In our case, it was argued that by virtue of the defendants' occupation, they have a moral, social and professional duty to express their opinion on the plaintiff's harsh and dangerous statements in the interview. When a person like the plaintiff, a hero of Israel, expresses support for a civil war with firearms, there is a moral and journalistic duty to warn against him and his words.
I would like to draw attention to the fact that this argument was written in the plural, i.e., it applies to both the defendant and the defendant. However, in section 26.5 of the statement of defense it is argued that in connection with defendant 2, section 15(12) of the law will apply, with respect to the manner of publication on live broadcast and the failure to record it in advance. Attention should also be drawn to the fact that the defendant wishes to impose upon himself a 'moral and journalistic duty' for the purpose of defending the section, while in his testimony he insisted that he was not a journalist and had never been a journalist (p. 40, lines 31-33, p. 41, lines 1-11), but rather a media person "presenter of a program and a commentator..." (pp. 1-11) and see also paragraph 2 of the defendants' summaries, where the plaintiff was presented as "a media person and a political commentator".
It is not possible to hold the rope at both ends; the defendant cannot impose upon himself a journalistic duty for the purpose of defending section 15(2) and at the same time insist that he is not a journalist who must comply with the duties of journalistic ethics, and it cannot be argued that the same moral and journalistic duty applies to the defendant as well, when it is claimed that her protection rests by virtue of another section.
On the merits, the defendant argued that any public figure who expresses support for a civil war and the use of weapons deserves harsh, harsh and harsh criticism, and that he sees a danger in the "normalization" of the discourse on civil war, and the public's habituation of this dangerous "idea" (paragraph 15 of the affidavit).