After the loss to the couple Benjamin and Sarah Netanyahu, the loss came to the Jewish community council in Hebron: Deputy President of the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court Gad Erenberg ruled at noon (Monday) in the lawsuit filed by Ashi Horowitz, the Jewish community council in Hebron, against Yigal Sarna, and determined that journalist Yigal Sarna will pay Horwitz the sum of twenty-five thousand shekels.
In November 2015, a terrorist arrived in the Jewish settlement in Hebron and carried out an attack during which he stabbed a soldier and the terrorist was shot and neutralized.
Horowitz, who was the operations officer in Hebron, arrived at the scene and was seen taking a photo of the terrorist. In response, Yigal Sarna wrote a post on Facebook, pointing to the photo and asking who knew "the smiling scum on the right, a kind of Jewish pogromist Cossack, who is documenting with a smug smile the body of a man who has just been shot.".
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In a second post, which he posted later, he mentions the name of Ashi Horowitz and writes that he is the nephew of Hillel Horowitz, one of the leaders of the settlement, and that he is not talking about a weed but "a tree that grows near the Shibar, the salt of the bleeding land of the Kingdom of Judah.".
Horowitz filed a defamation lawsuit with the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court, through his lawyer Itamar Ben Gvir, claiming that he was certainly not smug and that in any case, Serena hid the background to the incident in Hebron, when it was about a terrorist who wanted to murder soldiers and children, and that his nickname constituted defamation that harmed him and his profession, since he was a producer of events and caused him great grief and shame.
Sarna, through his lawyer Avigdor Feldman, claimed that the plaintiff appeared to be smiling and that the facts detailed in the publications, including the claims that the plaintiff is a pogromist, are true publications and at the very least are permitted publications.
Today, as stated, Vice President Gad Ehrenberg published his ruling and ruled, among other things, that although Horowitz was seen taking a photo of the body, and it also appears that the conclusion that the plaintiff was smiling is indeed reasonable under the circumstances, he accepted Attorney Ben Gvir's arguments and ruled that "the omission of the detail that the body in question is that of someone who had just tried to murder Jews and the comparison between the defendants and the Nazis and their actions constitute an omission of all the facts that allow the reasonable reader to distinguish between the actions of the Nazis and the actions of the plaintiff.".
The judge quoted from a previous ruling in the Itamar Ben Gvir case and stated: "Indeed, the painful history of our time, the deep wounds that still bleed today, are such that the use of expressions that link to the Nazi regime will be considered slander for us in almost all circumstances... certainly in a place where the defendant used harsh expressions and without providing all the relevant facts and mentioning that the body is the body of a terrorist.".
The judge ordered Serena to compensate Horowitz in the amount of twenty thousand NIS and also pay 5000 NIS in legal costs. •
Attorney Itamar Ben Gvir: "Although in my opinion it would have been appropriate to award double the amount, there is an important message here to Serena and his ilk: We will not allow you to lie and slander and distort the facts, and if you do so, we will sue you and you will have to pay - I am sure that the Chief Justice of the Jewish settlement in Hebron, Ashi Horowitz, would know how to spend the money only on good things for the people of Israel.".
