Two years ago, The New York Times published “Screams Without Words,” the most damaging piece of propaganda the paper has published since its falsified reporting on “weapons of mass destruction,” which drove the US to its disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003. 

“SWW” alleges that Hamas systematically “weaponized sexual violence” on October 7th. It sought to indict the entire Palestinian resistance and thereby justify Israel’s retaliation on the whole of the Palestinian people. Those allegations would prove central to US political and military support for Israel’s annihilatory response; they were repeated by the Biden Administration, in Congressional hearings, and exhaustively across mainstream media. 

But the story’s sensationalist language obscured its weak reporting. “SWW”’s central argument relies on “witness testimony” from members of the widely discredited ZAKA group, the same propagandists who invented the unfounded, racist and islamophobic provocations about “beheaded babies.” After “SWW” was published, family members of alleged victims said that they’d been pressured to participate and adamantly refuted the claims it made. 

In the wake of its publication, the Times cut ties with one of the story’s co-authors, Anat Schwartz, a former Israeli intelligence officer, for liking explicitly genocidal social media posts, including a call to “turn [Gaza] into a slaughterhouse.” Another co-author, Jeffrey Gettleman, later stated he did not feel confident using the word “evidence” to describe what it contained. The Times’ own podcast, The Daily, declined to platform the piece for failing to meet its editorial standards. Newsroom editors later admitted that video evidence “undercut” its original reporting. Despite its glaring flaws and catastrophic consequences, “SWW” has received only a quiet online “update.”

“Screams Without Words” used sensationalized, unsubstantiated claims to smear the Palestinian resistance in an attempt to justify a genocide in Gaza.  A retraction is insufficient but utterly necessary in the face of the damage it has done to the Palestinian people and their land in these last two years.

Join us to demand that The New York Times account for its failures such that it can never again manufacture consent for mass slaughter, torture, and displacement.