Can Israel Sue News Outlets for Defamation?

Much as it did with the fictional stories of Iraqi famine, the New York Times has joined much of Western Europe in propagating stories of an imagined famine in Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu even went so far as to threaten to sue the Times for defamation. In the U.S., he would have to demonstrate that the Times acted with “actual malice,” as opposed to making a mere error in reporting and fact-checking—a rule the Supreme Court established in the seminal 1964 decision New York Times v. Sullivan.