Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu announced Thursday that Israel plans to take legal action against The New York Times over what he described as a deeply offensive and misleading article accusing Israeli soldiers and military dogs of sexually abusing Palestinian detainees.
The decision follows the publication of a column by Nicholas Kristof in the newspaper, which alleged widespread sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners by Israeli guards and soldiers.
“They defamed the soldiers of Israel and perpetuated a blood libel about rape, trying to create a false symmetry between the genocidal terrorists of Hamas and Israel’s valiant soldiers,” Netanyahu said as he vowed harsh legal action against the paper.
“Under my leadership, Israel will not be silent. We will fight these lies in the court of public opinion and in the court of law. Truth will prevail.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed it is preparing a defamation lawsuit, calling the report “one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press.”
The controversial piece, based on testimony from 14 former Palestinian detainees, claimed that sexual abuse was systematically embedded within Israeli military practices.
It also alleged that Israeli forces trained dogs to assault prisoners.
The article quickly spread online and triggered strong reactions, with critics — including some analysts and Jewish organizations — condemning it as anti-Jewish propaganda and labeling it a “blood libel.”
The timing of the report also drew attention, as it appeared one day before the release of findings from a two-year investigation into widespread sexual violence committed against Israeli civilians during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack.
The New York Times stood by its reporter as criticism intensified.
“Nicholas Kristof is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has reported on sexual violence for decades and is widely regarded as one of the world’s best on-the-ground reporters documenting and bearing witness to sexual abuse experienced by women and men in war and conflict zones,” a Times spokesperson said.
“He traveled to the region to report firsthand on the stories of the Palestinians who suffered abuse, and his article collects accounts in the victims’ own words, backed by independent studies.”
{Matzav.com}
“The Jews poisoned the wells!”
“The Jews use Christian blood in their matza!”
We may have wondered how stupid people were to believe those outrageous, senseless lies, yet along comes this new blood libel and the prestigious NY Times prints it, and all too many people believe it. There’s nothing new under the sun.
Along with the Gaza “genocide and starvation” while they’re having parties and running marathons.
Advanced modern society has been processed through secular schools to be a bunch of morons.
Israel is wasting its money on paying lawyers to sue the NY Times unless they are working on a contingency basis. It’s virtually impossible to win a defamation case against a newspaper in the USA given the legal protections that the press is given.
Having personally known Israeli soldiers when I was in dati-leumi camp in my younger years and 2 sons in the IDF (who ended up serving in different kinds of units), plus knowing Israeli culture really well, Jews are not at all interested in committing these acts for any reason, no temptation to do so whatsoever.
But really, the Gazans really love doing this kind of thing, both to each other and anyone they consider their enemy.
So if anything actually happened, it was most likely the Gazans doing it to each other.