It is shown that each norm closed proper two-sided ideal of a von Neumann algebra is a Lipschitz retract of the algebra. In particular, there exists a Lipschitz retraction from the algebra
B
(
H
)
\mathcal {B}(\mathcal {H})
of all bounded linear operators on a complex Hilbert space
H
\mathcal {H}
onto the ideal
K
(
H
)
\mathcal {K}(\mathcal {H})
consisting of all compact operators.