- Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Sa’ar, say piece by columnist Nicholas Kristof is ‘one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press’
Israel will sue The New York Times over an op-ed alleging widespread sexual abuse and rape against Palestinian prisoners, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar in a joint statement Thursday.
They called the piece by columnist Nicholas Kristof “one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press.”
A New York Times spokesperson responded with a statement calling the threatened suit “without merit” and “part of a well-worn political playbook.”
Kristof’s column, published Monday, alleged “a pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, women and even children — by soldiers, settlers, interrogators in the Shin Bet internal security agency and, above all, prison guards.”
Kristof quoted testimony from Palestinians who said they’d been regularly stripped naked in prison and groped, forcibly penetrated with various objects, or been mounted and raped by specially trained dogs. The latter claim, circulating in anti-Israel media for some time, has recently been amplified by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, which was also a key source for Kristof’s report.
“Today I instructed my legal advisers to consider the harshest legal action against The New York Times and Nicholas Kristof,” Netanyahu said in a later post on X.
“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,” he said.
“We will fight these lies in the court of public opinion and in the court of law. Truth will prevail,” Netanyahu vowed.
The Israel Prison Service said the allegations raised “are false and entirely unfounded.” The Foreign Ministry denounced the article as “one of the worst blood libels in modern media,” while assailing its use of a report from the monitor whose leaders have been photographed alongside top Hamas officials.
Danielle Rhoades Ha, a New York Times spokesperson, responded to the Netanyahu and Sa’ar statement by saying the suit would not hold up in court.
“The Israeli Prime Minister has threatened to file a libel lawsuit against The New York Times regarding Nicholas Kristof’s deeply reported opinion column on sexual abuse by Israel’s prison guards, soldiers, settlers, and interrogators. This threat, similar to one made last year, is part of a well-worn political playbook that aims to undermine independent reporting and stifle journalism that does not fit a specific narrative. Any such legal claim would be without merit,” the statement said.
The ministry also alleged that the Times deliberately published Kristof’s column ahead of an independent Israeli report that found Hamas had systematically used sexual violence in the onslaught of October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza. The Foreign Ministry claimed the Times had been approached with the Israeli report “months ago.”
The Times has repeatedly defended the column.
BY: Lazar Berman
