Attorneys Menashe Yado and Nati Rom Mehonu filed a defamation lawsuit with the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court on behalf of two of the 100 Force fighters from the 'Yemen Field' incident - in the amount of approximately 1.5 million shekels against News 12 journalist Guy Peleg, who broadcast an article against the fighters, in which it was alleged, among other things, that the fighters committed an act of sodomy on the terrorist Nokhba at the Yemen Field facility.
In addition, the fighters are suing News 12 for publishing Peleg's article.
The amended lawsuit, which was filed today (Sunday) with the court, joins the lawsuit filed by the fighters for about half a million NIS against the Public Broadcasting Corporation for violating the privacy of the fighters whose faces were broadcast on Channel 33 without blurring, and against the IDF, which leaked the video and investigative materials that Peleg broadcast in his report on Channel 12.
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The lawsuit was filed as a request to amend the lawsuit that was filed several months ago against the state and the Public Broadcasting Corporation, and now Channel 12 and Guy Peleg have been added to the lawsuit as additional defendants - and the amount of the lawsuit has been amended to 2 million NIS.
In the lawsuit, the lawyers emphasize the enormous image damage to the IDF and the State of Israel that Peleg caused by publishing the article: "It was Guy Peleg's words during the article that solidified the meaning of what was seen in the video and that led the viewer to believe that the evidence in the case supports a conclusion that the soldiers, God forbid, committed an act of sodomy on the Nuhba terrorist. All the major media networks in the world concluded from the article that the documentation presented in it indicates sexual abuse by the soldiers of a Palestinian detainee.".
""The article seriously harmed the image and security interests of the State of Israel and of Israelis and Jews in the Diaspora, and it is likely that it also harmed the Jews held captive by the terrorists.".
The lawsuit further claims: "The article seriously harmed the fighters and their families on many levels, and it is not difficult to understand. Upon receipt of the investigation materials, it became clear that the foundation that Guy Peleg laid in the video to the conclusion that the article leads to sexual assault by soldiers on a Palestinian detainee is a false foundation. Guy Peleg, through a biased and misleading interpretation and unfounded and false statements, led the naive viewer to believe that the investigation file establishes with unequivocal evidence a guilt of sodomy. This conclusion that emerges from Guy Peleg's words in the article is not based on evidence, but only on lies and baseless statements and a biased and misleading interpretation of what is seen in the video.".
The lawyers are harshly criticizing the IDF's cooperation in leaking the video, and the fact that the leak of the video to the faction has not yet been investigated.
""The fact that these are different materials collected by different collection agencies indicates that it was not the individual collection agency that leaked the information, but rather a party that concentrated the collected investigative materials, i.e., a generalizing agency of the investigation and not a secondary collection agency. The message of the article supported the suspicions presented by the prosecution, and this also supports the conclusion that this was a leak. After the article was published, no clarification was issued by the investigative authorities that the things said in the article were false, and this also indicates that the investigative authorities were comfortable with the publication of its lies, and this silence constitutes a confirmation by default of what was said in the article.".
According to them, "The defendant did not act through any legal channels but leaked videos to the media that harmed its own soldiers. There is no doubt that at the time of the leak, there could not have been any legal justification for such offensive and dangerous publication, and it is not for nothing that any of the defendant's officials stood behind the leak in public. The investigation materials were published in the midst of an investigation, and during the detention hearings, and before they were presented to the defense attorneys, undermining the fairness of the criminal proceedings, and risking harm and disrupting the investigation, and in a sharp and blatant deviation from the accepted norm regarding the confidentiality of investigation materials before it was concluded.".
In addition, in the lawsuit, the lawyers reveal that the medical information indicating that the Nuhba terrorist did not commit the offenses that Peleg attributed to the fighters in the article was in the hands of the IDF in real time, but the army did not bother to refute the false claim and thereby abandoned the fighters of Force 100: "The medical records that were kept in the army clinics when the prisoner was in full custody of the army therefore ruled out, as early as 8.7.24, the possibility of injury as a result of an act of sodomy. Only on July 31, 2024, two days after the arrest, did the Military Prosecutor's Office contact medical officials with the question of whether the medical material ruled out the possibility of an act of sodomy. And only on August 24, 2024, three weeks after the arrest, did a doctor draw a sketch into the investigation file that ruled out the possibility that the injury was caused as a result of an act of sodomy, and gave the final seal of approval for the denial of the suspicion of an act of sodomy. This technical factual investigation was supposed to be done in the examination before the arrest and to spare the fighters and the State of Israel all the humiliation, injury, and humiliation.".
