The Times Has Been Getting the Israel–Hamas War Wrong from the Start

By Becket Adams

Sunday, May 17, 2026

 

Trust is an especially precious thing for the press, considering that nothing we do matters unless audiences believe us. Your solid sourcing and top-notch writing skills matter little if readers think you’re a weasel.

 

This is why it has been astonishing, over the past 20 or so years, to watch major newsrooms fritter away what public trust they had in pursuit of political or cultural aims, with little to no thought given to the long-term consequences of sacrificing the one thing they need to remain functional and effective.

 

It beggars belief, then, that the New York Times would publish a flimsily sourced op-ed in this environment alleging that Israeli officials have trained dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners. It is incredible to have published such a claim without providing any serious authentication, evidence, or proof beyond a simple “trust me” from the story’s author, a man long known for being a dupe.

 

Trust Nicholas Kristof? Nah.

 

Trust the New York Times more broadly? Why?

 

That trust was lost long ago with the paper’s kneejerk defenses of its preferred political players, its kid-glove treatment of in-the-club magnates and nepo babies, and its decades-long effort to put the most flattering shine on murderous regimes, including Stalin’s Soviet Russia and Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. And when it comes to the war between Israel and Hamas specifically, the paper has repeatedly gotten the story very wrong, making it senseless to take either its news or opinion teams at face value.

 

As I’ve said elsewhere, the dog-rape story may end up being the worst of the worst in terms of the paper’s shoddy reporting during this conflict, but it’s certainly not the first example.

 

You might recall the following incidents of Times malfeasance, many of which have already been detailed here at National Review.

 

On October 17, 2023, not long after the single greatest day of slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, the Times was among the many outlets that scrambled to accuse Israel of bombing the Al-Ahli Hospital and killing more than 500 Palestinians. The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry was given pride of place in the Times’ coverage, while Israel’s immediate denials were downplayed or treated as incidental. As it turned out, the hospital was not hit by an Israeli airstrike. The hospital wasn’t even attacked. A rocket had exploded in a nearby parking lot, and it turned out that the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad had fired it.

 

Yet here is the progression of the Times’ reporting: from “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say” to “At Least 500 Dead in Strike on Gaza Hospital, Palestinians Say” to “At Least 500 Dead in Blast at Gaza Hospital, Palestinians Say.”

 

The Times later conceded that its initial reporting “relied too heavily on claims by Hamas” and “left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was.”

 

Gee, when you can’t trust terrorist death cults, whom can you trust?

 

Later that November, the Times again let Hamas dictate the terms of its reporting when it claimed that Israel’s civilian-killing rate after a few weeks of fighting was “unprecedented” in modern warfare, even when compared with Russia’s multiyear war in Ukraine. The report was debunked almost immediately, and not just because the Hamas-provided figures were unverified and obviously inflated, but because the fake numbers still weren’t greater than those from other recent conflicts.

 

In December 2023, the Times, citing Hamas sources again, reported that Gaza deaths had surpassed “any Arab loss in wars in past 40 years.” This was obviously false, as anyone familiar with Syria, Iraq, Yemen, or Lebanon could attest. The paper eventually issued a correction.

 

Then, in July 2025, the New York Times ran a front-page story on supposed Gaza starvation that prominently featured a photo of an emaciated child named Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq.

 

“He was born healthy,” read the original caption for the photo, which was featured above the fold. The original version of the feature story also quoted the boy’s mother as saying, “Mohammed . . . was born a healthy child.”

 

Unfortunately for the Times, other news outlets later discovered that the child isn’t the victim of wartime starvation. He has severe cerebral palsy and other neurological and muscular disorders that make it difficult for him to eat. The Times later removed the mother’s quote and the photo caption from its website. It also added an editor’s note revealing that it hadn’t confirmed the child’s medical background prior to publication.

 

“Had the Times known the information before publication,” the note said, “it would have been included in the article and the picture caption.”

 

Yes, this is why we ask questions first and publish second.

 

It’s all there in the Times’ “reporting,” practically every journalism sin imaginable: botched math errors, bogus allegations that don’t hold up under even a whiff of scrutiny, and details about things that simply never happened.

 

Yet we’re supposed to trust the Times’ opinion section when it prints allegations that the paper’s own news side has yet to confirm or substantiate?

 

We’re supposed to believe that a paper that can’t get basic facts correct somehow has an opinion desk that did its due diligence on the dog-rape story — a claim that is conspicuously absent from the paper’s news coverage?

 

No thanks.

 

Not all of us are as gullible or pliant as Kristof.