Israel on Thursday threatened to take The New York Times to court over a piece it published denouncing allegedly widespread sexual abuse against Palestinian detainees.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Saar have ordered the \u201cinitiation of a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times\u201d, according to a joint statement issued by their offices.<\/p>\n
The offices said that the piece by Nicholas Kristof, a prominent opinion columnist, was \u201cone of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press, which also received the backing of the newspaper\u201d.<\/p>\n
Kristof\u2019s investigation is based on testimonies gathered in the Israeli-occupied West Bank from 14 men and women who said that they had been sexually assaulted by Israeli settlers or members of the security forces.<\/p>\n
The report described \u201ca pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, women and even children \u2014 by soldiers, settlers, interrogators in the Shin Bet internal security agency and, above all, prison guards\u201d.<\/p>\n
The New York Times responded that any legal claim over the \u201cdeeply reported opinion column\u201d lacked merit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis threat, similar to one made last year, is part of a well-worn political playbook that aims to undermine independent reporting and stifle journalism that does not fit a specific narrative,\u201d Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokesperson for the newspaper, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Kristof\u2019s piece said there was no evidence that Israeli leaders ordered rapes.<\/p>\n
The Israeli foreign ministry claimed that Kristof had based his piece \u201con unverified sources tied to Hamas-linked networks\u201d.<\/p>\n
It also accused the paper of deliberately timing the publication to \u201cundermine\u201d an independent Israeli report on alleged Hamas sexual violence perpetrated during its October 7, 2023 attack, which was published on the same day.<\/p>\n
Israeli forces have detained thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank since Hamas\u2019s 2023 attack, which triggered Israel\u2019s military campaign in Gaza.<\/p>\n
The United States has high protections for journalistic expression, with libel suits needing to prove that information was purposefully untrue and with harmful intent.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump and his allies have nonetheless filed a number of lawsuits against media outlets, some of which have reached settlements rather than risk repercussions from his administration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Israel on Thursday threatened to take The New York Times to court over a piece it published denouncing allegedly widespread sexual abuse against Palestinian detainees. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Saar have ordered the \u201cinitiation of a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times\u201d, according to a joint statement issued by their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18110,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18111,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18109\/revisions\/18111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}