‘It’s blood libel, preparation for genocide’ – US Ambassador Leiter blasts NYT over coverage, antisemitic criticism of Israel

The situation of the Jewish people and the State of Israel is dire, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said, amid a surge in antisemitism that he said is reflected in the pages of prestigious newspapers like The New York Times.

Speaking at the 43rd International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries in New York, Leiter harshly criticized the NYT, whose anti-Israel coverage over the duration of the war is effectively preparing “the next genocide against us,” he said.

“The reason they accuse us of genocide is to prepare the ground for the next genocide against us. Hitler did not emerge in a vacuum. He was preceded by decades of demonization and delegitimization of the Jews.”

Leiter began by mentioning his son Neriah, who suffered serious wounds in a terror attack in Samaria during reserve duty last month: “What I want to tell you today is a very simple message from my son: It’s not just about where we are, where our friends are, and where the enemy is. Given our current circumstances, we must constantly ask ourselves who we are, who our friends are, and who our enemies are.”

🔥MUST WATCH: Dr. Yechiel (Michael) Leiter — Israel’s Ambassador to the United States - speaks at Kinus Hashluchim and tells an insane story about him meeting the vile anti-Semitic editorial board of the NY Times. https://t.co/9OiRiExNXX

— Moshe Schwartz (@YWNReporter) November 8, 2026

The ambassador then began recounting a meeting with the NYT editorial board a year ago. “They were the jury. They were the judge. They were the firing squad—15 editors with another six on the screen. And they were accusing me. They were accusing the government of Israel; they were accusing chayalei tzahal [the IDF soldiers] of a genocide, of starving people to death.”

While Leiter sought to present facts, such as the number of humanitarian aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip each day and the risks IDF soldiers take to protect Gazan civilians, he also said those facts “gave me feelings.”

The claim that the combatant-to-civilian ratio in the war was the lowest in modern history, supported by experts like John Spencer or Douglas Murray, reportedly failed to move them. Some 45 minutes into the conversation, an editor argued that “everybody can’t be wrong.”

Leiter responded, “It’s not everybody. But if you people think that it’s everybody, maybe it’s because of you,” pointing to the July 2025 NYT report titled “Gazans Are Dying of Starvation,” which featured a front-page photograph of 18-month-old Palestinian boy Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq in his mother’s arms.

The boy was shown to have a protruding spine, Leiter added. “Anybody who saw the picture immediately thought of the Holocaust,” adding, “So now we were the perpetrators of genocide. Once we were the victims, and now we’re the Nazis.”

“You neglected to mention that the boy is suffering from genetic disease, cerebral palsy and other illnesses…" he added. "You also cropped out from the picture his brother, who is perfectly healthy,”

The senior editor then asked, “Don’t you think you’re making too much of a misappropriation?’ I said, ‘No, that’s not a misappropriation. That’s a blood libel.’” Leiter added.

The ambassador continued, “There is no difference between what is being done to us today and what was done to our grandparents in the ghettos of Europe 80 years ago. This is a blood libel. This is very serious. We have to know how to identify what the enemy is and who the enemy is. This is not another antisemitic rant.”

“Please understand, this is a blood libel, and a blood libel will cost lives. And the reason why they are accusing us of genocide is to prepare the next genocide against us.”

Leiter warned, “Hitler didn’t just happen; it was decades of preparation of demonizing and delegitimizing Jews. And now through the State of Israel, through the Jewish state, there is an attempt to delegitimize and disenfranchise Jews as Jews. We have to call it for what it is.”

“We fight it by knowing who we are. We fight it by knowing who our friends are. And we fight this by knowing who the enemy is and by identifying them as the enemy and calling them out as the enemy,” Leiter said.

Criticism of Israel isn’t a good-faith argument over issues like the settlements, Judea and Samaria, Gaza, or the Golan Heights, he explained.

“What is at stake at this moment is the very existence of Israel. Nothing less than that. This is not about territorial compromise today, when on October 8, tens of thousands of people in the United States of America – not in the Middle East, not in Europe, but right here – took to the streets, to university campuses, and to state capitals, shouting, ‘From the river to the sea.’ That does not mean giving up Hebron. It means destroying the Jewish people in the Land of Israel.”

Leiter added, “It means annihilation. It is an aspiration for total extermination. And if anyone thinks that all the Holocaust education we have been involved in for decades, Holocaust legislation, Holocaust museums, and Holocaust trips will generate sympathy, empathy, and solidarity with the Jewish people, ensuring that this will never happen again– well, they were wrong. Teaching that Jews are victims is not what is going to keep us alive.”