Israel Plans to Sue NYT Over Article Detailing Sexual Abuse of Palestinians

Israel has announced that it will sue The New York Times and reporter Nicholas Kristof over a recent article called “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” which documents systemic sexual abuse by Israeli soldiers and settlers.

In a social media post on May 14, Israel’s foreign ministry stated that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar “have instructed the initiation of a defamation lawsuit” against The New York Times. The post decried the article, published on Monday, as “one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press.”

Netanyahu also weighed in, stating, “Today I instructed my legal advisers to consider the harshest legal action against The New York Times and Nicholas Kristof.”

“They defamed the soldiers of Israel and perpetuated a blood libel about rape,” Netanyahu continued. “We will fight these lies in the court of public opinion and in the court of law.”

Kristof’s article details 14 Palestinians’ experiences of sexual violence at the hands of Israeli soldiers and settlers, and argues that sexual violence against Palestinians is systemic and a part of Israeli state policy.

Kristof also cited organizations including the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, which documented “a grave pattern of sexual violence” against Palestinians. He noted that the organization Save the Children found in its survey of children aged 12 to 17 who had been in Israeli detention that more than half reported either witnessing or experiencing sexual violence — and that the organization assumed that the actual figures were even higher.

Kristof’s article is hardly the first report to cover Israeli sexual violence against Palestinians — and the lawsuit represents yet another attempt by Israel to cover it up. In March, the Israeli military dropped all charges against five soldiers for their brutal sexual abuse of a Palestinian who was being detained at Israel’s Sde Teiman military prison in 2024 — an attack that was caught on video surveillance cameras. Netanyahu praised the court’s decision to drop the case.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that the dismissal “confirms the state’s active involvement in shielding perpetrators from accountability instead of prosecuting them, representing yet another practical declaration of Israel’s adoption of a policy of impunity for crimes committed against Palestinians.”

B’Tselem called the Sde Teiman case “only the tip of the iceberg,” documenting “the abuse and inhuman treatment of Palestinians in Israeli custody” since October 7, 2023. In its report, B’Tselem provided testimonies of 55 Palestinians detained since October 7. It labeled the Israeli prison system “a network of torture camps.”

This is not the first time that Israel has threatened to sue The New York Times, either. In August 2025, Netanyahu said he was looking into “whether a country can sue The New York Times” over its coverage of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Netanyahu called coverage of starvation in Gaza “clear defamation.”

But activists and journalists alike have found that The New York Times has “systematically” favored Israel. In a leaked memo, The New York Times was found to have instructed journalists to “restrict” use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing,” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when referring to Gaza or the West Bank.