Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, founder of The World Values Network, issued a series of posts on Instagram accusing Rolling Stone magazine of preparing a “hit piece” that will promulgate a “blood libel against my IDF soldier sons.”
In one of the posts, Boteach wrote that he was alerted by Rolling Stone that they were going to run a piece based on “a tiny little NGO that has less than 1000 followers on social media [filing] a war crimes complaint against my two sons fighting in the IDF at the @icc because they were seen praying in Gaza, which, this NGO says, is a war crime … @rollingstone magazine just disgraced itself utterly and exposed themselves as the most disgusting antisemitic newspaper. They’re planning to run the story, which will make them a global laughingstock.”
View this post on Instagram
In an exclusive interview with The Journal, Boteach claimed that a Rolling Stone reporter told him “I posted a picture of Mendy praying in this makeshift synagogue in Gaza, and apparently the allegation is that if you write graffiti somewhere, which some soldier did saying “Synagogue,” that’s a war crime,” Boteach elaborated to the Journal, claiming that when he spoke with Rolling Stone, they could not specify which building the alleged graffiti occurred at or who owned the building in question. “That sounds like an SNL skit.”
Boteach added that the “tiny little NGO” who filed the complaint is the Hind Rajab Foundation; on Oct. 8, the foundation announced in a press release that it had “filed an unprecedented and historic complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against 1,000 Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) soldiers for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Gaza, Palestine.” According to NGO Monitor, the “pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah NGO” is based in Belgium and was established in Sept. 2024.
In a separate Instagram post, Boteach revealed that the journalist who called him is Gabriel Schivone, whom he labeled as a “buffoon” for referring to the International Criminal Court as “the world court” when he called Boteach. Boteach also called Schivone an apparent “arch Israel hater,” noting that “the foremost antisemite in America, Noam Chomsky, who took hundreds of thousands of dollars from Jeffrey Epstein, wrote the forward to his book.” Boteach then chastised Andrew Perez, senior politics editor at Rolling Stone, for contracting “this know-nothing nobody, who barely anyone will even publish, to libel me and my hero sons.”
“Is @rollingstone trying to endanger their lives by highlighting them, the way that fanatical Islamist @mohammedhijabofficial did when he put them God forbid in body bags which we reported to @newscotlandyard and the @fbi?” Boteach asked. He is referencing when he debated YouTuber Mohammed Hijab on Piers Morgan in Nov. 2023; according to the Jewish News, “Boteach claimed that during the debate, Hijab said he’d like to see the rabbi’s IDF son, Mendy, in a body bag. The next day, on Twitter/X, Hijab posted a picture of what seemed to be a wrapped up body, next to a shovel, with the line ‘make sure that you apply the same discount to the funeral body bags for your terrorist IDF son Mendy. Promo-code Human-shield.’” Boteach told The Jewish News at the time that “he had reported the posts to the appropriate U.S. authorities, including the FBI.
“Goes without saying it’s going to be an honor owning @rollingstone after this blood libel comes out,” Boteach’s Instagram post continued. “We are going to hit them by every legal means necessary.”
View this post on Instagram
“If there is any fact that is not true, that endangers their safety or libels their reputations forever, of course I’ll take legal action,” Boteach told the Journal, adding that the story will likely be “completely wrong and we will hit them with a $100 million lawsuit.”
It’s particularly personal for Boteach, who was written about extensively in Rolling Stone when he endorsed John Fetterman (D-Pa.) over his Republican opponent, Mehmet Oz, during the 2022 midterm elections. Boteach did this despite Oz being a close friend because during the campaign, Oz would not recognize the Armenian genocide. “Rolling Stone magazine wrote a bunch of stories about how surprising it was that Rabbi Shmuley turned on his friend Oprah, on Mehmet Oz and everybody connected to his campaign to endorse this nobody Fetterman against the most famous doctor in the world all because of the Armenian genocide,” Boteach said. “So it’s not like I’m not known to Rolling Stone, they know me well … now it looks like they want to accuse me and my sons of aiding and abetting genocide.”
He added: “Why would Rolling Stone pick up a story from a journalist who does not work for them, he is only a freelancer with zero following … and publish a story that has no verification? They don’t know the address of the building … they don’t know who spray-painted it, they don’t know if the synagogue was set up by the IDF, they don’t know anything. So the question is, why is Rolling Stone doing this? Answer: they are trying to silence, attack, defame the person whom the media refers to as the most famous rabbi in America, to shut me up, and to potentially endanger my sons’ lives. Because it’s a thousand soldiers on that list, and they picked two, Mendy and Yosef Boteach … they go after the two soldiers where the complaint is they spray-painted the word ‘synagogue’? Are you kidding me?”
Jonathan Conricus, former Israel Defense Force spokesman and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense and Democracies, told The Journal regarding the Hind Rajab Foundation complaint as a whole: “These nonsensical allegations amount to less than heresy and are as baseless, fabricated and void as the sham organization that concocted them. The real and only perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity are Hamas terrorists who raped, burned, murdered and abducted hundreds of Israeli civilians in a premeditated attack on Oct. 7, not the soldiers of the only democracy in the Middle East, which is fighting for its very survival against genocidal jihadists in adherence to humanitarian law. This attempt to smear Israeli soldiers with dual nationality is yet another transparent act of distorted lawfare by Hamas and its supporters, probably funded by shady middle eastern money.
“These nonsensical allegations amount to less than heresy and are as baseless, fabricated and void as the sham organization that concocted them.”– Jonathan Conricus
“The mere fact that a once reputable publication like the Rolling Stone chose to lend these baseless allegations credibility by reporting on their insignificant actions places serious questions regarding the editorial standards and journalistic integrity of what used to be a beacon of investigate and interesting writing. Sad to see the Rolling Stone doing the footwork of terrorist organizations. Regardless, these allegations are false, unfounded, fail to meet event the basic standards of international law, and are just another politically motivated and desperate attempt to weaken the resolve of Israel to defend itself. This attempt too shall fail.”
Schivone, Perez and Rolling Stone did not immediately respond to the Journal’s requests for comment.
This is a developing story.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.