Israel to sue New York Times over opinion article alleging widespread rape of prisoners

Israel will sue The New York Times over an op-ed alleging widespread sexual abuse and rape against Palestinian prisoners, say Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar in a joint statement.

They call the piece by columnist Nicholas Kristof “one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press.”

Kristof’s column 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.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry has alleged that the Times deliberately published Kristof’s column ahead of an independent Israeli report that found Hamas had systematically used sexual violence in the onslaught of October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza. The Foreign Ministry claimed the Times had been approached with the Israeli report “months ago.”