Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar instructed officials to begin preparing a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times following a column by Nicholas Kristof that sparked furious condemnation from Israel.

The move came after Kristof published a column accusing Israel of widespread abuse of Palestinian detainees using trained dogs. Israeli officials accused the paper of promoting a false and deeply damaging narrative against the IDF, while stressing that legal action has been initiated but not yet formally filed.

Netanyahu accused the newspaper and Kristof of smearing Israeli soldiers and drawing a moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas terrorists. “They defamed the soldiers of Israel and perpetuated a blood libel, trying to create a false symmetry between the genocidal terrorists of Hamas and Israel’s valiant soldiers,” he said.

“We will fight these lies in the court of public opinion and in the court of law. Truth will prevail,” Netanyahu added. The Foreign Ministry had already denounced the column as one of the most severe modern media smears against Israel, calling it one of the worst blood libels to appear in the press.

The New York Times defended the column, saying Kristof’s reporting was extensively fact-checked and based on accounts corroborated where possible with witnesses, relatives and lawyers. The Israeli response comes amid growing anger in Jerusalem over international coverage that officials say distorts the war, vilifies IDF soldiers and blurs the line between Israel’s military and Hamas terrorists.