UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has sharply condemned Israel’s Foreign Ministry after it labelled a New York Times article documenting sexual abuse of Palestinians in Israeli prisons as “hideous and distorted lies” and threatened the newspaper with a defamation lawsuit.

In a series of posts on X, Albanese described the NYT report as “accurate but barely scratching the surface” and accused the Israeli government of overreacting not to the content itself but to the potential audience.

“Apartheid Israel fears NYT readers will finally see and no longer ignore,” she wrote.

Albanese referenced multiple reports documenting sexual violence against Palestinians in the context of Israel’s unlawful detention practices.

She noted that these accounts, mostly covering incidents since October 2023, reflect a far longer history of abuse, dating back to the establishment of the Israeli state.

“Sexual violence against Palestinians has been documented since the very foundation of the Israeli state, but this is nothing the NYT spoke about — so far,” Albanese added.

The remarks come amid ongoing scrutiny of Israel’s detention policies and growing international attention to allegations of human rights abuses in Palestinian territories.