MANHATTAN: Nicholas Kristof, in a (3,700-word) column The Silence Meets the Rape of Palestinians (that appeared in the 11th May, 2026 issue of The New York Times), presented his findings, based on interviews of fourteen men and women who were sexually abused during incarceration and attacks by Israeli settlers.
Responding to the ‘rape story’, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu took to the X to state: “Following the publication by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times of one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press, which also received the backing of the newspaper.”
Israeli PM informed: “Today 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 and Israel’s valiant soldiers. 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.”
New York Times stated: “The Israeli Prime Minister has threatened to file a libel lawsuit against The New York Times regarding Nicholas Kristof‘s deeply reported opinion column on sexual abuse by Israel’s prison guards, soldiers, settlers and interrogators. This threat, similar to one made last year, is part of a well-worn political playbook that aims to undermine independent reporting and stifle journalism that does not fit a specific narrative. Any such legal claim would be without merit.”
SOP: In his column Kristof also cited a UN report that was published in 2025. According to that, Israelis subject Palestinian men, women and children to sexualized torture: “There is no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes. But in recent years they have built a security apparatus where sexual violence has become, as a United Nations report put it last year, one of Israel’s ‘Standard Operating Procedures’ and ‘a major element in the ill treatment of Palestinians’.”
Danilo Della Valle, from European Parliament’s Left group, asserted that the sexual abuse at Israeli detention centers were not isolated misconduct: “The systematic violence inflicted on Palestinians in Israeli detention centers constitutes crimes against humanity…The latest investigation published by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times clearly demonstrates in detail that these are not isolated incidents or individual abuses.” He lamented EU’s failure to respond decisively to mounting reports of abuses.
Claudio Francavilla of Human Rights Watch, said the allegations are consistent with research carried out by his organization and other rights groups. He called for urgent international oversight of Israeli detention facilities, saying it vital that credible investigations took place and that those responsible be brought to justice.
Francavilla also urged immediate access for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and independent observers to all detention centers: “We have repeatedly called on the EU and member states to take concrete measures that would pressure Israeli authorities to end ongoing serious human rights and violations of the laws of war, and to ensure accountability.”
It is pertinent to mention here that ICC had issued an arrest warrant against Israeli PM.
Newspakistan.tv
UK-based Nimra Jamali is writing, on international politics, for Newspakistan.tv since its inception (on 15th December, 2015).
