Peloni: While it should be acknowledged that any lawsuit put forward will almost certainly be dismissed, what is the real prize in such a suit will not be the judgement of the plaintiff’s [ie Israel] innocence in the form of any sum awarded, but rather victory in such an undertaking would be in being granted discovery where the real source and motivation behind Krisof’s rape fantasies might be uncovered.
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New York Times Building by Robert Scoble, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
The just-published New York Times piece by Nicholas Kristof, accusing Israel of horrific crimes, including the sexual abuse of “Palestinians” in Israeli prisons, with victims said to include men, women, and children, and of “training dogs” to rape “Palestinians” as well, has quite properly enraged the government and the people of Israel. The Office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced in a Thursday, May 14 statement that Israel will take legal action against the Times over Kristof’s column.
More on this welcome news can be found here: “Israel to take legal action against ‘New York Times’ over claims of ‘dog rape’ of Palestinians,” by Shir Perets, Jerusalem Post, May 14, 2026:
Israel will take legal action against The New York Times over a column penned by Nicholas Kristof, which included allegations of serious sexual abuse of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a Thursday statement.
The PMO, which referred to the accusation as “one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar instructed officials to begin preparing a defamation lawsuit against the publication.
“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 wrote on X/Twitter….
The planned lawsuit would focus on whether statements in the article crossed the legal threshold from opinion or criticism into actionable defamation. It was not immediately clear where the lawsuit would be filed, what damages would be sought, or whether Israeli state institutions or individual officials would be listed as plaintiffs.
On Wednesday, the New York Times issued a statement affirming its support for Kristof’s controversial op-ed, saying he “draws together on-the-record accounts and cites several analyses documenting the practice of sexual violence and abuse conducted by various parts of Israel’s security forces and settlers.”
His “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,’” the news outlet stated.
“The accounts of the 14 men and women he interviewed were corroborated with other witnesses, whenever possible, and with people the victims confided in – that includes family members and lawyers,” the outlet said.
Kristof’s sensationalist charges, including the charge that the IDF deliberately has trained dogs to “rape” “Palestinian” prisoners, has spread around the world, causing untold harm to Israel’s image. Kristof relied on “Palestinians” for this malignant misinformation, apparently unaware that “Palestinians” have a long history of lying, and he never bothered, prior to publication, to obtain a comment, and rebuttal, from Israel that he might at least have included in his piece; he might even have checked with canine trainers who, to a man, have now publicly spoken about the impossibility of training dogs to rape humans.
This isn’t the only part of Kristof’s hit piece that is blatantly false, but it is the most outrageous and unbelievable of his many outrageous and unbelievable claims. When Israel did respond to the piece, and denounced its wild fabrications, the NYT doubled down, claiming that it stood by Kristof’s piece, and by the “Palestinians” upon whose testimony he relied.
This was too much for the government of Israel to let pass with just a denunciation of the New York Times and Kristof. It knew his piece damages Israel’s reputation around the world, and not just among those who are always prepared to believe the worst of the Jewish state. That preposterous charge about that canine corps of doggy rapists, and other bizarre charges, too, which Kristof made, will now become the stuff of approving comments from Hamas, CAIR, the Iranian government, and of course wsuch people as Francesca Albanese, Roger Waters, Susan Sarandon, Rashida Tlaib, Wally Shawn, Zohran Mamdani, and others of that silly-sinister ilk, whose name, alas, is legion, will pick them up and repeat them.
Now the New York Times will be sued for defamation by the State of Israel. How much will it ask for? Let it be Trumpian in size — a billion dollars, or two, or more. How do you measure the cost of such lies being made and disseminated across the globe, to the reputation of the Jewish state? How many more attacks on Israelis or Jews will be the result of those baseless kristovian charges?
Israel thinks that the New York Times will rue the day it published Kristof’s hit piece, not because it will have come to its senses, morally — the New York Times long ago lost that sense when it comes to its reporting on Israel — but because having to pay a billion or two for having published Kristof’s calumny, which is a kind of updated version, applied to the Jewish state, of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, will be painful. Does anyone doubt that the State of Israel will be able to call on the best defamation lawyers in the world, no matter where the suit is brought?
But here is another question. Why should Israel limit itself to suing the Grey Lady? Shouldn’t the onlie begetter of this defamation, the egregious Nicholas Kristof, with his long history of anti-Israel animus, also be sued? Let his days be full of exhausting testimony, both his own and that of others, and of withering cross-examinations, as lawyers for the plaintiff make mincemeat of him, and when the verdict comes down, he who is morally bankrupt will now be personally bankrupt as well.
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