Rabbi Dr. Eliyahu Zini has filed a defamation lawsuit seeking 500,000 shekels against Haaretz, accusing the newspaper of orchestrating a coordinated smear campaign aimed at him and his family in the lead-up to the appointment of his nephew, David Zini, as head of Israel’s Shin Bet.

According to the lawsuit, filed through attorneys Yechiel Weinrot, Tal Shachaf, and Yehuda Schwartz, Haaretz published a front-page feature on September 4 in its weekend supplement that deliberately sought to cast a “dramatic and dark atmosphere” around the incoming security chief and his family. The article, written by Hilo Glazer, was headlined, “There Have Been Extremists in Israel’s Leadership, But a Shin Bet Head Like David Zini Has Never Been Seen,” and prominently linked the general’s appointment to the alleged views of his uncle.

Central to the lawsuit is Haaretz’s claim that Rabbi Zini authored an article in which he purportedly praised the 1994 massacre of Arabs at Me’aras Hamachpeila and asserted that the biblical prohibition of “Do not kill” does not apply when a Jew kills a non-Jew. Rabbi Zini categorically denies the allegation, calling it a complete fabrication.

Rather than correcting the record, Rabbi Zini alleges, Haaretz escalated the claims. On September 22, a second article by Doron Koren repeated the accusations, this time with what the lawsuit describes as heightened sensationalism. The same claims were later echoed in additional Haaretz content, including an editorial titled “Zini’s Test” and another article by Yossi Klein.

The suit argues that the repetition was not incidental but deliberate, describing the coverage as “a coordinated and timed campaign of intimidation” intended to damage the reputation of Rabbi Zini and, by extension, undermine public confidence in his nephew ahead of his Shin Bet appointment. By repeatedly attributing extremist views to Rabbi Zini, the lawsuit contends, Haaretz created the false impression that the incoming intelligence chief was connected to radical ideology through his family.

Rabbi Zini says the alleged defamation has caused severe harm to his personal and professional standing, as well as to his family. The average reader, the lawsuit claims, would reasonably conclude from the coverage that he had praised mass murder—an assertion he insists is wholly untrue.

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