An Israeli court on Sunday dismissed a libel suit filed by New York Times journalist Ronen Bergman against Gadi Taub, a prominent intellectual on Israel’s political right. Taub had argued that Bergman’s reporting jeopardized the Mossad’s 2024 pager operation against Hezbollah.

Bergman said this week that he plans to appeal. The case became a rare wartime legal clash over public discourse and journalistic ethics, pitting two prominent figures from opposite ends of Israel’s increasingly polarized media landscape against each other.

The ruling also came amid a wave of lawsuits over right-wing rhetoric online. In dismissing the suit and ordering Bergman to pay 15,000 shekels (about $5,000) in court costs, the court upheld Taub’s right to criticize what he has called “the Ronen Bergman method.” Taub uses that phrase to describe what he sees as a symbiotic relationship between unelected defense officials seeking to shape Israeli policy and a journalist who gives them access to international media in exchange for exclusive information.

Taub, a frequent op-ed contributor to JNS, has argued that this dynamic, while not unique to Israel, became dangerous in Bergman’s coverage of the pager operation shortly before it was carried out.

Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court Judge Lior Gelbard wrote that Bergman had failed to prove the central claim in his suit, in which he sought 330,000 shekels (about $109,000) in damages. Bergman had argued that Taub defamed him personally by suggesting his reporting, based on leaks from defense officials allegedly trying to block the operation, had endangered the mission.

“Taub criticized [Bergman’s] journalism, which he [Taub] said ‘faithfully echoes’ the security establishment,” Gelbard wrote. The criticism, he added, “apparently also was directed at Bergman, but it does not seem from [Taub’s] text that Bergman knew about the pager operation or tried to thwart it. Bergman is not the focus of the article, the establishment is.”

Taub made the remarks on X and on his podcast, Shomer Saf (“Gatekeeper”), in response to an article by Bergman in Yedioth Ahronoth, where Bergman also writes in addition to his work for the New York Times.

That article appeared one day before the Sept. 17, 2024 pager operation, in which Mossad detonated thousands of booby-trapped pagers it had sold to Hezbollah through front companies for use by the group’s mid-level and some senior officers. The operation crippled Hezbollah’s middle management and is widely seen as a major turning point in Israel’s war against Hezbollah and Iran.

In the Yedioth article, Bergman wrote that unnamed “senior officials in the IDF and other parts of the security establishment” were warning against “reckless steps planned by the Israeli government in the North.” He described those steps as “a significant and deliberate escalation, including a ground operation in Lebanon.” Bergman, a critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, quoted the sources as saying the government was trying to appear as though it was “doing something,” but that “this something is the most misguided, the most dangerous thing. Exactly what we have been avoiding all last year. Instead of solving the problem, it could entangle us in a much more difficult problem.”

In his lawsuit, Bergman also said Taub defamed him by calling him the defense establishment’s “personal spokesperson” and “court reporter.” Gelbard rejected that argument as well, ruling that Taub’s criticism was legitimate and too general to meet the threshold for defamation.

Before filing suit, Bergman publicly denounced Taub’s allegations on X as “heinous lies” and described Taub as one of several “submissive amplifiers and eunuchs” of Netanyahu, Gelbard noted. That response, the judge wrote, showed that Bergman already had effective means of answering public criticism.

Contacted by JNS, Taub declined to comment, citing Bergman’s plans to appeal.

Taub did address the ruling on Tuesday on Israel Update, the Tablet podcast he co-hosts with Mike Doran. There, he described Bergman’s suit as a SLAPP—a strategic lawsuit against public participation—meant to suppress public debate.

“This is a systematic tool that the rich in Israel—the rich, privileged leftists—are using in order to dominate public discourse and preserve the monopoly they have lost, because now we have our own channels: social media, the Israel Update podcast, and also my show,” said Taub.

Taub launched Gatekeeper during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and expanded it further after Haaretz stopped accepting his op-eds in 2023 because of his support for the Netanyahu government’s judicial reform.

Loosely modeled on Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire in the United States, Gatekeeper has grown alongside newer right-wing outlets such as Channel 14 and Galei Israel, which have helped reshape a media landscape that critics say was long dominated by the left. Funded by sponsors and small donors, Gatekeeper now hosts several well-known journalists and commentators, including Irit Linur and Erez Tadmor.

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