Knesset (Israeli Parliament) member Tali Gottlieb published on Meta (Facebook) a post about a taxi driver who drove her and her daughter in which she insulted the taxi driver and contended that he treated her and her autistic daughter with disdain. Following this post, another post was written about the taxi driver on the same subject by another person.
The Court held that the Facebook publication amounted to defamation. Israeli law defines defamation as something whose publication may humiliate a person in the eyes of others and harm his profession, while a post on social media is also deemed "publication." It is not necessary to show the existence of damage, but it is sufficient that the publication could have caused harm. Words that are said as part of a quarrel, when a person is in a state of turmoil, will not necessarily constitute defamation, but later publication of what was said may. Here, even if the original statements were insulting another person during a loud argument, in the Facebook post, which was not made during the loud argument, but after some time had passed, it is something that was done after some thought and not as an immediate reaction to and during a loud argument, and it was also done in writing, which makes it more serious and therefore constitutes defamation.