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‘Antisemites beware’: Leo Dee weighing $1.3 billion lawsuit against CNN journalist who defamed family

“Let all our enemies know that this is just the first of many actions we will be taking to ensure that the Jewish people and the State of Israel will never again [be] defamed. Antisemites beware,” said Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.

By World Israel News Staff

Despite award-winning Christiane Amanpour’s forced apology after falsely implying that terror victims who were murdered at point blank range were armed and killed in a “shootout,” bereaved husband and father Leo Dee is considering filing a massive lawsuit against the CNN journalist, Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) reported Tuesday.

“On April 10, I referred to the murders of an Israeli family: Lucy, Maya and Rina Dee, the wife and daughters of Rabbi Leo Dee. I misspoke and said they were killed in a ‘shoot-out’ instead of a shooting,” Amanpour said in an on-air apology broadcast on May 22.

“I have written to Rabbi Leo Dee to apologize and make sure that he knows that we apologize for any further pain that may have caused him.”

Notably, Amanpour’s apology failed to acknowledge that the women had been killed in a terror attack, nor did it refer to the perpetrators of the murders or their ideology.

Rabbi Leo Dee, the widower and father of the victims, was outraged by Amanpour’s characterization of the murders.

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“This is the perfect example of ‘terror journalism’ where you have a moral equivalence between the terrorist and victim,” Dee said in a media statement.

“This type of journalism perpetuates the conflict in the Middle East. The real cycle of violence is a comment like this followed by a terrorist atrocity and then more of the same.”

Dee said he was considering legal action during an event on Monday held by famous American Rabbi Shmuel Boteach, which was broadcast on Facebook, JNS reported.

At the event, Dee said that CNN‘s defamation of his family was worse than Fox’s defamation of Dominion Voting Systems, in reference to the company’s recent successful lawsuit against Fox News and its parent company Fox Corp. which resulted in Fox paying $787 million in settlement.

U.S. criminal defense attorney Benjamin Brafman would be prepared to serve as Dee’s co-counsel, Boteach told JNS.

The rabbi told the news agency that Amanpour was “forced to capitulate and retract” her and CNN’s “nauseating lie” less than 24 hours after Dee announced that he planned to sue CNN for $1.3 billion “for defaming and desecrating the memory of his martyred wife and two daughters.

“The lesson here is that the Jewish community must never again allow the defamation of its good name and character,” Boteach said. “Let all our enemies know that this is just the first of many actions we will be taking to ensure that the Jewish people and the State of Israel will never again [be] defamed. Antisemites beware.”

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Last month, pro-Israel advocacy group HonestReporting posted a clip on its Twitter account of Amanpour discussing the murders of the three women on TV and demanded that she publicly apologize to the Dee family.

The watchdog said its campaign was successful after the apology was issued.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken, managing director of the U.S.-based Coalition for Jewish Values, was not impressed.

“If this were exceptional for Amanpour, I’d accept that she ‘misspoke.’ But it’s not exceptional, it’s par for the course, and her tone and body language are anything but apologetic,” he noted.