A Tel Aviv court on Thursday upheld a defamation ruling against Likud MK Yaakov Bardugo and radio hosts Noam Fathi and Yotam Zimri, and ordered them to pay journalist Raviv Drucker an additional 60,000 shekels.
The Tel Aviv District Court rejected all three broadcasters’ appeals and sided partly with Drucker, who had argued he was undercompensated. Judges Einat Ravid, Naftali Shilo and Yechezkel Eliyahu ruled that the hosts’ statements about the Channel 13 journalist were false factual claims, not protected opinion.
The case dates back to June 2021, when Drucker wrote in Haaretz that he had obtained recordings that could have embarrassed then-Defense Minister Benny Gantz, but that his source had not cleared them for publication. Bardugo, then a host on Galei Tzahal, told listeners in two broadcasts that Drucker was using the material to pressure Gantz. Fathi and Zimri took up the same theme on their show “Fathi and Zimri with the People.”
Last year, a magistrate’s court found that Bardugo had attributed to Drucker claims that never appeared in his article. It ordered Bardugo and Galei Tzahal to pay 100,000 shekels, and Fathi, Zimri and the companies behind Galei Yisrael and Radio Darom to pay 50,000.
Bardugo argued on appeal that he had simply offered his interpretation of the article as part of legitimate political debate. The judges disagreed. They found he had effectively told listeners that Drucker threatened to release damaging material if Gantz moved to change the political situation, a claim the article never made. Calling a false statement “interpretation,” they wrote, does not turn it into protected opinion.
The court also accepted Drucker’s argument that the online versions of the broadcasts, uploaded to the stations’ websites, were separate publications that reached a new audience. Because he could not show how many people heard them, the added damages were set at 30,000 shekels each for Bardugo and Galei Tzahal, and for Fathi, Zimri and the two stations.
Bardugo was elected to the Knesset last month and has been named to the temporary Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
