Background
Musari – Jewish Human Rights Organization and its director-general, Shamai Glick, published seven items about Hebron resident Issa Amro. The newspaper articles, letters, and Facebook posts concerned a pre-military academy students’ visit to Amro’s home and a play he helped write. Among other things, the publications stated that Amro was a terrorist’s cousin and had been convicted of serious security offenses and assaulting soldiers. After receiving a pre-suit notice, the applicants corrected some inaccuracies, but Amro maintained that the corrections were incomplete.
Amro sued under Israel’s Defamation Prohibition Law for ₪200,000. He alleged that he was neither a terrorist nor the terrorist’s cousin, but only a more distant relative, and that his convictions concerned protest activity rather than security offenses or assaults on Israel Defense Forces soldiers. The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court dismissed the claim, finding that the publications addressed matters of public concern and were protected expressions of opinion made in good faith under Sections 15(4) and 16(a) of the law.
The Jerusalem District Court reversed. It held that, although substantial portions of the publications expressed opinions on matters of public concern, their inaccurate factual components could not be treated as protected opinion, and the discrepancies were not trivial. Accounting for mitigating and aggravating circumstances, the District Court awarded Amro ₪15,000 and canceled the ₪5,000 costs award previously entered against him.
The Court’s Holding
Justice Daphne Barak-Erez denied the applicants leave to pursue a third-level appeal, without requesting a response from Amro. The Court explained that such leave is granted only under a narrow standard. The application raised no issue of general principle and instead concerned the parties’ particular circumstances. The District Court had merely applied the Defamation Prohibition Law and existing case law, and the modest damages award provided no basis for finding a serious miscarriage of justice.
The Court added, beyond what was necessary to decide the application, that it agreed with the District Court that the proceeding involved factual publications that could not be regarded as expressions of opinion on a matter of public concern and therefore did not fall within the Section 16(a) good-faith presumption. The Court also found that the District Court had fully considered the applicants’ arguments when setting the relatively low damages award.
The application for leave to appeal was therefore denied. Because no response had been requested, the Court made no order for costs.
Key Takeaways
- Leave for a third-level civil appeal remains narrowly confined to cases presenting a broader legal question or a serious miscarriage of justice.
- On these facts, inaccurate factual assertions within publications that also contained commentary on matters of public concern were not treated as protected opinion for purposes of the Section 16(a) good-faith presumption.
- The ₪15,000 award reflected both mitigating factors—including reliance on earlier publications and prompt but partial corrections—and aggravating factors, including wide dissemination and language portraying Amro negatively.
Why It Matters
The decision leaves intact a fact-specific distinction between opinion on a matter of public concern and inaccurate factual assertions embedded in the same publications. The Supreme Court did not announce a new general defamation rule; it concluded that the District Court had applied existing law to the particular record.
The ruling also illustrates the demanding threshold for obtaining Supreme Court review after an intermediate appellate decision, particularly where the dispute is case-specific and the damages award is relatively low.