The Yad Ezer L’Haver foundation and its chairman, Shimon Sabag, filed a 600,000-shekel ($200,000) libel lawsuit against Shomrim, TheMarker and reporters Uri Blau and Shai Fogelman over an investigation published in 2021. At the same time, Sabag and the foundation asked the court to take the rare step of barring media outlets from reporting on the case, which they asked to be held behind closed doors. The deputy president of the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court, Judge Tal Havkin rejected the request and ruled that the principle of public hearings is a key constitutional value. Therefore, he ruled, the proceedings would take place in public.

The case centers around an extensive investigation published jointly by Shomrim and TheMarker in Hebrew in June 2021. The 2021 investigation examined Yad Ezer L’Haver, a Haifa-based charity that provides housing and other assistance to Holocaust survivors, as well as Sabag’s role in the organization. It reported on Sabag’s financial history, real estate transactions involving the foundation and people close to him, and questions surrounding oversight of apartments owned by the foundation. It also discovered that Sabag has cultivated widespread political connections, and that the foundation raised massive sums of money from Evangelical Christians in the United States.

Sabag wanted his past deleted. The court wasn’t convinced

When the lawsuit was filed, five years after publication, Sabag sought to have the court order that the entire case be held behind closed doors and that a sweeping gag order be imposed to prevent information about his medical and financial history being exposed. Sabag argued that following a 1993 traffic accident, a court appointed a legal guardian to manage his affairs, an arrangement that remained in place until 2014. According to Sabag, exposing this information now would cause him irreparable personal, reputational and rehabilitative damage, and would severely undermine donor trust in the foundation that is entirely identified with him.

Attorneys representing Shomrim, Ofer Doron and Inbar Yosseff, opposed Sabag’s requests, arguing that the lawsuit was filed a significant time after publication of the article – some five years – and that the information contained in the article was freely available online. They further argued that Sabag is no longer under legal guardianship and no longer meets the criteria for ordering a trial behind closed doors. They also revealed that Sabag himself has made details of his own medical history public. An article in Yediot Haifa from 2019 under the headline “Shimon Sabag: The Full Story,” which was also published on the foundation’s website, revealed the details in depth. The article, in which Sabag was interviewed at length, portrayed the appointment of the guardian as part of the narrative of his “story of revival.” 

In their response, Shomrim’s attorneys argued that “the plaintiffs are trying to have their cake and eat it, too,” by making Sabag’s past public for reasons of public relations, but, at the same time, demanding privacy when that same past is being inspected. In addition, it was revealed that the plaintiffs leaked information about their lawsuit to the Social News website on the day it was submitted – thereby undermining their own argument that publication of the details would cause the plaintiff untold harm.

Judge Havkin rejected Sabag’s request and revoked the temporary gag order that had been placed on the case, ruling that all the proceedings should be conducted in public. He pointed out that the plaintiffs themselves published details of their lawsuit, thereby making any claim for secrecy unjustified. Beyond this, the judge said that there was a clear public interest in an investigation which probes a foundation that raises money from the public. Havkin ruled that he “could find no satisfactory explanation” as to why the lawsuit was submitted so long after publication of the investigation.

He added that no weight should be attached to the fact that Sabag was under legal guardianship until 2014, given that 14 years have passed since then and that he no longer has a legal guardian. Therefore, the sweeping gag order was only left in place to cover confidential medical records.

The ruling concerned only whether the proceedings would be public; the court has not ruled on the merits of the libel claims.