Israel will pursue a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times over an opinion column by Nicholas Kristof alleging widespread sexual abuse of Palestinians by Israelis, including graphic claims that detainees were raped with objects and even assaulted by attack dogs.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said Benjamin Netanyahu and Gideon Sa&#8217;ar instructed officials to initiate legal action after Kristof’s column, published Monday, accused Israeli prison guards, soldiers, settlers, and interrogators of carrying out systematic sexual violence against Palestinians. The ministry <a href="https://x.com/IsraelMFA/status/2054896697432519059">called</a> the piece “one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press.”
The dispute centers on Kristof’s column, which leaned exclusively on interviews with 14 Palestinians and secondary reports from activist-linked human rights groups — many of which themselves relied on anonymous testimony. While the Times framed the piece as <a href="https://x.com/NYTimesPR/status/2054713015107273103">“deeply reported”</a> journalism, the column presented explosive accusations as credible despite offering little independently verifiable evidence beyond the claims of the accusers and organizations already hostile to Israel.
The column included graphic allegations that some detainees were beaten, sexually assaulted with batons and other objects, and in one especially lurid claim, assaulted by a trained dog. The latter allegation in particular drew intense backlash, with critics <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/nick-kristof-dog-torture-claim-israel-palestine">calling</a> it grotesque propaganda more akin to wartime atrocity rumors than serious journalism.
Israeli officials argued the column relied on deeply compromised sourcing, including <a href="https://ngo-monitor.org/ngos/euro-med-human-rights-monitor/">Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor</a>, an organization whose founder has been accused by Israel of ties to Hamas. Watchdog group NGO Monitor <a href="https://www.jpost.com/international/article-896131#google_vignette">also challenged</a> sources cited in the column, arguing that several had records of amplifying false or unverified allegations against Israel.
The timing of Kristof’s column further inflamed the controversy. It ran just before the release of an Israeli civil commission report documenting sexual violence committed by Hamas during the October 7 massacre, a report built from years of evidence collection, forensic review, and thousands of hours of visual documentation. Israeli officials accused the Times of effectively laundering unverified allegations against Israel at the precise moment documented evidence of Hamas atrocities was being released.
Kristof himself has faced criticism for similar reporting failures before. In 2014, he publicly acknowledged being misled by activist Somaly Mam, whose dramatic claims about child trafficking he had promoted for years before they unraveled. Kristof later wrote that he regretted elevating those allegations and admitted journalists are “less suspicious if someone claims something stigmatizing, like being trafficked into a brothel.”
The same pattern is repeating here: sensational claims, weak corroboration, and an apparent willingness to suspend skepticism when the allegations fit a preferred political narrative. Even former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whom Kristof cited in the piece, later said the columnist had misrepresented his comments by placing them in a way that suggested he endorsed claims he explicitly said he could not verify.
The Times issued a statement Tuesday defending Kristof and rejecting rumors of a retraction. Spokesman Charlie Stadtlander <a href="https://x.com/NYTimesPR/status/2054257854345888161">wrote</a> there was “no truth” to reports the paper was reconsidering the piece and described Kristof as “one of the world’s best on-the-ground reporters.”
Neither Israeli officials nor the Times have publicly released legal filings as of Thursday, and it remains unclear whether the lawsuit would be filed in Israel, the United States, or another jurisdiction. But the confrontation has already escalated into a broader indictment of a press establishment critics say is increasingly willing to run incendiary anti-Israel allegations on the thinnest possible evidentiary basis — so long as the target is the Jewish state.

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Israel Moves To Slap New York Times With Lawsuit Over ‘Blood Libel’ Hit Piece