JERUSALEM: 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 “initiation of a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times,” according to a joint statement issued by their offices.
The offices said that the piece by Nicholas Kristof, a prominent opinion columnist, was “one 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.”
Kristof’s 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.
The report described “a pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, women and even children — by soldiers, settlers, interrogators in the Shin Bet internal security agency and, above all, prison guards.”
