Israel Will Sue New York Times Over Rape Op-Ed

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar have instructed Israeli officials to pursue legal action against The New York Times over a controversial opinion piece accusing Israeli soldiers and settlers of sexually abusing Palestinians, Israel announced Thursday.

The government said the article published by columnist Nicholas Kristof contained “one of the most distorted lies ever published” against the State of Israel. Israeli officials said the piece included fabricated accusations against IDF soldiers and presented unverified claims as evidence of severe abuse.

The decision follows several days of sharp criticism from Israel’s Foreign Ministry, which called the op-ed “one of the worst blood libels ever to appear in the modern press.” The ministry accused Kristof of reversing the roles of victim and perpetrator and publishing a piece that demonized Israel just as an Israeli civil commission released findings on Hamas’s sexual and gender-based crimes during the October 7 massacre and against hostages held in Gaza.

The New York Times has stood by the column. In a statement Wednesday night, the paper said Kristof’s opinion piece was extensively fact-checked and based on corroborated accounts. The Times said the article drew on interviews with 14 men and women, with their accounts checked where possible against witnesses, relatives, lawyers, news reports, human rights research, surveys and UN testimony.

Israeli officials and pro-Israel watchdogs have challenged that defense, arguing that some of the sources cited in the article have records of anti-Israel bias, factual problems or links to hostile actors. Critics have focused in particular on Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, whose founder Ramy Abdu has been accused by NGO Monitor of ties to Hamas figures and of using extreme anti-Israel rhetoric.

Gazan-born anti-Hamas activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib also criticized parts of the sourcing, saying that while he believes abuse has occurred in Israeli prisons, some entities and individuals cited in the piece have troubling records on accuracy and credibility.

The planned lawsuit would mark an unusually direct legal escalation by the Israeli government against one of the world’s most prominent newspapers. It was not immediately clear where the case would be filed, what specific claims Israel would make, or whether the suit would target the newspaper, Kristof personally, or both.

The dispute comes amid a broader fight over international coverage of wartime sexual violence, Israeli conduct, and Hamas atrocities. Israel argues that major outlets have minimized or delayed attention to documented Hamas crimes while amplifying poorly sourced allegations against Israeli forces.