Professor to pay Israeli settler $6,500 over 'libellous' Nazi comparison

An Israeli academic will have to pay over six thousand dollars in compensation to an Israeli settler for saying he will soon adopt Nazi ideology, after the settler appeared to justify the killing of a Palestinian.

Professor Alon Harel from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem will have to pay settler Uri Kirshenbaum 20,000 shekels ($6,500), plus an additional 500 shekels ($160) in legal expenses.

This came after the Harel said the settler was the "faithful student of Mr Alfred Rosenberg", a Nazi official, and he was "participating in a competition as to who will adopt Nazi ideology faster".

Harel responded to an article Kirshenbaum shared on the Srugim website in August 2024, written after Israeli settlers shot and killed Palestinian Rashid Sadah, 23. The settler said Israel's tactic of killing innocent civilians was "strategic" and "appropriate" and should be done in the occupied West Bank.

"Maybe we'll send the learned man to Sde Teiman? Would an act of sodomy help rid him of his perverted desire to murder children?" Harel wrote, referring to the Sde Teiman detention facility where Israeli soldiers have been accused of sodomising Palestinian detainees.

Kirshenbaum filed a defamation suit against Harel in 2024, describing Harel's comment as "terrifying", equating it to libel and sexual harassment.

In his defence, Harel said he was not cursing the settler or claiming he was a Nazi, noting the similarities of Kirshsenbaum's suggestion for "handling" Palestinians, akin to the mindset that was adopted in Nazi Germany.

"This is a legitimate historical analogy, which relates to the plaintiff's views and the 'solutions' he proposes," the professor said.

However, Judge Hagit Plaut-Babad rejected the defence that the professor was "telling the truth", describing the comment as creating a "harsh and extreme" narrative that demonises him. The judge rejected claims of sexual harassment.

"When one attributes Nazi ideology to anyone, the reasonable person understands this is an attribution of 'race theory' and not Nazi Germany's theory of combat during the course of World War II," the judge wrote.

Harel told Haaretz the court's ruling risks normalising violent discourse, arguing the court "doesn't even bother to object to…Mr. Kirshenbaum's explicit call to slaughter Palestinians wherever they are".

"Judicial neutrality towards an article that calls for the massacre of innocents is not neutral in the proper sense; it's an ethical failure at the least."

Following the outbreak of Israel's genocidal war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, Israeli settlers have ramped up their attacks on the occupied West Bank, killing over a thousand Palestinians.