The Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court accepted the compromise reached between Labor Party Chairman Avi Gabbay and former Labor MK Eitan Broshi in the libel suit filed by Broshi against Gabbay.
Gabbay, who called Broshi a sex offender, was ordered to publicly apologize to Broshi and pay him NIS 40,000 in compensation.
In an apology posted on his Twitter account on Monday afternoon, Gabbay wrote: "On July 29, 2018, I posted a message on my Twitter account, in which I called Eitan Broshi a 'sex offender' and announced that he had been suspended from party activity. I would like to announce that I retract the statement I published and apologize to Eitan Broshi and his family. There was no justification for using this expression."
Broshi filed a lawsuit against Gabbay after the latter published a post on Twitter in July 2018 in which he suspended Broshi from Labor and dubbed him a "sex offender." Gabbay took this step following a second report that Broshi allegedly sexually assaulted a woman in 2006. Earlier in July, Israeli media reported that Broshi sexually harrassed MK Ayelet Nahmias-Verbin during a party tour of a Gaza border.
"I spoke with MK Broshi this evening and informed him of his immediate suspension from party activity. I demanded that he take responsibility for his shameful actions and withdraw from the Knesset," Gabbay wrote on Twitter at the time. "Sex offenders don't have a place on the street or in the Knesset."
Broshi subsequently filed a libel suit against Gabbay for calling him a sex offender through attorney Ilan Bombach.
It should be noted that in a preliminary hearing held in court a few months ago, the judge noted to Gabbay's attorney that it was very problematic that Gabbay called Broshi a "sex offender" on Twitter when he hadn't been convicted of any act. In his decision at the end of the trial, the judge wrote that in this matter "the defendant [Avi Gabbay] faces a considerable hurdle."