On May 11, as the Eurovision Song Contest was opening its 2026 edition in Vienna, New York Times I published two major articles about Israel in one day. The first, an A1-page investigation titled “At Eurovision, Israel used soft power to polish its ailing image,” alleged that the Israeli government spent more than $1 million coordinating a campaign to influence the Eurovision vote.
It was a discovery that was ultimately undermined by the newspaper’s reporting, but since the article acknowledged that no rules were broken, no bots were deployed, and no votes were manipulated. The headline online was: “How Israel chose Eurovision – and almost broke the world’s biggest song contest.” This was quietly changed to “How Israel turned the Eurovision stage into a soft power tool”.
The second article, an opinion column by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof, was hard to dismiss as a slow news day. Titled “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” the report alleged a pattern of systematic sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners by Israeli soldiers, settlers, and prison guards — including the allegation, coming from an advocacy group, Euro-Med Monitor, whose leadership has been criticized for being sympathetic to Hamas’s goals — that Israeli guards trained dogs to rape detainees.
In the article, Kristof admitted that “there is no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes.” After its publication, the Israeli Foreign Ministry called it “one of the worst bloody slanders ever to appear in the modern press” and former US special envoy to combat anti-Semitism, Deborah Lipstadt, publicly questioned whether times He had “no sense of journalistic decency and responsibility.” The newspaper stood by Kristof and its communications team issued a statement saying there was “no truth” to the idea of pulling the column.
Both articles were released on the same day as a 300-page report, “Silenced No Longer,” documenting Hamas’ sexual violence on October 7, based on 430 interviews and more than 10,000 photos and videos. the times Didn’t cover it.
Hanna Mazigh is an Israeli author, activist, and founder of the Tel Aviv Institute, which tracks anti-Semitism and anti-Israel misinformation. Talk to Hollywood Reporter The day the pieces were published.
The Eurovision investigation appeared on the front page of the magazine times And its website. What did you make of it?
They had to tone down the title. I think that’s the story, really, because newspapers don’t change headlines on articles they trust completely. And if you read the article itself, you see that all the time, they try to find any evidence of Israel violating the rules and they can’t find any. There was no evidence of robots. Even Eurovision president Martin Green said the Israeli campaign was a bit excessive, but no rules were broken.
The article found that Israel spent about $1 million promoting its posts over several years. That’s the big number they’re driving with. Does that seem like a scandal to you?
Every country uses Eurovision for exactly this purpose. Sweden does it. France does it. The United Kingdom spent millions of dollars on Eurovision. Ukraine, especially in 2022, has invested a lot. Only when Israel does that is there bound to be something suspicious. and times Itself, even in the article, mentions that Malta, Greece, Albania, Poland and France have all carried out similar campaigns – without any scrutiny. So what is the real goal here? I think many readers were stunned and didn’t understand why this article appeared on the front page.
The word “hasbara” appears in the piece, which is described as a euphemism for foreign propaganda. How is this land?
The word “Hasbara” just means a public relations campaign carried out by Israel – just like any other country, such as the United States, France and Qatar. Many countries are investing in it. The installation is really weird.
Both pieces were played on the same day. Do you think this is a coincidence?
I don’t want to use the term media bias, especially when speaking to other members of the media, because I believe there is justified scrutiny and Israel should be held accountable when it does things wrong. But it is very strange to see the Eurovision article and then the Kristof article alleging that Israel sponsored mass rapes of Palestinian prisoners – both coming out a day before Israel publishes a report on sexual assaults on Israelis on October 7, which is actually based on evidence, testimony, medical examinations, and facts. Leaves me with questions. New York Times He really needs to do some serious calculations.
On Kristoff’s piece, does it contain water?
Have there been cases of sexual assaults on Palestinian prisoners? I’m very confident that there is, and I think that’s something that everyone in Israel probably knows. But there was no institutional order for rapes to be carried out. If you read the article itself, it is based on testimonies from a European organization affiliated with Hamas. From someone like Christoph, who is a serious journalist, who has won Pulitzer Prizes and done amazing investigative reporting – to see his article, I couldn’t find any evidence other than that of a Hamas-affiliated organization. Then there was this bizarre claim about dogs being trained to rape prisoners, which is medically and scientifically not possible.
the times Defend Christoph and his piece. Is this the last they will eat? If so, what now?
the times He rarely apologizes for his Israeli coverage. The institutional pattern is quite resistant to correction. They changed the headline on the Eurovision article, and didn’t apologise. It doesn’t look like they’ll retract Kristof’s article either, partly because it was submitted under opinion, so there’s more freedom there.
But the damage has already been done. I know that if they wanted to regain their credibility — and Jewish readers have been a large and loyal part of this newspaper for generations, which is truly heartbreaking — times He has to ask himself this question: Do they want to do something to regain their position, or do they just give up? Because right now he’s not going anywhere good.
