Israel is gearing up for a courtroom showdown with The New York Times over a Nicholas Kristof opinion column that accuses Israeli soldiers and prison guards of systematic sexual abuse of Palestinian detainees, including disputed and graphic claims that guards trained dogs to assault prisoners. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar have instructed officials to prepare a defamation case, while the Times is publicly standing by the piece, turning an already ferocious media fight into a potential legal one.
Government response
The Prime Minister’s Office blasted Kristof’s column as “one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel” and said Netanyahu and Sa’ar had “instructed officials to begin preparing a defamation lawsuit” against the paper, according to The Jerusalem Post. The statement added that officials have not yet decided in which jurisdiction the case would be filed or what level of damages they would seek.
What the column said
Kristof’s opinion piece, published Monday under the headline “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” relies on interviews with more than a dozen former Palestinian detainees who describe sexual abuse while in Israeli custody, according to The Forward. The New York Times communications office has defended the work as “deeply reported” and has said there are no plans to retract it, per TheWrap.
Timing and the 'blood libel' charge
Israeli officials have also accused Kristof and the Times of dropping the column just as a civil commission was releasing a report on sexual violence carried out by Hamas, claiming the timing was meant to undercut that finding and denouncing the piece as a “blood libel,” according to statements and ministry posts cited by Israel National News. The Foreign Ministry has publicly challenged several of the sources cited in the column and has demanded that the article be taken down.
Legal hurdles ahead
Legal experts note that transforming an opinion column into a successful libel case is an uphill climb in many jurisdictions. In the United States in particular, defamation law generally protects rhetorical and subjective language, and public-figure plaintiffs must typically prove that specific factual claims are false and were published with actual malice. Recent case law and commentary highlight how hard it is to turn disputed political commentary into an actionable claim, as outlined in analysis at Casemine and in reporting on First Amendment defenses in The Washington Post.
Next steps
Pro-Israel advocates are planning protests outside the Times headquarters in Manhattan and pushing for a hard line from both Jerusalem and the paper’s critics, while Israeli officials say they intend to move ahead as lawyers sort through strategy, according to The Forward. Any lawsuit, along with any counter-moves from the Times, could take months just to clear questions of jurisdiction and press-freedom protections, keeping this clash front and center from New York newsrooms to government halls in Jerusalem.
