Around 200 Jewish demonstrators and supporters of Israel gathered on Thursday outside The New York Times headquarters in Manhattan, to protest the recent column by Nick Kristof accusing Israel of the mass rape of Arab prisoners, including by allegedly training dogs to rape prisoners.
According to a report in Times of Israel, The protesters chanted, among other things, “New York Times, shame on you," and, “We will not be silent."
The demonstrators held up signs saying, “Antizionism gets Jews killed," and “J’accuse" next to the logo of the newspaper, a reference to the Dreyfus affair in 19th-century France in which Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus was falsely accused of treason.
On Monday, Kristof published an opinion piece in the Times claiming that there is widespread sexual abuse of Arab prisoners in Israeli prisons.
Kristof's piece has been criticized for a lack of evidence, relying on anonymous testimony, and for using non-credible sources, such as an NGO that is known to spread fake conspiracy theories about Israeli crimes, including the false claim that Israel has trained dogs to rape prisoners, a claim that is made in Kristof's piece.
Earlier on Thursday, the Israeli government announced that it would file a lawsuit against The New York Times over the op-ed.
The Foreign Ministry stated: "Following the publication by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times of 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, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar have instructed the initiation of a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times."
Prime Minister Netanyahu stated: "Today I instructed my legal advisers to consider the harshest legal action against The New York Times and Nicholas Kristof.They defamed the soldiers of Israel and perpetuated a blood libel about rape, trying to create a false symmetry between the genocidal terrorists of Hamas and Israel’s valiant soldiers."
"Under my leadership, Israel will not be silent. We will fight these lies in the court of public opinion and in the court of law. Truth will prevail," Netanyahu added.