Anat Schwartz

Anat Schwartz (ענת שוורץ; born 1978) is an Israeli film director and freelance writer.

Schwartz was born in Haifa in 1978, and raised in Ramat Ef'al.

She received a BA cum laude in philosophy and literature at Tel Aviv University.

She majored in theater arts in Thelma Yellin High School for the Arts.

Schwartz has served in the Israeli Air Force intelligence division.

In 2017, she directed and filmed a documentary series titled "La Promesse," which was broadcast on the YesDocu channel; it was since adapted into a documentary film.

Schwartz began working in the data industry in 2020, when she joined the Israeli company "Vault AI" as a Content Data Analyst.

The same year, Schwartz directed and wrote the short film 39, which participated in the official competition at the Torino Film Festival.

It was her first fiction film.

In 2022, she directed, wrote, and produced the film Soviet Life - Zoya Cherkassky about the artist Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi.

The film was broadcast on Kan 11 and received the 2022 Israeli Documentary Forum award, as well as the Short Film Award at the Master of Art Film Festival.

In 2023, Schwartz was hired by the New York Times; she did not have any prior journalistic experience.

In December of the same year, Schwartz, her partner's nephew Adam Sella, and Jeffrey Gettleman co-wrote an article for the Times—"Screams Without Words"—about "mass rape" by Hamas militants on the 7 October attack in Israel.

The New York Times added a correction that there wasn't "forensic evidence".

The article commanded significant acclaim but has since been critiqued.

Relatives of a victim's family claimed to Mondoweiss that there was no proof of rape and that Schwartz had interviewed them under "false pretenses".

In an article in CounterPunch, professor Robin Andersen of Fordham University criticized the strength of the investigation, noting major discrepancies between families' testimonies and the article's text.

Photographer Eden Wesley, whose pictures were used as evidence in the Times article, stated that Schwartz had called her "again and again" for information for the article due to its importance for "Israeli advocacy."

Schwartz's article reportedly caused an "internal debate" about the strength of its reporting, and, according to Jeremy Scahill, was met by skepticism from fellow journalists.

According to The Intercept, a Schwartz interview to Israeli media suggested that the "New York Times’s mission was to bolster a predetermined narrative".

In February 2024, analysis of Schwartz' social media activity found that she had liked posts calling Palestinians "human animals" and advocating to "turn the [ Gaza] strip into a slaughterhouse", "violate any norm, on the way to victory", leading to allegations of bias and violations of editorial policies.

The New York Times began an investigation into Schwartz, stating, "Those 'likes' are unacceptable violations of our company policy. We are currently reviewing the matter."

Schwartz admitted on a Channel 12 podcast interview that "she found no direct evidence of rapes or sexual violence" at the time when the "Screams Without Words" article was written.

Schwartz added she didn't find either any report of sexual violence when calling the manager of the sexual assault hotline and the psychiatric hospitals.

So she went to a therapy facility "established to address the trauma of October 7 victims" and came away with "only innuendo and general statements from the therapists".

The Intercept wrote; "Schwartz said she then began a series of extensive conversations with Israeli officials from ZAKA, a private ultra-Orthodox rescue organization that has been documented to have mishandled evidence and spread multiple false stories about the events of October 7, including debunked allegations of Hamas operatives beheading babies and cutting the fetus from a pregnant woman’s body".

Nonetheless, the Times International editor Philip Pan has has rejected accusations of bias in her work.