National Unity MK Chilli Tropper filed a defamation lawsuit for one million shekels on Sunday against two relatively well-known Likud activists on social media, Aviram Tal Mis and Miri Barbi after Mis distributed a video in which he claims Tropper is a pedophile and that the fact that he was exposed is what made him donate a kidney.
The allegations
"Chilli Tropper, look me in the eyes... How are you not ashamed to sit with the president when you know you are a pedophile, that you were caught messing with little boys and little girls," Mis said in the video. "You are a stinking pedophile, you piece of s***, who now walks around and hides behind all this reform. You know how many years you should sit in prison."
At the time of the lawsuit's filing, the video had reached nearly 20,000 views. Even after Mis was sent a warning letter, he posted a second, and then a third video with similar content.
Barbi shared the video on her Twitter account while asking, supposedly innocently, if Tropper indeed is a pedophile, writing: "What's up? Is it real? If it's not real, Tropper must sue this man. And if not, Chilli Tropper will pay his debt. I'm really shocked by this video! The truth has to come out somewhere!"
At the end of the statement of claim against the two, attorneys Nabot Tal Tzur and Elran Dolev, who represent Tropper, wrote that "elected officials have nothing but their good name, on which is the public's trust in them to fulfill their mission properly. The good name and honor of the elected officials are not in vain, and it is appropriate that the court should have its say in the place where it is exposed to false and unbridled insults towards a public figure, while seriously and unjustly harming his good name."
"Elected officials have nothing but their good name, on which the public's trust in fulfilling their mission properly depends."
MK Tropper's attorneys
MK Tropper donated a kidney to an unknown stranger in 2020.
"The donor usually has no idea who the donation is intended for. We kept the whole process confidential. In our eyes, MK Tropper is an example and a role model."," the chairman of NGO "Gift of Life" told Maariv.
According to him, Tropper is the first member of the Knesset to donate a kidney in Israel.