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Or sign-in if you have an account.The New York Times logo is seen on the building's facade in New York City on January 22, 2026. Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP via Getty ImagesPrime Minister Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced on Thursday the initiation of a lawsuit against The New York Times for publishing “one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel.” On May 11, the Times published a story by Nicholas Kristof, an op-ed columnist, who cited Palestinians accusing Israel 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.”Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. 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Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorToday I instructed my legal advisers to consider the harshest legal action against The New York Times and Nicholas Kristof. 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…— Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) May 14, 2026Kristof did not fact check the sources or question their reliability. For instance, he quotes a report by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based group that accuses Israel of employing “systematic sexual violence” that is “widely practiced as part of an organized state policy.”NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based watchdog group, found that key members of Euro-Med are associated with Hamas. For example, Ramy Abdu, Euro-Med’s founder and chairman, appeared on a 2013 list published by Israel of Hamas’s “main operatives and institutions” in Europe.Kristof also cited the Committee to Protect Journalists, which he describes as “a respected American organization.” In 2024, investigative journalist David Collier discovered that the group had regurgitated Hamas propaganda in a report accusing Israel of targeting journalists in Gaza.This is a hard article to read, but I hope you'll do so. I've spent some time reporting on widespread rape and other sexual violence of Palestinian male and female prisoners by Israeli authorities, and the article is now published. The assault victims were warned not to give…— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) May 11, 2026Kristof appeared to take all the accusations at face value. “[O]ur American tax dollars subsidize the Israeli security establishment, so this is sexual violence in which the United States is complicit,” he wrote.He also seemed to treat as a cover-up the Sde Teiman Affair, in which five IDF reservists serving in Force 100, a unit of the Military Police responsible for high-risk security prisoners, were indicted in 2025, over accusations of sexually abusing a Palestinian prisoner.The case was dropped and the reservists were reinstated.Kristof did not mention an expert opinion of Professor Alon Pikarsky, director of general surgery at Jerusalem’s Hadassah-University Medical Center and a board-certified general surgeon specializing in colorectal surgery, who said the lack of damage to the terrorist’s anus suggested that he caused the wound himself, “as it is precisely the self-insertion of a foreign body, which can also cause a rupture in the rectum, that will not cause damage to the anus itself since the inserter (the patient) will ensure a gentle and non-traumatic insertion of the foreign body.”NYT is heightening the scandal -- instead of minimizing Kristof's bogus claims by asserting it was merely an opinion column, here the NYT is taking full ownership of every part of the story. But it still boils down to something very simple: the NYT published a bunch of… https://t.co/Rym7n8MpYk— Noah Pollak (@NoahPollak) May 14, 2026“The medical records made available to me (hospitalization documents, as well as a computer screenshot dated July 8, 2024, by Dr. Muhammad Melhem), which do not indicate any wounding to the anus, support self-insertion and not insertion by any external party,” Pikarsky concluded.Michal Cotler-Wunsh, CEO of the International Legal Forum, a group supporting Israel and fighting antisemitism, described Kristof’s column to JNS as “blood libelous.”Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here. Join the Conversation This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. 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