I know I’ve already written about the Kristof article and the report on the sexual crimes of Gazans on 10/7. But I want to highlight this article by Guy Goldstein, because it offers a great deal of relevant historical background and perspective on how long this sort of behavior has been going on – and by “this sort of behavior” I don’t just mean sexual attacks by Palestinians on Jews, I also mean what the author calls the inversion of charges by which Palestinians falsely accuse the Jews of similar crimes.

Some excerpts:

The libel [Kristof] dutifully repeated in “The Paper of Record” was a hundred years old when he printed it. The Palestinian propaganda has not changed in a century. The Western press, which once exposed it, now promotes it.

Haj Amin al-Husseini, the man Palestinian historians call the father of their national movement, distributed the original handbills in the summer of 1929. The text called on Arab men to rise against the Jews, an enemy who had “violated the honor of Islam and raped the women and murdered widows and babies.” The leaflets had been printed in advance.

No Jewish man had raped any Arab woman. That didn’t matter.

He paired the rape libel with a second weapon. His crowds at the Nebi Musa riots of 1920 had chanted “Palestine is our land, the Jews are our dogs.” Dogs in Islamic law are najis, ritually impure, the same religious category as pigs and bodily fluids. Calling a Jew a dog made a religious statement about defilement. Twin demonizations, both concocted and distributed with the specific intent of inciting violence against the Jews.

The author goes on to describe the Hebron massacre that resulted, in which Palestinians (not called that back then, of course) committed barbaric crimes against Jews that have a great deal of resonance with what occurred on 10/7, nearly 100 years later. There are resonances with other historic events in the area, too.

I strongly suggest you read the whole thing; it can’t be summarized. It’s an extraordinary history.