NY Times op-ed alleges widespread rape of Palestinian prisoners

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

They called 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, published Monday, 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.”

Kristof quoted testimony from Palestinians who said they’d been regularly stripped naked in prison and groped, forcibly penetrated with various objects, or been mounted and raped by specially trained dogs. The latter claim, circulating in anti-Israel media for some time, has recently been amplified by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, which was also a key source for Kristof’s report.

“Today I instructed my legal advisers to consider the harshest legal action against The New York Times and Nicholas Kristof,” Netanyahu said in a later post on X.