Adopting a position according to which things said in a 'panel of opinions' will be classified as an 'opinion' for this reason violates the aforementioned balance and in any case cannot be accepted in the circumstances of the present case.
- To be precise: it is possible that in 'borderline' contexts, the 'hostel' in which the statement is said will be one of the criteria for classifying the statement as a 'fact'/'opinion'; however, in the circumstances at hand, this is not a borderline case, but rather a clear case of incorporating an erroneous fact, and the hostel for things (a 'panel of opinions') does not change the aforementioned conclusion.
- Counsel for the defendants also argued in the summaries that the defendant's words were perceived as an "expression of opinion" by the reasonable observer because the defendant used an "exaggerated expression" ("He was discharged after two days, right?") and also because of the contradiction in the defendant's words between "he did not do the army at all" and "was discharged after two days". According to counsel for the defendants, this contradiction creates the impression that this is not a fact.
- This is not the impression obtained from watching the video clip. The reference to the aforementioned parts of the sentences is a retroactive legal experiment proposed from the general context in which he mocked the plaintiff ("Show me Guy Peleg") in the context of a biographical detail that is important to most viewers ("He was released after two days") that is intended to undermine the credibility that can be attributed to the plaintiff's words in the event of an injury to him.
In addition, the claim regarding an alleged contradiction in the defendant's words constitutes an expansion of the front in the sense that it was not made in the statement of defense.
- For the entirety of the discussion in the context of the classification between "opinion" and "fact, " I will add that the case before me differed from the publication that was the subject of the proceedings in the case of the New Contract Association, to which the defendants referred the Shin Bet. In the same matter, the publication ("Miki Zohar is a senior soldier in Netanyahu's criminal organization") was perceived as an expression of opinion, due to its metaphorical nature. Here, we are dealing with a purely factual matter - he served/did not serve in the IDF.
The case before me is also different from expressions such as "hater of Israel" or "despicable Jew" mentioned in the defendants' summaries. These are publications in which the factual dimension is not as clear as in the present case.