How the NYT manufactured consent for genocide.
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Displaced Palestinians sit in a camp in the Al-Raqab neighbourhood, east of Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip, as they just received evacuation orders for the area, 19 January 2026. Photo: Doaa Albaz |
On Saturday, Israeli military airstrikes across Gaza killed at least 32 Palestinians, adding to the at least 509 killed during the so-called ceasefire. On Monday, the Rafah crossing to Egypt was partially opened, but Israel will only allow 150 Palestinians to leave Gaza each day. “At this rate, it would take over a year for the 20,000 awaiting evacuation to leave,” observed an emergency medic. As Israel’s genocide drags on into its 28th month, Western media has been central to maintaining U.S. political and military support for these atrocities. Nowhere is that complicity more apparent than in the New York Times’ now thoroughly-debunked story “Screams Without Words.” The false claims made in this story were parroted by top U.S. officials and used to justify U.S. government support for the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children.
In this Wire, we’ll break down how “Screams Without Words” has been debunked and take action together to demand that the New York Times retract it. |
What is “Screams Without Words”?
On December 28, 2023, the New York Times published “'Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.” The investigation claimed to document a deliberately deployed and systematic pattern of widespread sexual violence against Israeli women on October 7. No such evidence existed.
The story has since been thoroughly debunked by its own sources, medical professionals, and independent journalists. But that didn’t stop Western media outlets, members of Congress, and even President Biden from parroting the NYT’s unverified claims, further fueling the Israeli government’s genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza. |
How has “Screams Without Words” been debunked?
In its investigation into the reporting behind “Screams Without Words,” the Intercept raises questions about witness testimonies central to the story. These now-debunked testimonies were attributed to members of the widely discredited ZAKA group, other individuals with “track records of making unreliable claims,” and Israeli officials and soldiers with a vested interest in painting Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza as a fight against supposed “barbarism.”
It was ZAKA that originated the racist and Islamophobic lie about “beheaded babies.” A second source for the story, American architect and IDF reservist Shari Mendes, had claimed that a “baby was cut out of a pregnant woman and beheaded and then the mother was beheaded," yet another sensationalist claim that had already been proven false by the time Mendes was interviewed for the article. “Screams Without Words” opens with the story of Gal Abdush, but two of her family members have since come forward to say that they were pressured to participate in the story and adamantly refuted the claim that Abdush was raped.
One of the story’s co-authors, former Israeli intelligence officer Anat Schwartz, has admitted openly that she had no reporting experience. Yet at the behest of the NYT, Schwartz was “convinced” — in her own words — to write the story with her partner’s nephew, freelancer Adam Sella. Schwartz has since come under fire for liking an explicitly genocidal tweet that called to “turn the [Gaza] strip into a slaughterhouse.”
The third co-author, longtime NYT reporter Jeffrey Gettleman, stated publicly after the story was published that he did not feel confident using the word “evidence” to describe what the story contained. The story set off an internal “firestorm” at the NYT, and even their own podcast, The Daily, declined to platform “Screams Without Words” for failing to meet its editorial standards — though the NYT has since claimed that isn’t the case.
“Screams Without Words” relies on sparse, unverified testimonies because no forensic evidence of systematic sexual violence during October 7 exists — a fact even the story’s co-authors admitted. In a podcast interview with Israel’s Channel 12, Schwartz says she spoke with Israeli hospitals and sexual assault hotlines, tracked down survivors of the attacks, and contacted Kibbutzim that had been targeted. None could produce evidence of widespread sexual assault. Though Israeli investigators claimed to have been gathering “tens of thousands” of witness testimonies to sexual violence in December 2023, this evidence “never materialized,” according to the Intercept’s investigation.
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“A predetermined narrative”
For generations, the New York Times has borne a reputation as the nation’s paper of record: a standard-bearer for rigorous, verified journalism that shapes public understanding of world events. When the NYT speaks, policymakers listen, other media outlets follow, and public opinion crystallizes around the narratives it presents.
This has happened before. After its falsified reporting of “weapons of mass destruction” helped spur on the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the NYT catalogued the many unverified claims it repeated and apologized for printing biased commentary as fact. “The failure was not individual,” the NYT’s former public editor wrote, “but institutional.”
Today, history repeats itself. In commissioning a former Israeli intelligence official and her nephew to write one of the most consequential stories of this century, editors at the NYT weren’t just being irresponsible; instead, the botched reporting process suggests that the NYT sought to “bolster a predetermined narrative,” describes the Intercept.
Despite the clear lack of evidence that widespread sexual violence had taken place, the claims at the center of “Screams Without Words” had far-reaching consequences. |
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Tell the NYT to retract “Screams Without Words” |
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Given the damage the NYT’s deeply biased reporting on Palestine has done in these last two years, a retraction of “Screams Without Words” is insufficient but still utterly necessary. Demand the NYT issue a full retraction, and conduct a full, independent, and public investigation into its editorial process that allowed "Screams Without Words" to be published. |
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