Regarding Nicholas Kristof’s recent, May 11 New York Times column, “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians.”   (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/opinion/israel-palestinians-sexual-violence.html?unlocked_article_code=1.i1A.XHJF.Trv8oS6TBv3J&smid=em-share .)

Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times column of May 11, 2026 addresses alleged abuse, including sexual abuse, against Palestinian men, women, and children by prison guards,  police, and settlers.  The content of the column is disturbing.  My rabbi gave a sermon about the column, correctly saying that we must speak out against the abuses.  She acknowledged in the beginning of her sermon the fraught timing of the column, its blood libel, and its questionable sources, but these issues were raised in passing, effectively dismissed as inconsequential to the main allegations of the column.

I cannot disagree with the conclusions of the sermon, that we should speak out against abuse, yet I found myself uncomfortable and thinking about puzzle pieces.  How do we put puzzle pieces together to tell a story?  Which is the story we want to tell—the timing and blood libel of Kristof’s column and the further undermining of the impact of October 7 and support for Israel?  Or, our moral responsibility to Palestinian prisoners and residents in the West Bank to be free from abuse by guards, soldiers, and settlers?  I would have put the puzzle pieces together differently, yet each are important stories.  To borrow from Yehudah........

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