Last week, a columnist for The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof, published serious allegations regarding the sexual assault of Palestinian prisoners currently being held by Israel.

Among the claims, he argued that Israel had been guilty of beatings, humiliation, threats of rape, degrading treatment, and torture during detention, and that these abuses had become “systemic”.

Reaction to the column was immediate, with critics pointing to several problems with the report. Among them was the fact that sources used for the piece, were supporters of the 7 October attacks and had simply repeated Hamas talking points.

One example was the use of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which has claimed that Israeli civilian hostages were simply “arrested [by Hamas] and moved to the Gaza Strip” on 7 October. The organisation has also published blatantly false claims that Israel used thermobaric weapons to “evaporate” 3 000 Palestinians and that it has been stealing the organs of Palestinians, a variation of the so-called “blood libels” directed against Jews since the Middle Ages. Palestinian writer Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib said that Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has “a troubling record on accuracy, conduct, and associations” and that “they are not credible sources, even if the article relied on others as well”.

Others pointed to the timing and placement of the article. Rather than appearing in the news section, the supposed investigative piece was published in the opinion section, where the evidentiary standards are lower. Critics also noted that the column was published on the same day as the release of a major report into sexual assaults committed during the 7 October attacks, a report that The New York Times did not cover when it was released.

Greatest Scrutiny

However, the allegation that has drawn the greatest scrutiny is the claim that Israeli security forces had trained dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners. The suggestion is so extraordinary that it has not been reported by any major mainstream newspaper in the world, including The New York Times itself, despite the paper’s own history of factual inaccuracies regarding the conflict. Canine experts have generally greeted the allegation with extreme scepticism on obvious biological grounds.

Attributing nefarious conduct involving animals to Jews is not a new phenomenon in social discourse. To this day, Germany still contains antisemitic carvings from the 13th century depicting degrading imagery involving Jews and pigs, despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that pigs are considered unclean in Judaism. Comparing Jews to rats was also a staple of Nazi propaganda.

The Arab-Israeli conflict has helped turbocharge this trend, with an entire genre of Israel animal-related conspiracies emerging over recent decades. These include:

• •Spy dolphins: Hamas and Iranian media claimed Israel used dolphins equipped with cameras or weapons to track or attack Gaza naval commandos. Some reports described them as “robot dolphins” used for underwater espionage and assassination missions.
• •Wild boars as biological weapons: Palestinian figures and media alleged that Israel deliberately released wild boars into Palestinian farming areas to destroy crops, frighten villagers, and force people off their land.
• •Plague-carrying rats: A Jordanian television host claimed Israel released rats from Norway infected with bubonic plague into Egypt after 1967. The theory alleged that the rats damaged crops, attacked children, and formed part of a long-term plan to weaken Arab societies.
• •Spy sharks: After a series of shark attacks near Egyptian resorts in the Red Sea, Egyptian officials and commentators claimed Israel had deployed sharks to damage Egypt’s tourism industry. Similar accusations later surfaced after shark sightings near Sudan.
• •Spy birds: Several conspiracy theories emerged after birds tagged by Israeli researchers were discovered in Arab countries. Saudi media accused Israel of using vultures and eagles fitted with GPS trackers as intelligence tools. In Turkey, an Israeli-tagged kestrel was briefly detained by authorities on suspicion of espionage, while in Sudan and Saudi Arabia, birds carrying Hebrew-labelled scientific tracking equipment were portrayed as part of Mossad surveillance operations.

One fortunate eagle from the Gamla Nature Reserve, after being captured by Syrian opposition forces and initially suspected of carrying espionage equipment, was eventually returned to Israel as a gesture recognising the medical treatment Israel had provided to Syrians during the Syrian Civil War.

These animal stories reveal something important about the current state of public discourse surrounding antisemitism, Israel, and Jews. A common refrain in the media is that criticism of Israel is not inherently antisemitic. However, as Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky has argued, there is a line beyond which criticism can become antisemitic.

Local Example

To take a local example arguing that President Cyril Ramaphosa has been involved in corruption is not racist. Arguing that he is corrupt because he is black clearly would be.

Sharansky proposed that a rough guide to distinguishing legitimate criticism from antisemitism can be found in what he called the “Three Ds”:

• •Delegitimisation: Criticism that denies Israel’s right to exist, a position held by a number of states in the international system as well as by much of the activist class on university campuses.
• •Double standards: Criticism of Israel that is not applied to other countries. From 2015 through 2024, for example, the United Nations General Assembly adopted 173 resolutions against Israel, more than double the total directed at all other countries combined.
• •Demonisation: Criticism that portrays Israel or Jews as uniquely evil or supernatural in nature. Senior Iranian officials, for example, have claimed that Israel uses evil spirits and occult practices in its military campaigns. One official stated: “In the first year of the Gaza war, news had also leaked about [Benjamin] Netanyahu meeting with occult specialists ... A few years ago, the Supreme Leader had stated that hostile countries and Western and Hebrew intelligence services use occult sciences and jinn entities for espionage.”

Animal conspiracy theories fit firmly into this final category. The use of animals is intended to degrade the target of the conspiracy, to literally dehumanise Jews by associating them with uncontrolled animal behaviour.

At the same time, the suggestion that Jews manipulate animals into carrying out unnatural acts symbolically implies a supernatural or non-human quality. In both respects, such narratives are designed to place Jews outside the boundaries of ordinary human society. Historically, this kind of thinking has led in only one direction.

Distorting

All of this also has the effect of distorting serious attempts to establish the truth. Like all prison systems, Israel faces legitimate challenges regarding the treatment of prisoners. Anyone familiar with the Thabo Bester case in South Africa can recognise how prison systems can fail. Israeli media itself has reported extensively on abuses and misconduct, including incidents in which Palestinian prisoners sexually assaulted female Israeli prison guards.

The addition of sensational dog rape allegations into the discussion transforms an issue that requires serious investigation and transparency into an attempt to demonise Israelis and Jews and do nothing to solve the problem.

That such narratives should become widespread among populations exposed to state-sponsored antisemitic propaganda in parts of the Muslim world is perhaps unsurprising.

The difference now is that they have been published and defended by the premier newspaper of record in the Western world.