The Magistrate's Court also ruled that:
"The defendant factually claimed that the plaintiff was corrupt and criminal, and even insisted on his claims in the cross-examination and repeated them even more vigorously [...]" (See: ibid., 2, paragraph 32).
Subsequently, the Magistrate's Court moved on to examine the defenses that exempt a person from liability for defamation and ruled that the respondent is not protected under any protection. With regard to the defense of the truth of the publication, the Respondent tried to claim that the Applicant, as he said in the publication, was indeed corrupt - by means of The Inquiry to press publications about the applicant which allegedly testify that the applicant invited party activists TheLikud for a cruise in Greece; that the Registrar of Contractors suspended the applicant's license for three years, and that a fine was imposed on him; and that the applicant was summoned for police interrogation following the break-in to the Yemen Sde base affair. The problem is that the court was of the opinion that these publications do not establish any factual finding and ruled that the respondent did not meet the increased burden of proving the claim that the applicant was corrupt.
At the end of the day, the Magistrate's Court accepted the claim as stated above. The Magistrate's Court's conclusion that the respondent's words constituted defamation was based, as stated, on findings of fact and reliability and on the circumstances of the case as a whole. The Magistrate's Court based its decision on, Among other things, on his direct impression of the respondent's testimony and the manner in which he defended himself against the lawsuit. In addition, the court examined the respondent's intentions and found that the respondent acted in bad faith-Lev in order to damage the good name of the applicant. He tried - and succeeded.
- The Magistrate's Court's judgment was therefore not impaired by any mistake - on the contrary. The Magistrate's Court's conclusion that the respondent's publication amounts to defamation is reasoned and based on the evidence presented to it and its examination in the light of life experience. The result reached by the Magistrate's Court - awarding compensation on the lower side, only ILS 10,000, in favor of the applicant - reflects, alongside the rudeness and bluntness of the publication, the degree of damage to the applicant's good name, as well as the limited scope of the publication, the relatively little exposure he had, and the possibility that the applicant had to respond to it. This result strikes the right balance between the necessary protection of freedom of expression - and in particular, the freedom of an ordinary citizen to voice public criticism of public figures - and verbal violence that goes beyond the scope of "expression of opinion" and amounts to the tort of defamation. This judgment rightly held that the boundaries of freedom of expression are not breached, and that baseless insults and slander that conveya false factual message about a person and his actions have no place in the public sphere. Such determinations are consistent with what is stated in the Prohibition of Defamation Law and do not deviate in the entirety from the principle of separation between opinion and facts.
- As to the respondent's claim that the claim is a "suit for silence" - this argument was rejected in its entirety by the Magistrate's Court, and the same is the case here as well. As stated, the claim that the Applicant filed against the Respondent is a well-founded claim that does not have a single characteristic of silencing claims (see: Civil Appeal Authority 1954/24 Vaknin v. Kibbutz Nir David - Cooperative Society, paragraph 21 of the judgment of Justice Sohlberg [Nevo] (January 7,2025)).
- Conclusion: The law of the application and the appeal to be accepted. I propose to my colleagues that we consider the application before us as an appeal, accept the appeal, cancel the judgment of the District Court, determine that the judgment of the Magistrate's Court will stand, and also obligate the Respondent to pay the Applicant the expenses of the hearing in our court in the total sum of ILS 4,000.
Alex SteinJudge
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