The Jerusalem Magistrate's Court has dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by Tareq Abbas, the son of the Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, against Middle East expert Dr. Reuven Berko following a television interview. Judge Orna Sandler-Eitan ordered Abbas's son to pay Dr. Berko NIS 30,000 and determined that the interview did not take place on Israeli Channel 14 as claimed in the lawsuit. Additionally, some of Berko's alleged quotes were not made by him, but by the Gazan channel where the interview was actually broadcasted from.
In 2019, Abbas filed a defamation lawsuit against Dr. Reuven Berko following a television interview in which Berko discussed the Abbas family's wealth, noting that they arrived in Israel "destitute." He also stated that without security coordination with Israel, their presence in the Palestinian Authority territory would be short-lived. According to Abbas, Dr. Berko portrayed him as a "greedy, corrupt person... willing to sacrifice everything for his pocket and wants" - claims the lawsuit, adding that the interview was conducted on Channel 14.
Berko's lawyers, Abraham Moshe Segal and Avraham Gaz from the "Shurat HaDin" organization led by attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, argued that the interview did not broadcast on Israeli television and thus "was not published in a widely viewed medium." Court-ordered checks by representatives of Channels 12, 13, and 14 revealed that the interview did not broadcast on these channels, but rather on a Gazan channel. The judge watched the interview with the assistance of the court's Arabic-language interpreter. "During the hearing, it became clear to the court and the defendant, for the first time, that the publication was edited and contained no less than four 'jumps,'" according to the judge.
The judge wrote that the main issue revealed by watching the interview was that a central part of Berko's alleged quotes were not said by him. "Against the defendant's image, a red caption appeared at the bottom of the screen stating: 'Zionist researcher: Abbas's stay depends on security coordination with Israel, and his sons became millionaires.' The connection between these two parts of the sentence, suggesting that the plaintiff is corrupt, was created by the editor of the Gazan news channel. Furthermore, the mentioned statement was not made by the defendant," the judge noted.
The judge added that "a review of the publication, as translated by the court's interpreter, shows that the defendant referred to the plaintiff family's wealth and also mentioned that they were previously destitute. The defendant also said that 'without security coordination, their stay in the Palestinian Authority is short-lived.' None of these statements constitutes defamation." The judge further stated that "the Gazan news channel published the statements for its own reasons and that this 'interpretation' - not the defendant's words - defamed the plaintiff." The judge dismissed the lawsuit and ordered Abbas to pay Berko NIS 30,000 in legal expenses.
Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, President of the "Shurat HaDin" organization, stated, "This was an absurd and unfounded lawsuit intended to intimidate free speech in Israel from the very begining. The lawsuit should have been dismissed outright, but I welcome the court's ruling that brought justice to light."
