"'Good faith,' within the meaning of section 15 of the Prohibition of Defamation Law, does not coincide with the 'popular' meaning of this term. It does not necessarily mean that the person who acted not in good faith intended to harm; to lie or to act maliciously. Rather, it is legal good faith. It requires both subjective and objective foundations, that is, not only for the actual thought or motives of the advertiser, but also for those of a 'reasonable' [advertiser]. The boundaries and essence of the duty of good faith are determined according to the objectives of the Prohibition of Defamation Law, and in particular according to the unique foundations of each of the defenses in section 15" (Civil Case (Shalom Tel Aviv-Jaffa) 54653-02-14 Tel Aviv Journalists Association (R.A.) v. Broadcasting Authority, at paragraph 25 of my judgment (published in the databases on September 1, 2021)).
- Defamation of the plaintiffs?
- As I wrote earlier, in my opinion the plaintiffs do not rise to the level of "public figures" and hence in any case there is no basis to bring such an element in the balance, which determines whether the defendant should be held liable for defamation. However, even if it was determined otherwise and even if the plaintiffs were placed somewhere on the scale of "public figures", it is clear to me that there was no connection between the content of the defendant's publications about them and their being such. It is true, apart from the defendant's motives, that she saw fit to publish something about the plaintiffs because of their positions that are contrary to hers, nothing in the publications was connected, even subjectively, to the plaintiffs' actions in the public sphere. There is no basis for thinking that any of the plaintiffs has waived a degree of sensitivity or has taken upon himself, in his activity, a "risk" that he will be stripped of his professional self-definition and presented differently. The defendant's publications hadn't, I wrote this as well, no contribution to the public discourse, and certainly not to that one, which draws from freedom of political expression. In addition, and I will discuss this later on, I have not found that the defendant is entitled to any kind of protection, which requires good faith. All of the above leads me to determine, without hesitation, that no "public" aspect of the plaintiffs' action acts to fulfill the obligation of their claim here. Instead, we must examine whether, regardless of whether they were "public figures", the defendant's publications amounted to defamation of the plaintiffs.
- The Question of Application of The first section The Prohibition of Defamation Law, in the circumstances of the case before us, bothered me from the beginning of the discussion. I asked myself, and subsequently the parties, whether the defendant's publications met any of the four alternatives in the section and were a prerequisite for considering the application of the protection of the right to a good name. The question focused itself on the fact that the content of the publications was not like this, which defames the plaintiffs, calls them derogatory nicknames or the like. This matter was clear on the face of it, and the question was, therefore, whether something else in the content of the publications might be perceived offensive.
It was a pity for me, in the meantime, for the trouble of the defense - and perhaps it decreed itself from some weight, which it carried on its shoulders before entering the doors of these courts - to extract from the plaintiffs a statement as if their claim was based on their view of themselves as "superior" than the other. "What you're saying - that you, as a high-tech [worker], are worth more than someone who sells diapers?" asked Plaintiff 4, "Do you think you have an advantage, that you define yourself as a high-tech person compared to someone who sells diapers?" (Transcript, at p. 14, paras. 6-7 and 14-15). "In fact, you are saying that someone who deals with security is inferior," plaintiff No. 2 was slammed (ibid., at p. 26, para. 19). These questions missed the essence of the defamation lawsuit. The plaintiffs' argument was, and remains, that the publications damaged their good name because they attributed to them false occupations, which sin against the reputation that they had built for themselves in their lives, especially the professional ones, without disparaging those occupations, God forbid, that the defendant's prolific mind conceived. I will quote from the testimony of plaintiff No. 4, Mr. Dror: