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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government plans to file a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times in response to an opinion column alleging widespread sexual abuse targeting Palestinian prisoners.
The column, by journalist Nicholas Kristof, cites interviews with 14 men and women “who said they had been sexually assaulted by Israeli settlers or members of the security forces,” but notes Kristoff was unable to corroborate some accounts of abuse.
Israeli officials condemned the Times for publishing the report. Netanyahu’s office called it “one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel.” In a statement Thursday, the office said Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar “have instructed the initiation of a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times.”
Netanyahu posted on X that his legal advisers will “consider the harshest legal action against The New York Times and Nicholas Kristof.”
The Times on Wednesday night defended Kristof’s piece, calling it a “deeply reported piece of opinion journalism.”
“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,” said Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesperson for the Times. “Details were extensively fact-checked, with accounts further cross-referenced with news reporting, independent research from human-rights groups, surveys and in one case, with U.N. testimony. Independent experts were consulted on the assertions in the piece throughout reporting and fact-checking.”
It is unclear if litigation will be filed in the United States or Israel, or who the plaintiffs will be.
A government itself cannot sue for defamation in the United States, according to Rodney Smolla, a First Amendment scholar and former president of the Vermont Law and Graduate School. If Netanyahu or another government official were to bring the suit, Smolla said they’d likely have a tough hill to climb.
“I think at the end of the day, courts would say this [article] is insufficiently targeting Netanyahu, and to allow him to sue is just too perilously close to allowing a suit by the government itself,” Smolla said.
The New York Times can also count on a different landmark case in which it was involved. In New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court limited the ability of public officials to sue for defamation, according to Nadine Strossen, a former president of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Strossen said the plaintiff, whether Netanyahu or someone else, would have to show “that there was intentional or reckless falsity, that they knew or had great reason to know that what was being said was false.”
“It can’t be a matter of opinion or of analysis or of perspective. It has to be objectively falsifiable,” Strossen said.
Yale Law professor Jed Rubenfeld also noted the Sullivan case, saying “I think there is probably zero chance of the suit succeeding.”
“If you write your criticism of a government impersonally without naming particular individuals, who you’re saying are responsible for whatever the misconduct or crimes are….then you’re within your First Amendment rights,” Rubenfeld said.
Public figures in the U.S. have sued for millions over news coverage they considered unfair or defamatory, but at trial they’re required to show that the reporter or publisher acted with actual malice — the knowledge that statements were false, or reckless disregard for the truth.
President Trump has in recent years wielded lawsuits over coverage he hasn’t liked as leverage to extract millions in pretrial settlements from the parent companies of news outlets, including CBS News. Mr. Trump sued CBS News over a 2024 “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. The outlet said the lawsuit was “completely without merit” shortly after it was filed. Mr. Trump and CBS News’ parent company, Paramount, settled in 2025 for $16 million.
In 1983, Israel’s then-Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon sued Time Magazine over an article about a massacre in Lebanon. That case went to trial, and a federal jury found the reporting in question to be false, but concluded the magazine did not act with actual malice in publishing the story.
Smolla said Sharon — who decades later would serve as prime minister — had standing because the reporting that he claimed was defamatory was about him specifically. He noted that members of a small group can have legal standing — even when unnamed in the reporting — if they believe they’re implicated in the alleged defamation.
Kristof’s column includes a claim by a journalist from Gaza that he was stripped naked and mounted by a dog as Israeli guards laughed. Kristof wrote that “the Palestinian prisoners and human rights monitors have also cited reports of police dogs being coached to rape prisoners.”
Smolla said if individual police dog trainers brought claims they “might” be viable plaintiffs.
“There are only a small number of people with that expertise who have that assignment,” Smolla said.
Still, Strossen said even a case like that would have little chance under the Sullivan standard, since individuals were not named in the column.
“It seems to me that would be an imaginative effort,” Strossen said.
