Sharon Lawyers Reject Time Retraction

Time magazine offered former Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon a written statement of at least partial retraction this week on the eve of closing arguments in their $50-million libel trial, but the statement was rejected by Sharon’s attorneys.

Although the details of the proposal are not known, Time spokesman Michael Luftman said Thursday that it was presented Wednesday at the urging of U.S. District Judge Abraham D. Sofaer, and a source for Sharon characterized it as part of a settlement offer.

News of the offer came as Time attorney Thomas Barr delivered his 5 1/2-hour closing argument in the case, in which Sharon has alleged that Time falsely accused him of instigating or knowingly encouraging the massacre of more than 700 Palestinian refugees by Lebanese Christian militia in September, 1982.

The paragraph at issue said in part that, on the eve of the massacre, Sharon met with Lebanon’s Christian Falangists and “discussed” the need to avenge the assassination of Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel.

Wednesday’s offer was made the same day that Time conceded that the allegations that Sharon had such discussions was not included, as Time had reported, in a secret appendix of an Israeli government report on the massacre.

Luftman described the offer not as a settlement but merely as a statement. “We agreed reluctantly to go along with this procedure,” at the urging of Sofaer, “despite the fact that we felt anything that might be agreeable to use would be unacceptable to Sharon,” Luftman said.

Luftman said that Sofaer actually wrote the first draft of the statement and that Time “made extensive changes and resubmitted it to the judge. He passed it on to Mr. Sharon’s attorneys and, as we anticipated, they turned it down.”

Earlier Proposal

A source for Sharon, who requested anonymity, said the attorneys rejected the offer without even submitting it to Sharon, though the former general was later made aware of it.

The source said Sharon’s attorneys rejected the statement because it was less than Time had offered Sharon in a separate proposal in early December. The source said that, at that time, Time offered a statement of retraction acceptable to Sharon but that Time later withdrew the offer.

Luftman declined to comment on the alleged December offer.

In his closing argument, Barr sought to convince the jury that the words in the disputed paragraph “simply don’t mean what the plaintiff says they mean.”

Barr said Sharon was “stung” by the Israeli government report that found him “indirectly responsible” for the massacre but could not sue the commission that wrote it.

“Instead, he picked out this one paragraph buried in the middle of a Time story, gave it this one meaning, as a way of getting back at the Kahan Commission,” which wrote the report.

Barr’s summation was delayed for more than two hours Thursday morning while lawyers for several media organizations asked the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to release testimony that had been presented Wednesday after the courtoom was cleared of press and spectators. The judge had ordered the secret proceedings to honor the agreement with the Israeli government that allowed the court to receive the testimony. The appeals court said it would rule later on the motion.