Israel has launched a stunning legal warning against The New York Times, vowing to file a defamation lawsuit over a bombshell column that accused Israeli soldiers, settlers and prison guards of sexually abusing Palestinian detainees. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Saar ordered the move on May 14, calling the piece a “blood libel.” The Times is firing back, refusing to retract a single line.
Netanyahu Orders “Harshest Legal Action” Against Kristof
The Israeli government announced the lawsuit just three days after the column hit newsstands. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his country’s foreign ministry said Thursday they will sue The New York Times, accusing the outlet of defamation after it published a column alleging that Israeli prison guards sexually abuse and assault imprisoned Palestinians.
Netanyahu took the fight straight to social media. “Today I instructed my legal advisers to consider the harshest legal action against The New York Times and [columnist] Nicholas Kristof,” Netanyahu wrote on the social platform X. “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.”
The foreign ministry said in its own statement that the column showcased “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.”
The prime minister, who is also fighting a war on multiple fronts, framed the legal move as a broader battle. The Israeli prime minister, who faces elections later this year, on Thursday said he wanted the lawsuit to send a message beyond its legal scope. “Under my leadership, Israel will not be silent,” he said in a post on X. “We will fight these lies in the court of public opinion and in the court of law.”
Inside Kristof’s Explosive Investigation
The column at the center of the firestorm is titled “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians.” Kristof’s column, titled “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” published Monday, chronicles accounts from 14 Palestinian men and women, including freelance journalist Sami al-Sai, who said they were beaten by Israeli guards after they were detained, before they were sexually assaulted, in some cases repeatedly.
Kristof, a veteran columnist, painted a chilling picture in the piece. Kristof’s column, published Monday, alleged “a pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, women and even children, by soldiers, settlers, interrogators in the Shin Bet internal security agency and, above all, prison guards.”
Importantly, he stopped short of blaming top officials. “There is no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes,” Kristof wrote. “But in recent years they have built a security apparatus where sexual violence has become, as a United Nations report put it last year, one of Israel’s ‘standard operating procedures’ and ‘a major element in the ill treatment of Palestinians.'” He cites several humanitarian organizations in his column, including Save the Children’s 2025 survey that found more than half of the children detained by Israel reported witnessing or experiencing sexual violence.
The numbers cited in the report are deeply troubling.
- In a report, 17 out of 59 Palestinian journalists told the Committee to Protect Journalists, another resource Kristof relied on, that they endured some form of sexual violence. Two of the 59 said they were raped.
- The accounts included that of Sami al-Sai, a 46-year-old Palestinian freelance journalist, who said he was sexually assaulted with a rubber baton and carrot while in Israeli detention in 2024.
- 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.
The New York Times Refuses to Back Down
The newspaper is standing firmly behind its star columnist. Danielle Rhoades Ha, a New York Times spokesperson, responded to the Netanyahu and Sa’ar statement by saying the suit would not hold up in court. A New York Times spokesperson responded with a statement calling the threatened suit “without merit” and “part of a well-worn political playbook.”
Times editors went further, defending the rigor of the reporting. “The accounts of the 14 men and women he interviewed 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. “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.
The paper also dismissed online chatter suggesting it might pull the piece. Stadtlander also defended Kristof after “The Young Turks” contributor David Shuster posted on X that the Times was considering retracting Kristof’s story. Both Stadtlander and Kristof replied that this was not accurate.
Legal Experts Say Israel Faces a Steep Uphill Battle
The biggest hurdle for Netanyahu may not be politics but American constitutional law. A government itself cannot sue for defamation in the United States, according to Rodney Smolla, a First Amendment scholar and former president of the Vermont Law and Graduate School. If Netanyahu or another government official were to bring the suit, Smolla said they’d likely have a tough hill to climb. “I think at the end of the day, courts would say this [article] is insufficiently targeting Netanyahu, and to allow him to sue is just too perilously close to allowing a suit by the government itself,” Smolla said.
The Times also has a powerful precedent on its side. The New York Times can also count on a different landmark case in which it was involved. In New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court limited the ability of public officials to sue for defamation, according to Nadine Strossen, a former president of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Other media law specialists openly mocked the threat. David A Logan, a professor emeritus at the Roger Williams School of Law and media law expert, told The Guardian, “There is no chance a US court would countenance such a case.” Mark Stephens, an international media law expert, said the idea of Israel suing the Times is, “ludicrous.”
| Key Question | Current Status |
|---|---|
| Where will the suit be filed? | Not announced by Netanyahu |
| Who will be the plaintiff? | Unclear (government vs. individual) |
| Will the Times retract? | No, paper stands by the column |
| Legal standard to beat | “Actual malice” under NYT v. Sullivan |
Protests, Politics and a Pattern of Threats
The legal threat came as anger spilled into the streets of New York. Thursday’s protest, organized by Pro-Israel groups including EndJewHatred, Stop Antizionism, Hineni and the Movement Against Antizionism, featured impassioned chants of “shame on Kristof” and “we demand action” amid steady drumbeats.
This is not the first time the Israeli leader has gone after the paper of record. 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.”
Critics argue the lawsuit threat is part of a larger strategy. 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.
There is also a famous historical parallel that worries Israeli officials. In 1983, Israel’s then-Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon sued Time Magazine over an article about a massacre in Lebanon. That case went to trial, and a federal jury found the reporting in question to be false, but concluded the magazine did not act with actual malice in publishing the story. Sharon, in effect, lost.
The fight over Kristof’s column lands at a raw, painful moment for both Israelis and Palestinians, where every word about the war carries enormous weight. Whether this lawsuit ever reaches a courtroom or simply fades like the threats before it, the questions Kristof raised about detention, dignity and accountability are not going to disappear quietly. Readers, the world is watching closely. Share your honest thoughts on this growing press freedom showdown in the comments below.
