Occupied Palestine (QNN)- Israel said it will sue the New York Times after the newspaper published an op-ed detailing the widespread sexual abuse and rape against Palestinian detainees.
Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office made the announcement on Thursday, three days after the release of the article by longtime New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, which was based on the accounts of 14 male and female Palestinian victims.
The report added to a growing body of evidemce of systematic Israeli sexual abuse of Palestinian detainees, particluary following the start of the genocide in Gaza. That evidence has been documented by rights groups and media and comes amid a spike in deaths aming Palestinians in Israeli custofy amid reports of torture, mistrrwanent and medical negligeance.
Israel had previously condemned The New York Times report as “blood libel”, but went further on Thursday, saying Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Saar “have instructed the initiation of a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times”.
It further called the report “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”.
For its part, The New York Times and Kristoff have stood by the article, with a spokesperson on Wednesday calling the report a “deeply reported piece of opinion journalism”.
“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,” the spokesperson, Charlie Stadtlander, said in a statement on X.
“Details were extensively fact-checked, with accounts further cross-referenced with news reporting, independent research from human-rights groups, surveys and in one case, the UN testimony,” it said. “Independent experts were consulted on the assertions in the piece throughout reporting and fact-checking.”
Further details of the Israeli government’s planned lawsuit were not immediately available. While a foreign government can technically sue a US media company, the prospect raises several legal questions, particularly over jurisdiction.
If the suit is brought in a US court, it is likely to face a steep legal climb. US media has broad constitutional protections, particularly when challenged by government authorities.
Last year, Netanyahu said he was “looking at whether a country can sue The New York Times” newspaper, following a report on starvation in Gaza amid Israel’s genocide.
The Israeli prime minister, who is wanted by the ICC over war crimes in Gaza, 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.”
Kristof’s article cited a report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, presented to the UN Human Rights Council last year that Israel’s security apparatus had become a system under which sexual violence is “standard operating procedures” and “a major element in the ill treatment of Palestinians”.
It also pointed to a Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) report that found nearly a third of Palestinian journalists detained by Israel had faced sexual violence.
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.
Other Palestinians detailed abuses by Israeli settlers, who often operate with the protection of Israel’s security forces. Mohammad Matar, a Palestinian official, recounted being stripped and poked with a stick as settlers joked about raping him. “For six months, I couldn’t speak about it, even to my family,” he said.
In March, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, said in her report to the UN Human Rights Council that "the Israeli prison system has degenerated into a laboratory of calculated cruelty" with acts that include rape of Palestinians with bottles, metal rods and knives.
David Shuster, a former personality on Israeli news channel i24, suggested on his X account that the NYT is having discussions to take down the Kristof piece because it's "problematic", but on Tuesday, the public relations arm of the paper refuted the claim.
"There is no truth to this at all," the NYT statement said. "Nicholas Kristof is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has reported on sexual violence for decades, and is widely regarded as one of the world's best on-the-ground reporters documenting and bearing witness to sexual abuse."
Kristof qualified his piece by writing within it that "American tax dollars subsidize the Israeli security establishment, so this is sexual violence in which the United States is complicit".
But the reporting is filed under the opinions section, which means it falls under different editorial guidelines separate from those of the daily newsroom.
"I deeply believe the best opinion journalism is based on new reporting, so my columns are rooted in travel and reporting," Kristof wrote on X on Tuesday, responding to critics who asked why the paper would not publish the investigation as a news piece.
"In this case, I saw a story and pursued it, and because I'm a columnist, it ran in the opinion section," he added.
Many of Kristof's followers - he has more than 1.2 million - didn't find that to be a sufficient answer, regardless of what side they were on.
"For skeptics, why not agree on Red Cross and lawyer visits for the 9,000 Palestinian 'security' prisoners?" Kristof wrote on X in another post on Tuesday. "If you think these abuse allegations are false, such monitoring visits would be protective. So why not?"
The Israeli occupation government has not allowed the Red Cross to inspect the conditions of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons for years.
"If the US ambassador visited rape survivors with cameras in tow, if we conditioned arms transfers on an end to sexual assault, we could send a moral and practical message that sexual violence is unacceptable no matter the identity of the victim," Kristof wrote.
"For starters, the ambassador could ensure that those Palestinians who dared to speak for this article are not brutalized again for their courage," he added, referring to US ambassador to Israel and avowed Zionist Mike Huckabee.
