A fresh wave of controversy erupted this week over a high-profile investigative report published by the *New York Times*, which detailed horrific accounts of sexual violence and rape committed against Palestinian detainees by Israeli personnel in state-run prisons. On Thursday, dozens of pro-Israel activists gathered outside the *New York Times* headquarters in midtown Manhattan to stage a public demonstration against the outlet’s coverage, amplifying long-simmering anger over the piece.
Video footage of the protest, circulated widely on the social platform X, showed demonstrators carrying banners that demanded an end to antisemitic sentiment and framed anti-Zionist ideology as a direct threat to Jewish lives. Central to the protestors’ demands was the immediate firing of Nicholas Kristof, the veteran *New York Times* journalist who authored the controversial report.
Kristof’s published investigation featured harrowing, firsthand testimonies from survivors that detailed brutal abuse: Palestinian prisoners described being sexually assaulted with dogs, penetrated with carrots, and sustaining severe rectal tearing from beatings with batons. In response to the report, high-profile Israeli influencers and sitting political figures quickly pushed back, dismissing the testimonies as a modern iteration of the blood libel — a centuries-old antisemitic falsehood that was repeatedly used to justify mass violence against Jewish communities across medieval and early modern Europe.
After the *New York Times* reaffirmed its commitment to the reporting and stood by Kristof’s work, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Thursday that it would pursue legal action against the American newspaper.
Claims of systemic sexual abuse against Palestinian detainees are not new: multiple independent human rights organizations have documented such abuses for years, and allegations featured in Kristof’s report have already been verified by independent regional outlet Middle East Eye. Past incidents of abuse have exposed deep rifts within Israeli society: multiple Israeli media personalities have publicly trivialized the use of dogs in sexual assaults against Palestinian detainees, and when Israeli prosecutors attempted to bring charges against soldiers accused of rape, widespread public backlash from hardline groups ultimately forced the release of the accused. In a high-profile example of public support for the accused soldiers, thousands of Israelis joined so-called “right to rape” demonstrations in the aftermath of the abuse allegations.
One of the most striking developments in related investigations came in November, when Israeli authorities arrested a military prosecutor charged with leaking footage that documented the rape of a Palestinian detainee. Separately, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the Israeli military’s chief military advocate, staged a fake suicide attempt while reportedly attempting to dispose of a mobile phone that held incriminating evidence connected to the case. The Israeli military subsequently launched a formal criminal investigation into the evidence leak.
Most recently, in March of this year, the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released its own findings, confirming it had uncovered evidence of widespread, systematic sexual violence perpetrated by Israeli officers against Palestinian people, dating back to the start of military operations in Gaza. The commission’s final report documented dozens of cases of rape and sexual assault against male Palestinian detainees, including accounts of abuse involving electrical probes used to burn anal tissue, and the insertion of objects including fingers, sticks, broom handles and vegetables into detainees’ anuses and rectums.