As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to Israel after using his United Nations speech "to repeat baseless lies meant to sanitize his genocide of Palestinians" in the Gaza Strip, The New York Times on Friday corroborated Haaretz's recent reporting that the Israeli leader was warned about the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack that…
Page A2From§Eachthe milkman edition — 26 September 2026
Netanyahu threatens libel suit over report The New York Times just confirmed was true
As it ran on the front
On September 9th, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a warning letter threatening a libel lawsuit against a newspaper. The newspaper was Haaretz. The story it wanted to sue over: that in September 2023, United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan told Netanyahu, on a phone call, that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning "a major event" against Israel — weeks before more than 1,200 Israelis were killed on October 7th.
Netanyahu denied receiving that warning. He also sent the letter — addressed to Haaretz and to the two reporters, Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval, who wrote the story — threatening to sue all three over it. Haaretz did not retract anything. The paper said it stood by its reporting.…
…(cont) That was Sept. 9. Today is Sept. 26. What arrived instead is worse for him than any court date. The New York Times assigned three of its own journalists to the story, and on Friday the paper of record backed it: Netanyahu was warned.
He confirmed the rest of it himself. Returning from the United Nations, where Common Dreams reports he used his speech "to repeat baseless lies meant to sanitize his genocide of Palestinians" in Gaza, Netanyahu landed home to a story that had grown, not died, in the two and a half weeks since his letter went out. A libel threat is supposed to freeze a story while the target decides whether to make good on the promise to sue. This one froze nothing.
The letter functioned as a bet: that Haaretz would fold, that the story would die from being ignored, that nobody else would call the Emiratis and ask what they told him in that September 2023 phone call. The bet lost. The confirmation came from the one newsroom a libel threat doesn't reach.
So here is where the fold leaves it. A warning letter, still unfiled as a lawsuit, outlived by the story it was sent to kill, confirmed by a newspaper Netanyahu never threatened. The reporters he wanted to sue are still working. The story he wanted buried made The New York Times. The one thing he actually did — write the letter — is the only part of this that hasn't moved in two and a half weeks.
“You send a lawyer letter like that so a story freezes while people wonder if you'll really sue — he never sued anybody, he just let the New York Times spend two and a half weeks confirming the exact thing he wanted killed. That's the tell: guys who actually got caught out don't file, they let the clock run and hope the story gets old before the paperwork does.”
“Look, the Prime Minister has every right to defend his name against reporters, that's what a warning letter is for, it's a normal legal tool, and — well, he hasn't actually filed anything in seventeen days, so I guess it's a tool he's chosen not to use. That's not — hold on, did I just say the defense is that he hasn't defended himself? That's not landing the way I wanted.”
The receipts
· As Netanyahu Threatens Libel Suit, Haaretz ‘Stands By Its Reporting’ on 10/7 Attack from the morgue, 9 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.