Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel's foreign ministry announced Thursday they will file a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, targeting a column by Nicholas Kristof that detailed allegations of sexual abuse and assault of Palestinian prisoners by Israeli guards.
In a post on X, Netanyahu said he had directed his legal team to explore the “harshest legal action” against the newspaper and Kristof. He accused the outlet of “defaming the soldiers of Israel” and promoting a “blood libel about rape,” adding that the column sought to create a false equivalence between “genocidal terrorists of Hamas” and Israeli troops. “Israel will not be silent,” the prime minister wrote, vowing that “the truth will prevail.”
The foreign ministry separately condemned the column as “one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press,” and noted that the Times had “backed” the piece.
Kristof’s column, titled “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” was published Monday. It recounted firsthand accounts from 14 Palestinian men and women, including freelance journalist Sami al-Sai, who said they were beaten and sexually assaulted—in some cases repeatedly—while in Israeli custody. Kristof wrote that while “there is no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes,” the country’s security apparatus has allowed sexual violence to become, according to a 2024 United Nations report, “standard operating procedures” and “a major element in the ill treatment of Palestinians.”
The column drew on data from humanitarian organizations. A 2025 Save the Children survey found that more than half of Palestinian children detained by Israeli forces reported witnessing or experiencing sexual violence. Separately, 29 percent of 59 Palestinian journalists surveyed by the Committee to Protect Journalists said they had endured some form of sexual violence; 3 percent said they were raped.
Kristof also noted that Israel had welcomed a U.N. report documenting sexual assaults against Israeli women by Hamas but rejected the report’s call to investigate similar abuses by Israeli forces. Netanyahu has previously denounced what he called “baseless accusations of sexual violence” against Israel.
Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander, responding before the lawsuit was announced, defended the piece as “deeply reported opinion journalism” that was fact-checked with independent experts and relied on “news reporting, independent research from human-rights groups, surveys and, in one case, with U.N. testimony.” He also refuted an online claim that the Times was considering retracting Kristof’s story, calling it inaccurate.
The legal threat comes amid broader tensions over media coverage of Israel’s treatment of Palestinian detainees. The Times itself is also facing a separate lawsuit from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which alleges bias against a white male editor in a promotion case. Meanwhile, growing anti-Israel sentiment within the Democratic Party is raising questions for Jewish candidates eyeing the 2028 presidential race.
As of Thursday evening, the Times had not issued a further response to the planned lawsuit.
