Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times column alleging widespread Israeli sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners was certain to generate intense debate and scrutiny, given the sensitivities involved in covering such a highly charged subject.

But after it was published on Monday, his opinion piece, headlined “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” has faced particularly heated backlash, including accusations of antisemitism and claims Kristof relied on discredited sources to advance his message.

Kristof, a veteran Times opinion columnist who has frequently reported on atrocities in far-flung locales, argued that Israeli leaders have ignored what he calls a well-documented pattern of sexual violence against Palestinians, even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “rightly” beseeched “civilized leaders” to “speak up” after Hamas was found to have engaged in a campaign of gender-based rape and brutalization targeting women during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.

Citing recent interviews with 14 Palestinian victims, including men and women, some of whose accounts he says he corroborated, Kristof relays a number of graphically detailed stories implicating members of the Israeli security forces and settlers whom he claims have escaped accountability.

Despite the direct testimonies he presented, critics have countered with a range of rebuttals, claiming that he drew a false equivalence between Israel and Hamas, that his column overstated the existence of alleged misconduct and that his broader assessment rests on questionable data and sources that weaken his central thesis.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was quoted in the column as saying he was not surprised to hear about accounts of sexual violence, also wrote in a statement to the Times obtained by the journalist Eli Lake that “the positioning” of his comments “after pages of such allegations misrepresents my views.”

Meanwhile, Israel’s Foreign Ministry, in a social media post on Monday, dismissed Kristof’s column as “one of the worst blood libels ever to appear in the modern press,” saying it “will fight these lies with the truth.”

On Tuesday, echoing others who took issue with the column, the ministry said that Kristof had referenced a report by a Geneva-based NGO, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, whose founder “has documented ties to senior Hamas leaders,” raising questions about the accuracy of its conclusion that Israel uses “systematic sexual violence” that is “widely practiced as part of an organized state policy.”

The American Jewish Committee also expressed concerns about Kristof’s decision to cite allegations that Israel had trained police dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners, a claim that critics have rejected as a thinly sourced conspiracy theory. The AJC, for its part, said the allegation represented “a modern-day blood libel in the ‘paper of record.’”

“Allegations of abuse toward Palestinians deserve serious, rigorous investigation,” the organization wrote in a social media post on Tuesday. “Yet this piece, while opinion, appeared to be presented as an investigative report and fell alarmingly short of that standard while amplifying inflammatory narratives that have real-world consequences in a time of surging hatred toward Israelis and Jews worldwide.”

Kristof, who has defended his column in several social media posts, questioned “those who say that canine rape is impossible, despite the many Palestinians who have described it.”

“I’d note that at least three different medical journal articles discuss rectal injuries in humans from anal penetration by dogs,” he wrote on Tuesday. “Sigh.”

In a separate post after publication, Kristof voiced appreciation for “the intense interest in” his column. “For skeptics, why not agree on Red Cross and lawyer visits for the 9,000 Palestinian ‘security’ prisoners?” he replied. “If you think these abuse allegations are false, such monitoring visits would be protective. So why not?”

He also dismissed a viral but unverified social media post alleging Times discussions about “retracting” the column as “completely untrue,” a response backed up by the newspaper itself. 

“There is no truth to this at all,” a spokesperson for the Times said in a statement posted to social media, adding that Kristof “traveled to the region to report firsthand on the stories of Palestinians who suffered abuse, and his article collects accounts in the victims’ own words, backed by independent studies.”

The Times did not respond to a request for comment from Jewish Insider regarding other reactions to the column and how or if it is now weighing the criticism.

Haviv Rettig Gur, an Israeli journalist, criticized the column as “obvious propaganda,” but acknowledged that “there really is abuse” that Israel must confront.

“The problem is real,” he said in a lengthy post. “It’s far smaller than they claim, but real nonetheless. And when discipline and morality break down, it can only get worse. We either crack down now or we watch it fester and grow.”

He also noted that the column had overshadowed a comprehensive new report, released on Tuesday by an independent Israeli group, concluding that Hamas had committed “systematic” and “widespread” sexual violence on Oct. 7 as part of a “calculated strategy.”

The Times spokesperson said in a statement that the report “had no bearing on” Kristof’s “opinion column or its publication timing.”

Michael Cohen, a pro-Israel political commentator based in New York City, argued in social media post that “two things can be true at the same time.”

“Kristof’s piece properly highlighted the horrible prison conditions for Palestinian detainees in Israel (which are well documented) while also leaning into arguments (the dogs’ story in particular) that are based on weak evidence from unreliable sources,” he wrote on Tuesday. “Lots of people are focusing on the latter and ignoring the former — and vice versa.”

“I know it’s verboten on this website (or elsewhere) to suggest nuance in anything related to” Israelis and Palestinians, Cohen added, “but that’s usually where the truth lies.”