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Will There Be “Blood Libel”?

Nick Kristof’s exposé on Israeli prison abuse has brought the threat of a potential “blood libel” case from Netanyahu and another epic internal schism on Eighth Avenue, once again pitting the Opinion section against the newsroom. Here’s how it’s playing on the inside.

Nicholas Kristof
But above all else, Kristofgate points to the ’Times’’s broader institutional anxiety at a time when it is both more influential and more diversified than ever. Photo: Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit
Dylan Byers
May 15, 2026

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Even by Times standards, it was a heavy week: Nick Kristof’s radioactive Opinion piece—a lengthy exposé alleging that Israeli prison guards had engaged in depraved and systematic sexual abuse of Palestinians—set in motion a series of high-pitched events. Pro-Israel advocates immediately accused the paper of antisemitism. Incredulous editorials in The Wall Street Journal and The Free Press followed. On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu threatened to sue the Times for libel against the State of Israel. Whether it is actually possible for a nation to bring a libel case against a foreign newspaper is not the concern of this column; suffice to say that the threat itself achieved the desired conflagratory effect.