A NIS 250,000 ($78,500) lawsuit was filed on Tuesday by prosecutors on behalf of the Director of Public Health Services at the Health Ministry Dr. Sharon Elroi Preiss against a vaccine protester who allegedly leads a smear campaign against the official.
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Yosefa Barak Tamir is accused of publishing "false and offensive" posts on social media that targeted Elroi Preiss and even using her relatives and underage son.
According to the lawsuit, Barak Tamir shared over 60 such posts in the past two and a half weeks alone, all of which were part of a systematic campaign aimed at defaming the senior Health Ministry official.
Elroi Preiss is seen by many as the face of the government's pandemic policies. In the past months, she has become the target of opprobrium by anti-vaxxers and was even assigned a private security detail in December last year after police determined she was the target of credible death threats.
The prosecutors stressed that while criticism of officials is not inherently illegitimate, and is, in fact, part and parcel of a healthy democracy, Barak Tamir's posts were "a deliberate attempt to violate the plaintiff's good name and professionalism … and to undermine public confidence" in the Health Ministry.
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