BREAKING: Israel is suing The New York Times over Nicholas Kristof’s shoddy and error-filled opinion column alleging systematic rape and sexual torture of Palestinian prisoners by Israeli guards, soldiers, and settlers.
Kristof’s piece — published May 11 — has been widely criticized by independent journalists and denounced by Israeli officials as a modern “blood libel.” Kristoff relied heavily on unverified claims from sources with documented Hamas sympathies and repeating graphic allegations (including much ridiculed claims about dogs trained for sexual abuse) without any rigorous corroboration. Little wonder the NYT ran it in the opinion section and not the news. Still, that does not absolve the paper's editors of a duty to fact check and vet such an inflammatory piece.
As an investigative journalist, I’ve spent decades watching how stories get distorted. This one stands out for its timing and sourcing failures: it landed just before the release of a two-year Israel investigation about detailed evidence on Hamas’s own systematic sexual violence on Oct. 7, which the Times largely ignored.
Israel’s government isn’t letting it slide. The Prime Minister’s Office and Foreign Ministry have now authorized a defamation lawsuit, calling Kristof’s column “one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press.”
This is NOT just another media spat. It’s a major escalation: a sovereign democracy taking on one of the most influential legacy newspapers for its reckless, agenda-driven journalism.
The New York Times is standing by the piece for now.
We’ll see how this plays out in court. But the mere fact that Israel felt compelled to sue speaks volumes about the state of elite media coverage of the Jewish state.
I am looking forward to litigation discovery to determine what was behind Kristof's 'reporting'
"Heads were decapitated. Pelvic bones shattered. Even after death, sexual assault continued. A grotesque, medieval obsession with sexual organs pervaded the crime scenes at the Nova Festival and in the Kibbutzim near Gaza."