Iris Chaim, the mother of Yotam Chaim Hy”d, has filed a NIS 169,000 defamation lawsuit against chareidi attorney and commentator Dov Halbertal over a blistering social media post in which he accused her of exploiting her son’s death for fame and suggested that Hamas had effectively done her a favor.

The lawsuit was filed Monday in the Yerushalayim Magistrate’s Court following a Facebook post Halbertal published after Chaim’s name surfaced in reports and rumors about individuals who could potentially be given a reserved spot on the Likud electoral slate.

In the May 10 post, Halbertal attacked Chaim in exceptionally harsh terms, referring to her, among other things, as “this despicable woman” and as someone “obsessed with honor and publicity who has only been glowing since her son was murdered.”

Halbertal went on to write: “It can be assumed that she planned her entire path into politics in advance and is trampling on the blood of her son, who bequeathed her worldwide celebrity status.”

He concluded the post with an even more incendiary remark: “On her son’s grave she will write: ‘How good it is that you were murdered.’ What a kindness Hamas did for her.”

Chaim subsequently responded in a post of her own, denying that she had received any offer to enter politics through Likud or any other party.

“No one approached me, not from Likud and not from any other list or political party, and even if they do approach me, the answer will be no,” she wrote.

A letter warning Halbertal of impending legal action was sent on May 26. In his response, Halbertal did not deny writing the comments but said that a day or two after publishing them, he reconsidered their severity and voluntarily removed the entire post.

“I didn’t change it; I simply deleted it,” he wrote.

Halbertal maintained that the original post had received only several hundred views before its deletion and argued that it was only after Chaim responded and a screenshot began circulating online that the remarks spread widely and reached the media.

He also maintained that he had not invented the report about Chaim potentially receiving a reserved spot on the Likud slate, saying he had read about the possibility in an article by journalist Anna Barsky in Maariv.

Halbertal said he himself faced fierce criticism over the post, including attacks from within his own community.

“I received a severe punishment for publishing the post,” he wrote.

He also offered to issue another apology, meet with Chaim and even host the family at his home for Shabbos.

Chaim’s attorneys, Assaf Sharaf and Nili Schatz, rejected Halbertal’s explanations, describing his response as “the height of outrageous cynicism.”

According to the lawsuit, Halbertal’s comments were not written impulsively in a moment of anger but were published knowingly and with the intention of harming Chaim. The complaint also alleges that the photograph accompanying the post — showing Chaim with a portrait of her son Yotam behind her — was deliberately selected to intensify the harm and increase the “shock effect.”

No date has yet been scheduled for the first court hearing.

Responding to the lawsuit, Halbertal defended the principle of his right to express a harsh opinion while acknowledging that his language had been extreme.

“It is time to stop with these lawsuits. Today, terrible things are written about me on Twitter and I have never sued anyone; it is time to give more room to freedom of opinion. I wrote in a harsh manner and I am aware of that, but is it forbidden to write that a woman is dancing on her son’s blood? It is time to eradicate the phenomenon in which people are sued for hundreds of thousands of shekels. Lawsuits can be filed over facts, but not interpretations — even though they are harsh and biting. There is a fundamental issue here involving freedom of expression, and this is a bad law that creates silencing lawsuits.

“As for Iris Chaim, as far as I’m concerned, enough is enough: An article came out saying that she was running with Likud and she didn’t deny it, and then I wrote what I wrote. A day or two later, I realized that it was too harsh, deleted the post and thought the story was over.

“But then someone took a screenshot, it reached Iris and she posted it on her social media — which gave it tremendous momentum and led to harsh reactions against me. Had she not responded to it, no one would have heard about it. To sue for 100,000 shekels over something like this? She is responsible for that. Incidentally, I sent her a response in which I apologized, explained that I had deleted the post, noted that I understand the grieving father and invited her to spend Shabbos together — and suddenly I find myself facing a lawsuit.”

{Matzav.com}