Adva Magal Cohen, the sister of former Jewish Home MK Yinon Magal, published a post on Facebook following news that a police investigation cleared Magal of any criminal offenses vis-à-vis women he worked with in the past.
She described the family's ordeal, since the publication of a post by a female former co-worker of Magal's who said that he had spoken to her inappropriately at a going-away party from the Walla website, where he had been employed before entering the Knesset.
"We were asked not to react," she revealed. "Now that the public (but not the private) storm has passed, and the suspicion of criminal offenses has been removed on the legal plane, we would like to say a few words about those days. Days in which we stood in shock, faced with the tsunami of hatred that swept Yinon on the internet (filled the feed for a week) and the press (six straight pages in Yediot Aharonot, for instance!) with a decisiveness and conviction that were based on two posts on the Internet, which volunteered enthusiastically to serve as investigator, judge and executioner. It was a paean to shaming and public humiliation," she added.
"When everything is seething with the mockery of the cynics, the schadenfreude, puritanism, voyeurism, evil humor and holier-than-thou hypocrisy, o endless hypocrisy… and it is all, of course, well written and wonderfully phrased but as violent and savage as the lowest talkbacks of those talkback writers who are called 'the unruly mob,' whom everyone despises.
"When someone tried to voice a dissenting opinion in a post, he often had to take it down immediately. Few journalists dared write differently. It was a glorious show of herd mentality. Herd rule.
"It was very hard to experience this from the sideline. The feeling was that most of the press kept kicking Yinon, until he chose to stop the madness and resign.
"We realize that this is a price that a family pays when a member enters public life, is accused of criminal deeds (an accusation that has been refuted) and is a member of 'the wrong' party. Staying silent and observing from the side made it possible to sense the depth of the hatred, of those who sought to devour their rival until he was dead."
However, she added, the family withstood the ordeal, because it is strong and unified, but also because of support from friends, neighbors, and many other people who expressed their support, "These were rays of light in difficult days that strengthened us and reminded us that beyond everything we met, there is another voice as well, with which we chose to remain."
"We love Yinon very much," she summed up. "We believe in him and in the strong truth that leads him wherever he goes, and we wish him success in everything he does."
She signed her name, along with those of her brothers, Elad and Itai Magal, and tagged Yinon's wife, Gitit.