Israel’s Foreign Ministry slammed The New York Times for an opinion piece published Monday alleging rape and other horrific sexual abuses against Arabs in Israeli prisons, including the use of dogs trained to rape prisoners.

If that sounds like an insane conspiracy theory, it’s because it is. “At the risk of giving it any more airtime, the cartoonishly nonsensical ‘Israeli dogs rape Palestinians’ claim has a source worth naming. It’s the handiwork of Ramy Abdu, head of the Hamas front group called Euro-Med,” wrote Middle East analyst Eitan Fischberger on X. Abdu has been identified as a Hamas operative by Israel.

The Foreign Ministry said the civil commission into Hamas’ systemic violence on and since Oct. 7 approached The New York Times about publishing its findings, but the paper of record said it wasn’t interested. Instead, the day before the commission’s report was released, the Times published Nicholas Kristof’s column detailing the violence and sexual abuse allegedly inflicted by Israel on Arab prisoners while acknowledging there was no evidence that Israeli leaders ordered the abuse.

Instead, he said, without evidence, that the system created a permission structure in which any kind of abuse is tolerated. For the piece, Kristoff interviewed 14 men and women who gave searing accounts of torture at the hands of IDF soldiers, but Arabs have been known to lie to the media about Israel. A famous example is the fabricated Jenin massacre claim in April 2002.

“Months ago, the Civil Commission approached the New York Times with a report on Hamas’ systematic sexual violence on Oct. 7 and after,” the Foreign Ministry posted on X. “The New York Times said it was not interested.”

The ministry noted that the Times was alone among major outlets who did publish the report. For example, CNN and other international outlets ran the commission’s findings.

“Aware of the report and its release date, the night before its release the NYT ran a shameful attack on Israel, belittling Hamas’ sexual crimes. That tells you everything about the NYT’s agenda,” the ministry said.

In a separate post, the ministry called the allegations a “blood libel” and described them as an “inversion of reality.”

“Today, The New York Times chose to publish one of the worst blood libels ever to appear in the modern press,” the ministry wrote. “In an unfathomable inversion of reality, and through an endless stream of baseless lies, propagandist Nicholas Kristof turns the victim into the accused. Israel — whose citizens were the victims of the most horrific sexual crimes committed by Hamas on October 7, and whose hostages were later subjected to further sexual abuse — is portrayed as the guilty party.”

Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, also called the article a blood libel in a blistering condemnation on X.

“The New York Times and Nick Kristof count on you not pulling the curtain back on their lies. Don’t buy into their blood libels — watch and find out who’s really behind this narrative,” he wrote alongside a video in which he explained that Euro-Med Monitor, cited in the piece, is run by Hamas operatives.

Gerald Steinberg, founder of NGO Monitor, also expressed his scorn on X.

“Perhaps the most toxic and idiotic pieces that Nick Kristoff has put his name on — a mix of lies sold by a Hamas-front propaganda NGO with zero credibility and ‘eyewitness testimony’ from Hamas terrorists,” he wrote.

A Gazan-born anti-Hamas activist, Ahmed Fouad al-Khatib, also criticized the piece.

While agreeing that the dehumanization of Arabs, combined with anger over the sexual violence of Oct. 7, created a permission structure for the abuse of prisoners, he also said skepticism of the claims in the article is warranted.

“It is also fair to scrutinize the sourcing of Nicholas Kristof’s NYT opinion article. Some cited entities and individuals, including the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor and Shaiel Ben Ephraim, have troubling records on accuracy,” he wrote. “They are not credible sources.”

He also warned against using these claims to stoke antisemitism.

“This reporting must not be weaponized to stoke antisemitism or collective blame,” he wrote. “These are alleged acts by individuals, not an indictment of all Israelis or the Jewish people.”