Logo text Israeli officials are preparing to sue The New York Times for defamation over a column documenting rape and sexual abuse of Palestinians in government detention facilities. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar have instructed the “initiation of a defamation lawsuit” against the paper, the Israel Foreign Ministry said in an X post on Thursday. The Times “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,” added Netanyahu. The saga leading up to the legal threat started on Monday when the paper published an op-ed from Nicholas Krisftof in which 14 men and women alleged sexual violence by Israeli military forces and prison guards. “The Palestinians I interviewed recounted various kinds of abuse beyond rape,” the story reads. “Many reported that they often had their genitals yanked or were beaten on the testicles.…