Zias found guilty of defamation

THE JERUSALEM POST: Court rules that film on Jesus tomb, marriage to Mary Magdalene was not a fraud. Court Grants massive defamation award to filmmaker Jacobovici against critic; Judge leaves question of truth to academia.

A film with the jaw-dropping conclusions that Jesus was buried, his lost tomb was found in Jerusalem and that he had married Mary Magdalene and had children with her has been declared clear of being a fraud by the Lod District Court.

Judge Jacob Sheinman also granted the filmmaker, in a decision handed down late Sunday, but not announced until Monday, Simcha Jacobovici, NIS 800,000 in damages for having been defamed by his critic, Joe Zias.

This would be one of the largest defamation awards in years, with Jacobovici’s lawyer, Yossi Abadi, estimating the average defamation award in 2014 at the much lower mark of around NIS 37,000.

Sheinman did not fully resolve the underlying controversy about whether Jacobovici’s eye-popping conclusions in his various films, which strike at the heart of Christian theology, are true, ruling only that there was no proof that they were fraudulent and leaving the final question of truth to theologians and academics.

Rather, Sheinman said that Zias, a former Antiquities Authority official, had gone beyond the bounds of academic criticism by undermining Jacobovici’s films on a commercial level with claims that were themselves not properly grounded, causing him serious financial harm.

[...]

Background here and links.