Overview
- Israel's government, which ordered legal action Thursday, has not filed a case and has not said where it will sue.
- The Kristof opinion piece alleged widespread sexual abuse of Palestinian detainees by soldiers, prison guards, settlers and interrogators, citing interviews with 14 Palestinians and NGO reports, including a disputed claim that a dog was used in an assault.
- The New York Times said the accounts were corroborated when possible and extensively fact-checked, and its spokespeople called Israel's threat an effort to stifle independent reporting.
- Israeli officials denounced the column as a blood libel and said it relied on Hamas-linked sources such as Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, and they also accused the paper of publishing it to blunt an Israeli civil commission report on Hamas sexual crimes released the next day.
- Legal scholars said any case in U.S. courts would likely fail under the actual-malice standard and face jurisdiction and enforcement hurdles, while pro-Israel protesters outside the Times building Thursday pressed for a retraction.