewish-American Heritage Month. Oy vey!

Just received a copy of Ehud Olmert’s statement on the Kristof column he sent to NYT. Full story coming soon. “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. I have no knowledge supporting these claims as I said to Mr. Kristof. Therefore, the positioning of my quote after pages of such allegations misrepresents my views."

The NYT published an opinion column accusing Israel of systematic sexual abuse the night before a major report documenting Hamas’ October 7 sexual atrocities was released. Not an investigation, but an opinion piece built heavily on claims from Euro-Med Monitor, whose leadership has documented ties to Hamas networks. If abuse is happening, it should be investigated seriously. But regurgitating absurd claims such as that “Israel trained dogs to rape Palestinians” does not help victims of sexual violence. It makes a mockery of them. Shame on the New York Times.

Hey @NickKristof Was it deliberate that your @nytimes piece, full of propaganda, pro-Hamas lies and stories of “rape dogs” - was published one day before a major evidence-laden report on the Oct. 7 rapes was released? Or just unfortunate coincidence? Asking for a friend

@SethAMandel Oy vey

Happy Jewish American Heritage Month everyone