To support his recent allegations in the
@nytimes,
@nickkristof references "studies" from the
@UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) to suggest sexual violence is an Israeli "standard operating procedure."
As
@dmlitman explains in a new analysis, Kristof is simply pointing to a report that suffers from the exact same flaws as his own: a total lack of transparency and a demand that readers "just trust" an untrustworthy source.
The reality of the COI is far more troubling than Kristof lets on, Litman writes:
"It is a body established by the infamously biased and scandal-ridden Human Rights Council. It was led, at the time of the report, by three individuals with histories of egregious antisemitism and well-known hostility to the Jewish state. One commissioner, Miloon Kothari, claimed that Jews control social media. Another, Navi Pillay, is perhaps best known for cheerleading the infamous 2001 Durban Conference, where the most popular flyer distributed lamented Hitler’s failure to exterminate the Jews. The third, Chris Sidoti, responded to criticism of his fellow commissioners by accusing Jews of throwing accusations of antisemitism around 'like rice at a wedding.' He has also advanced the age-old dual loyalty trope by accusing Jewish nonprofits of being agents of the State of Israel.
What little the COI has shared about its investigative process only raises alarm bells. For example, the 2025 report states that for its purposes, 'verification for sexual violence may rely on a single primary source if deemed credible.' What makes a source credible? Pillay, Kothari, and Sidoti say so. As CAMERA has pointed out previously, the COI’s terms of reference provide that corroborating a primary source requires as little as 'the investigator’s own findings.' This is particularly troubling given that they are notorious for regularly making demonstrably false claims in their reports."