By Steven Scheer<\/p>\n
JERUSALEM, May 14 (Reuters) – Israel plans to sue The New York Times and one of its journalists for defamation over an \u200carticle that said Israeli soldiers, prison guards and settlers had used widespread \u200csexual violence against Palestinian prisoners.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday he had instructed his legal advisers “to \u200bconsider the harshest legal action” against the newspaper and Nicholas Kristof, a veteran journalist who reported the story from the occupied West Bank.<\/p>\n
“They defamed the soldiers of Israel and perpetuated a blood libel about rape, trying to create a false symmetry between \u200cthe genocidal terrorists of Hamas \u2060and Israel’s valiant soldiers,” Netanyahu said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“We will fight these lies in the court of public opinion and in \u2060the court of law. Truth will prevail,” he added.<\/p>\n
The United Nations and rights groups say they have documented the use of sexual violence by both Israel and Hamas since \u200bthe militant \u200bPalestinian group’s assault on Israel on October \u200b7, 2023, which triggered Israel’s \u200cwar in Gaza.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu did not say where or when the lawsuit would be filed. He also threatened to sue the newspaper last August over an article about starvation in Gaza but did not follow through.<\/p>\n
The Times did not immediately respond on Thursday to a request for comment on Netanyahu’s threat.<\/p>\n
In a statement on Wednesday that \u200cfollowed criticism from Israeli lawmakers, the newspaper defended \u200bKristof’s article, which includes testimony by a Palestinian \u200bsaying he was raped by \u200ba dog. Israel rejects this.<\/p>\n
“The accounts of the 14 men and \u200cwomen [Kristof] interviewed were corroborated with other \u200bwitnesses, when possible, and \u200bwith people the victims confided in – that includes family members and lawyers,” newspaper spokesman Charlie Stadtlander wrote, adding that “details were extensively fact-checked”.<\/p>\n
In his article, \u200bKristof, who writes for the \u200cnewspaper’s opinion section, wrote: “(Our) American tax dollars subsidize the Israeli security establishment, \u200bso this is sexual violence in which the United States is \u200bcomplicit.”<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Steven ScheerEditing by Gareth Jones)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Steven Scheer JERUSALEM, May 14 (Reuters) – Israel plans to sue The New York Times and one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[471,41,8,37,17511,9,17510,17512,17513,7],"class_list":{"0":"post-28709","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-article","9":"tag-benjamin-netanyahu","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-israeli-soldiers","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-nicholas-kristof","15":"tag-palestinian-prisoners","16":"tag-sexual-violence","17":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116574356963330760","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}