On May 11, the Times published a story by op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof, who cited Palestinians accusing Israel of “widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, women and even children.”
( May 14, 2026 / JNS ) Prime 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.”
Kristof 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.”