Second, during the hearing of the evidence, a number of witnesses testified that they were former clients of the defendant, as well as the defendant himself. The contact between the defendant and the witnesses was carried out, among other things, through correspondence and voice messages, usually via WhatsApp, which were documented and then "unloaded" from the phones. This documentation, which found its way into the evidentiary system in the case, is an important tool for examining the parties' versions. This evidence allows us to go back in time and glimpse into the events and moods of those involved "in real time".
Third, the evidence before me includes, inter alia, documentation of an exchange between the defendant and other "spokespersons" (clients or potential clients), usually through the WhatsApp application, some of whom are not witnesses who testified in court. Against the background of the state of affairs, the defendant argued that this evidence was inadmissible, because it was a testimony froma rumor, and the spokesmen of his interlocutors were not at all among the prosecution's witnesses.
It is true that the statements of the speakers who are not prosecution witnesses are hearsay testimony, but they may nevertheless serve as evidence that the words were indeed said (Civil Appeals Authority 8597/21 Yaakov v. Nabwani (February 21, 2022); Criminal Appeal 522/88 State of Israel v. Yifrach; Yaakov Kedmi on the Evidence, Part III 1322 (2009) (hereinafter: Preliminary Evidence)). Therefore, it is not possible to learn from the words of those speakers about the truth of their content, except in circumstances that can be regarded as such according to the laws of evidence. However, this does not mean that the documentation should be disqualified in its entirety, because the part of the evidence documenting the defendant's statements is admissible by virtue of section 12 of the Evidence Ordinance (Criminal Appeal 5140/99 Vidal v. State of Israel, IsrSC 56(2) 844, 857-858 (2002) (hereinafter: the Vidal case)); Criminal Appeal 3669/14 Golan v. State of Israel (December 18, 2016) (hereinafter: the Golan case); Pre-Evidence, p. 1330). Moreover, the case law expressed the opinion that the words of the defendant's interlocutor could be used, even without knowing whether he had told the truth, in order to understand the meaning of the defendant's words (Vidal, 857-858; the Golan case; Yaniv and Aki, Laws of Evidence, Vol. 3, p. 1263 (2021).