Israel is preparing legal action against the New York Times after the newspaper published an article describing the rapes of Palestinian prisoners it its custody.
The Israeli Ministry of Foreigh Ministry (MFA) announced its decision to sue on X on Thursday after the paper doubled down in its defence of the report.
“Nicholas Kristof’s deeply reported piece of opinion journalism starts with a proposition to readers: ‘Whatever our views of the Middle East conflict, we should be able to unite in condemning rape.” A spokesperson for the New York Times said.
Kristof’s story contained harrowing testimonies of the rape of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers, which included accounts of prisoners being Mounted by dogs, penetrated by carrots, and rectums torn by batons.
Israeli influencers and politicians responded to the accounts by claiming that the New York Times was perpetuating a blood libel – or an antisemitic canard, used to justify the slaughter of Jews in Europe during the medieval and early modern era.
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Israel’s MFA wrote: “Following the publication by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times of one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press, which also received the backing of the newspaper, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar have instructed the initiation of a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times.”
Middle East Eye revealed similar testimonies to Kristof’s last month, from a report titled “Sexual violence and forcible transfer in the West Bank: How the exploitation of gender dynamics drives displacement,” by the West Bank Protection Consortium.
The group documented at least 16 cases involving sexual crimes perpetrated by Israeli settlers and soldiers.
‘US complicity’
Kristof qualified his piece by writing within it that “American tax dollars subsidize the Israeli security establishment, so this is sexual violence in which the United States is complicit”.
He opens with an interview with a Palestinian journalist who describes being filmed while sexually assaulted by both male and female Israeli soldiers, as they used items like rubber batons to rape him.
The 46-year-old Sami al-Sai recounted being grabbed by the penis and testicles so hard that he would scream for the soldiers to stop.
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Kristof did not shy away from pointing out that decades of the dehumanisation of Palestinians lead to these actions – and also that there are likely many more rape cases than anyone can know, because openly talking about being the victim of sexual assault is deeply taboo in conservative Palestinian society.
Few victims interviewed by Kristof agreed to be identified by name, but he noted that their testimonies formed a pattern that is evidence of a systematic problem.
He also cited almost every available report by a non-profit organisation that has studied Israeli state sexual violence: Euro-Med Monitor, Save the Children, the Committee to Protect Journalists, B’Tselem, and others. Kristof also interviewed Israeli lawyers who acknowledged that the rape of Palestinians is far-reaching.
