No less than all of these, and this is the main point. Mr. Horowitz admitted that his son did not tell him before signing the contract that he was required to record in the contract a lower sum than he had actually paid (p. 54 of Prov. Sh. 6-8), and that "if I had been present at the scene in real time, I would not have agreed to write a false sum in the contract, certainly not to report false reports to the tax authorities, and certainly not in such small amounts..." (paragraph 11 of the affidavit). In other words, Mr. Hurwitz admitted that if he had been aware of the requirement to record a lower sum in the contract than the amount he actually paid, he would not have agreed to write it in the contract, and therefore the contract would not have been signed.
In these circumstances, Mr. Horowitz's claim is against his son who did not tell him before signing the contract that the seller was demanding to record a lower amount in the contract, since if he had known this he would not have signed the contract. Therefore, he will seek the correction of the injustice from his son's hands, and not from the defendants. Mr. Hurwitz's damages would not have come into the world if his son had not hidden it from him, and then Mr. Hurwitz would have refused, as he said, to sign the contract. Thus, the causal connection with the alleged omissions attributed to any of the defendants was severed. Certainly, Mr. Horowitz's claim against the transfer of the Goren hearing venue is not clear, since, as stated, he and his son did not speak with him prior to the signing of the contract, and their version of the matter is drawn from conversations that others told them that they had, as well as from documents that Mr. Horowitz's son saw.
Beyond what is necessary, it should be said that in the documents on which Mr. Horowitz's son relied, signed by Mr. Shimon Cohen, the deputy mayor of Ashkelon at the time (attached as Appendix A to Mr. Horowitz's affidavit), it was noted that the land that is the subject of the proceeding, "has an urban designation on an outline level. This is after the process of changing the designation from agriculture to urban needs." These documents prima facie indicate that the designation of the land that is the subject of the lawsuit is different from agriculture for "urban purposes". On the face of it, the reasonable reader may interpret "urban needs" as clear public needs and not necessarily for residential purposes. Indeed, in the testimony of Mr. Shimon Cohen, he claimed that when he wrote in his letter "urban needs" he meant housing (p. 390 of Prov. S. 25). However, when Mr. Horowitz's son and the other plaintiffs saw these letters, they could not have known that the term "urban needs" was interpreted to mean residential and did not even bother to examine it, including in the municipality's engineering department. Had they done so, they would have even discovered that the deputy mayor was not accurate when he wrote in his letter that the land "underwent rezoning procedures from agriculture to urban needs," since, at the time this was written, the land had not yet undergone rezoning procedures. The deputy mayor himself testified, "I mean, you know that in our language, 'pass' or 'pass' means the same... How can I write 'after they have passed' when I know that they have not passed? This is impossible" (ibid., p. 391 of Prov. Sh. 7-9).