Written by jeremy scahill @jeremyscahill
Senior Correspondent and Editor-at-Large at The Intercept
On March 4, @theintercept published a story about how Kibbutz Be’eri denied a report in the NYT regarding the sexual assault of two girls on October 7. The NYT told us they stood by the reporting. Our story is here: https://theintercept.com/2024/03/04/nyt-october-7-sexual-violence-kibbutz-beeri/…
Now, the NYT reports on a new video filmed by an Israeli soldier who discovered the girls that completely undermines the NYT report. And the NYT now quotes kibbutz residents as saying it was false.
Yet the NYT has not retracted it on the original Screams Without Words story, which has won a Polk Award and is constantly cited as the definitive account of systematic sexual violence by Hamas on October 7.
The NYT has serious questions to answer about how this false story made its way into the “paper of record.”
The new story about the video is here: https://nytimes.com/2024/03/25/world/middleeast/video-sexual-assault-israel-kibbutz-hamas.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb
One important detail: The “paramedic” the NYT used as a source for this Kibbutz Be’eri sexual assault story only gave estimates of the girls’ ages. It was the NYT that stated specific ages, making it possible to identify the alleged victims. This is relevant to exposing how dishonest the NYT spin is in the face of new information that shows what they printed was false. They are implying there might be other victims that fit his description and their source may have just got the location wrong. But it was the NYT, not the source, who assigned them specific ages. They have a lot of explaining to do. Don’t hold your breath that will happen.
privately wrote to the NYT to point out problems with their story, including raising credibility questions about their source for the Kibbutz Be’eri story. The NYT never responded to her.
Written by jeremy scahill @jeremyscahill
Senior Correspondent and Editor-at-Large at The Intercept