In this episode:

• The dog rape claim: where it originated (Euromed Human Rights Monitor, Geneva), why it's scientifically impossible, and why it passed through a Times editor anyway

• Euromed Monitor's track record: organ harvesting libel, denial of Hamas infrastructure at Al-Shifa, a single-witness foundation for its most grotesque claims

• Sami Al-Sai - Kristof's primary named source: arrested by Israel for incitement (celebrating Oct 7, coordination with terrorist groups), with a documented history of claims made, recanted, and then re-recanted

• Issa Amro - second named source: "threatened with rape" in his Washington Post account; "raped" in Kristof's account. A significant discrepancy Kristof did not address

• Kristof's defense on Twitter: cited medical journals to prove dogs can rape humans - journals that were actually about bestiality in the other direction. As Rachel put it: "He read it backwards."

• The Israeli Civil Commission report, released the same day: two years in the making, 300+ pages, 10,000+ photographs, 1,800 hours of visual material, 430 testimonies across 52 nationalities - documenting systematic sexual violence by Hamas on October 7th. The Times reportedly declined to publish it in advance.

• What the NYT's muted headline for the Civil Commission report (*"Israeli report examines sexual violence during and after Hamas-led attack"*) says about editorial priorities

• The pattern: when the Times gets Israel wrong, it always cuts the same way

Links:

• Rachel's full rebuttal in the Wall Street Journal: "Kristof's Unbelievable Tale"

• HonestReporting's original X thread debunking the piece: honestreporting.com / @Honest.Rachel

• Israeli Civil Commission report on Oct 7 sexual violence: civilc.org

Guest: Rachel O'Donoghue, senior writer and researcher at HonestReporting. Follow her at @Honest.Rachel on Instagram.

For 25 years, HonestReporting has been the global watchdog on media bias against Israel — monitoring newsrooms, calling out distortion, and forcing corrections from some of the world's most powerful outlets. The Honest Take is where we go beyond the rapid response and sit down with the people who understand what's really happening: journalists, scholars, lawyers, diplomats, and activists.

Hosted by Ben Chertoff, every episode is a sustained conversation about the stories the mainstream keeps getting wrong — antisemitism, the war in Gaza, the UN, campus politics, the future of Jewish life, and the fight for truth in an information war.

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Featuring voices including Hillel Neuer (UN Watch), Shai Davidai, Yardena Schwartz, Yossi Klein Halevi, and many, many more.

Today, on college campuses across America, the answer is: you're colonizers. The Nakba proves it.

With Nakba Day approaching, Ben sits down with Halevi for an honest, unflinching conversation about what actually happened in 1948 - the partition vote, the Arab invasion, Deir Yassin, the Hadassah convoy massacre, the 850,000 Jews expelled from Arab countries that nobody talks about. And then: how a legitimate historical grievance became a weapon of delegitimization.

Halevi is not a denialist. He openly names the Nakba as a real catastrophe. He has criticized Israeli education for refusing to teach it. But he also argues that collapsing 1948 into a "narrative of total innocence" - and using it to erase Jewish indigeneity - is something categorically different from honest historical reckoning.

This is the conversation about 1948 that most people never get to have.

In this episode:

00:00 — Cold Open (Deir Yassin / Hadassah convoy quote)

00:22 — Intro: Ben introduces Yossi Klein Halevi and the episode

00:53 — The Real Story of 1948 — episode framing

02:43 — Growing up in Brooklyn, joining the JDL

04:12 — Breaking with Kahana and moving to Israel

05:25 — Living with the partition wall in Jerusalem

07:42 — Two overlapping geographies: Land of Israel vs. Land of Palestine

08:02 — The UN Partition vote (1947) — Arab rejection and the pattern of refusals

12:07 — The Palestinian maximalist frame vs. the Israeli counter-narrative

14:08 — When does land become about existence?

14:55 — The Israeli center: head vs. heart on two states

16:33 — Why two states feel impossible after October 7th

16:54 — The six months between partition and war (Nov '47–May '48)

18:50 — Ethnic cleansing on both sides — flight vs. expulsion

20:58 — The 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries

25:20 — Why Arab countries kept Palestinians as permanent refugees

27:34 — Inversion: Nazi collaboration accusations flipped

30:35 — Plan Dalet: ethnic cleansing blueprint or defensive plan?

34:04 — Deir Yassin vs. the Hadassah convoy massacre

36:06 — Acknowledgment vs. apology — teaching the Palestinian Nakba

41:13 — Settler colonialism goes mainstream: Al Jazeera, Jacobin, the Oscars

47:01 — Why 'indigenous' and 'no metropole' arguments aren't landing

48:13 — The language war: genocide, apartheid, settler colonialism as weapons

49:03 — Myths & Facts doesn't work anymore — it's about narrative now

53:00 — Has dialog survived October 7th?

58:02 — Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor — the German edition and new intro

01:00:59 — Outro

About the guest:

Yossi Klein Halevi is a Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He is the author of Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor (Harper Collins, 2018), a New York Times bestseller released free in Arabic at letterstomyneighbor.com. His previous books include Like Dreamers (National Jewish Book Award winner) and Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist.

Follow him on X: @YKleinHalevi

Hosted by Ben Chertoff @ben.chertoff

The Honest Take is produced by HonestReporting - rebuilding trust in media.