Kristof’s Israel Allegations, the Danger of Circling the Wagons and More | Peter Savodnik

About this episode

Peter Savodnik discusses Nicholas Kristof's allegations regarding Palestinian prisoners and the implications for pro-Israel responses.

Peter Savodnik joins us to talk about Nicholas Kristof’s column alleging abuse of Palestinian prisoners, including the most extreme dog-rape allegation, and how pro-Israel people should respond when the reporting is weak but the underlying issue may still deserve investigation. We talk about the difference between bad journalism and false accusations, the danger of reflexively circling the wagons, Ben-Gvir and the Israeli prison system, antisemitism, double standards against Israel, whether Jews are being pushed back into history, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Gavin Newsom, Jonathan Haidt, Twitter addiction, and the general collapse of everyone’s sanity online. Peter Savodnik reported for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Guardian, GQ, Wired and other venues from the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, Asia and across the United States. His book, The Interloper: Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union, was published in 2013 by Basic Books. He is now a senior editor at The Free Press and based in Los Angeles. https://x.com/petersavodnik Chapters: 00:00 Intro and Peter Savodnik joins 01:16 Nick Kristof’s Israel prison-abuse column 06:15 Olmert, Benny Morris, Haviv Rettig…

People in this episode

Guest: Peter Savodnik

Topics covered

• Israel
• Palestinian prisoners
• journalism
• antisemitism
• politics
• media criticism
• online discourse

Keywords

• Israel
• Nicholas Kristof
• Palestinian prisoners
• journalism
• antisemitism
• dog-rape allegation
• political response
• media
• investigation

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Guardian, GQ, Wired, The Free Press

Books & works: The Interloper: Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union

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