Israel says it will sue New York Times over article on sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners [View all]

Source: Guardian

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Nethanyahu, and foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, have threatened to sue the New York Times for defamation over the publication of an essay by Nicholas Kristof detailing allegations that Palestinian women, men and children have been raped and sexually abused in Israeli military detention.

“Following the publication by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times of one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press, which also received the backing of the newspaper, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar have instructed the initiation of a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times,” Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs wrote in a social media post on Thursday.

“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,” Netanyahu added in a statement to Reuters. “We will fight these lies in the court of public opinion and in the court of law. Truth will prevail.”

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Kristof’s interviews with 14 men and women “were corroborated with other witnesses, whenever possible, and with people the victims confided in – that includes family members and lawyers”, said Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesperson for the Times, in a statement posted on Wednesday. “Details were extensively fact-checked, with accounts further cross-referenced with news reporting, independent research from human-rights groups, surveys and in one case, with U.N. testimony. Independent experts were consulted on the assertions in the piece throughout reporting and fact-checking.”

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/14/israel-sue-new-york-times-sexual-abuse-palestinian-prisoners

As noted in the article, deeply unlikely to succeed on First Amendment grounds here in the US, and as the kids like to say, discovery in such a suit would be... interesting.

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

— John Scalzi (@scalzi.com) 2026-05-14T19:37:21.915Z