Yeshivat Homesh, rabbis and students; Photo credit: Yeshivat Homesh
Sunday, July 7, 2024, 13:46 Three years years ago, journalist Gideon Levi claimed on a Channel 13 (Israeli) TV broadcast that students from Yeshivat Homesh had tortured a Palestinian youth by hanging him from a tree by his arms and burning his feet. Honenu Attorney Menashe Yado filed a 500,000 NIS slander suit against Levi on behalf of Yeshivat Homesh Head, Rabbi Elishama Cohen, and Yeshivat Homesh administrator Shmuel Wende. Attorney Yado presented evidence at the hearings that completely refuted Levi’s claim. Recently, the Bat Yam Magistrates Court ruled that Levi’s claim was a lie. His statement did not correspond to the evidence in the case. Moreover, it is likely that the incident did not occur at all.
Levi claimed that when a Palestinian youth by the name of Tareq Zubeidi came for a picnic at a site near Homesh, students from the yeshiva captured him, hung him by his arms from a tree, burned his feet as he was hanging, and also sprayed tear gas in his face. At the hearing, Attorney Yado presented photographs of Zubeidi showing him in an IDF jeep after the incident with his eyes wide open, which contradicts the claim that the had been tear-gassed and on the verge of fainting. The IDF operation report cites that the soldiers at the scene did not detect the use of tear gas at the scene.
Additionally, Attorney Yado presented a medical document from the Palestinian hospital that treated Zubeidi on the day of the incident in which there is no mention of burns, thereby refuting the claim that his feet had been burnt. Attorney Yado also revealed that according to the IDF company commander in the relevant zone, Zubeidi admitted under questioning that he had arrived with his friends intending to throw rocks at the yeshiva students and not to aimlessly take a walk around the area. During cross-examination, Gideon Levi did not give any explanation as to why he did not bring Zubeidi to give testimony about what had happened to him. Thus there was no admissible evidence supporting Levi’s claim. Despite all of the evidence presented by Attorney Yado, the court ruled that Levi had not slandered individuals, but rather a group, and rejected the suit. Nonetheless, the court ruled that Levi had not proven his claim regarding Yeshivat Homesh, and the evidence submitted refutes it.
Honenu Attorney Menashe Yado commented on the case: “Gideon Levi’s slander against Homesh was completely discredited. The court ruled that Levi neither spoke the truth nor acted in good faith. The lie alleging serious burns was disproved by medical records. The lie concerning fainting and tear gas was disproved by a photograph from the scene of the incident and the IDF operations log. Gideon Levi, the famous journalist, was no more than a mouthpiece for a blood libel from Israel haters, which he embellished with antisemitic slurs. He has not retracted any part of his statement, not even after he failed to prove it and it was refuted in court.”