Israel has announced it will launch a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times over a column alleging that Israeli soldiers and prison guards systematically sexually abused Palestinian prisoners — with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemning the piece as “hideous and distorted lies” and accusing the paper of perpetuating a “blood libel.”
The legal action was announced by Israel’s Foreign Ministry, which described the article as “one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press.” Netanyahu went further, saying: “They defamed the soldiers of Israel and perpetuated a blood libel about rape, trying to create a false symmetry between the genocidal terrorists of Hamas and Israel’s valiant soldiers. Under my leadership, Israel will not be silent. We will fight these lies in the court of public opinion and in the court of law.”
The article at the centre of the row was a column written by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof, published by the New York Times and citing accounts from 14 former Palestinian prisoners. The piece alleged that sexual torture was widespread within Israeli detention facilities and claimed that Israeli troops trained dogs to rape Palestinian detainees. The column went viral almost immediately, drawing fierce condemnation from Jewish groups, Israeli officials and some media critics who described it as antisemitic propaganda. The New York Post reported that New Jersey Democratic congressman Josh Gottheimer accused the Times of being “on Hamas’s payroll” following its publication.
Around 200 protesters gathered outside the Times building in Midtown Manhattan on Thursday evening for a demonstration calling on the newspaper to “stop the anti-Zionist libels.” Sherrill Mane, a protester born and raised in New York, said: “I believe in journalism that is fact-based, and not this nonsense, with sources that are not credible, disparaging all Jews. This kind of stuff is dangerous.”
The timing of the article has also drawn sharp criticism. It was published one day before the release of a two-year investigation detailing evidence of widespread sexual abuse committed against Israeli civilians during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks — a juxtaposition that Netanyahu and others argued was deliberate and deeply misleading.
The New York Times defended its reporter. A spokesperson said: “Nicholas Kristof is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has reported on sexual violence for decades and is widely regarded as one of the world’s best on-the-ground reporters documenting and bearing witness to sexual abuse experienced by women and men in war and conflict zones. He traveled to the region to report firsthand on the stories of the Palestinians who suffered abuse, and his article collects accounts in the victims’ own words, backed by independent studies.”
