Israel to sue NYTs over article alleging Palestinian rape in prisons

Israeli officials have ordered the initiation of a libel lawsuit against The New York Times, following the publication of a controversial opinion column that Israeli officials have labeled a "blood libel." 

The lawsuit targets a column by Nicholas Kristof titled "The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians," which Netanyahu’s office described as one of the most distorted lies ever published against the state.  

Coinciding with the legal action, several US Jewish groups—including EndJewHatred, Stop Antizionism, Hineni, and the Movement Against Antizionism—announced plans to protest outside the Times' headquarters in Manhattan on Thursday evening. 

These organizations, many of which were formed in response to the rise in antisemitism following the Gaza war, stated that the column serves as direct incitement against the Jewish people.  

The column at the center of the dispute features testimony from 14 Palestinian men and women who alleged systematic sexual abuse by Israeli soldiers, prison guards, and Shin Bet interrogators. 

Most controversially, the piece included claims that Israeli forces trained combat dogs to rape prisoners on command and used various objects for sexual torture. Israel’s Foreign Ministry rejected these allegations as a "false and well-orchestrated anti-Israel campaign," accusing the Times of trying to force Israel onto a UN "blacklist" by creating a false symmetry between Israeli soldiers and Hamas.  

Israeli officials and media watchdogs like NGO Monitor have specifically challenged the credibility of Kristof's sources. Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter pointed out that the column relied heavily on the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, a group whose leadership has been photographed with senior Hamas officials. Further criticism was directed at the involvement of groups like Save the Children and the Committee to Protect Journalists, which critics argue have documented histories of factual inaccuracies regarding Israel.  

The Foreign Ministry also accused The New York Times of strategic timing, claiming the column was published to overshadow a 300-page report by the Israeli Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes. 

That report, released just one day after the column, detailed systematic and widespread sexual violence committed by Hamas terrorists during their October 7 attack on Israel. The New York Times has denied this, stating they were not informed of the Israeli report's completion and stood by their column, asserting that Kristof’s reporting was extensively fact-checked and corroborated by multiple witnesses.  

The Civil Commission's report, which the ministry claims the Times ignored, presents a starkly different narrative of the conflict. Based on over 430 interviews and thousands of photographs and videos, it documents 13 distinct forms of sexual violence committed by Hamas, including gang rape, sexual mutilation, and postmortem abuse. According to the report, these acts were not isolated incidents but were "deliberately used as a method of terror" against Israeli civilians and hostages.