From Alan Dershowitz; very instructive:

As I thought, he says the lawsuit won’t work in the US. One reason is that an entity like Israel can’t sue under US law; it has to be a person who was harmed. Plus, the standard is very high in the US when suing a newspaper for defamation, due to New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (ironic, isn’t it, that the case involved the Times?).

Nevertheless, Dershowitz makes the point that Israel could sue in other countries that make it easier to win against media outlets, such as in Britain.

Dershowitz also points out that the NY Times’ printing of these particular allegations – which already had been floating around online for ages – gives the stories a kind of gravitas they didn’t have before, and could convince credulous readers who were neutral on the Israel question to turn against Israel because they trust that the Times wouldn’t print mere online rumors or mere Palestinian propaganda. Those who follow the Times more closely know that of course the paper would do that – and already has, many times. But lots of people aren’t that tuned in to these topics and can be persuaded by the Times’ high reputation of old.

Dershowitz also points out that the article was careful not just to be published as opinion – which doesn’t really protect it legally, although that’s the goal – but to not name any of the persons being accused of these crimes. Naming a person falsely would give that person a viable causer of action in the United States.

Plus, Dershowitz says that journalists are the most unethical group of people he’s ever dealt with; I can well believe it.

This National Review article describes what the advantages would be of a defamation lawsuit in Israel, even if the defamation case would basically go nowhere if brought in the US:

Which brings us to the real mechanism: 28 U.S.C. § 1782.

Once an Israeli proceeding is in reasonable contemplation, an interested person can apply in the Southern District of New York (where the New York Times is headquartered) to compel evidence production from a U.S. entity for use in foreign litigation. A properly framed § 1782 application does not ask the court to adjudicate the case; it simply asks the court to order the Times to produce the factual basis for one published allegation.

The subpoena categories write themselves: documents identifying the source and evidentiary basis for the dog allegation; fact-checking notes and editorial review records; communications with cited human rights organizations about this specific claim; internal discussions of reliability or corroboration. The Times will obviously raise reporter’s privilege. That is expected. But the answer here is a measured response: Nobody is asking for every source on every story. The request is for the factual foundation for one allegation the Times has publicly called corroborated and extensively fact-checked and “deeply reported.” Either show the corroboration or explain why you cannot. Both answers are informative.

None of this is a technical defamation case, but the critics declaring the claim dead on arrival are focusing on the colloquial use of the word “defamation” expressed in a spokesperson’s tweet and missing the tree for the forest. The real question is whether there exists a narrow, disciplined legal theory that forces the Times to produce the evidentiary basis for one of the most inflammatory factual allegations it has ever published. And there is.

Of course, many many more people have paid attention to the Kristof piece (many of whom might believe it) than would pay attention to any legal findings delegitimizing it. The Times and Kristof are well aware of that. They want their lies to get all the way around the world before the truth has a chance to get its boots on.