Ettinger was the counselor on a hike in which Newman and a group of other teenage boys who were studying at the now-defunct Mechinat Yeud yeshiva, a gap-year program for Diaspora youth between high school and college. According to previous medical reports, Newman’s body temperature rose to unusually high temperatures and he died on the hike.

Ettinger and other Yeud officials were accused of negligent homicide by Newman’s family. They were questioned by police and all cleared of any wrongdoing. However, last year, a petition was filed by the Newmans’ lawyer, Amos Fried, to the High Court of Justice seeking to overturn the decision to close the case by the police, the Southern District Attorney and the prosecution appeals department.

It is expected though that the court will accept the law enforcement’s unanimous recommendation to close the case.

In a first-ever-interview with The Post, Ettinger said that while he sees the event as a tragedy, “I was cleared.”

Ettinger told The Post that in the initial weeks after Newman’s tragic death, there were no accusations. He said that what might have started as the parent’s “quest for truth and justice” evolved into “a desire to assuage their sense of loss and regret for withholding vital information and not considering Ariel’s past medical history and the known inherent physical risks of the program to him based on that history.”

Ettinger said that he was “at the Newman parents’ home in Great Neck only a few days after Ariel passed away. After the prayers for mourners, Ellen and Mark asked me to join them for breakfast.

“During the meal, they were anxious to hear what happened on the hike,” he continued. “Afterward, Ellen told me that when the family took a trip to Israel for Ariel’s Bar Mitzvah, Ariel fainted at the Kotel in the morning hours of their visit.”

He said that Ellen Newman also told him that she herself had suffered an episode of heat stroke during the same family trip, and that a family doctor then “warned them that they likely have a family genetic sensitivity to the sun or heat of the Middle East.”

According to Ettinger, “had this information been available to me or to the program, we possibly would not have accepted Ariel to our program, a program which had a physical element. Or, if he had been accepted, at least we would have had a heads up to take extra special measures.”

Based on a report by Professor Yoram Epstein, the Newmans have alleged that Ariel died of heat stroke and from a combination of negligence by Ettinger and other Yeud officials, and have presented arguments contrary to Ettinger’s claims.

However, Ettinger said there is no way to know for sure the cause of death, including whether a genetic issue played a part, as the Newmans vetoed an autopsy, citing Jewish law objections.

The prosecution has also cited the absence of an autopsy as an obstacle to proving the cause of death.

Further, the prosecution continues to seek to close the case arguing that in the best case for the parents’ allegations, there is a mix of around 10 contradictory stories from the hike about Ariel’s condition and of how hard the hike was, which it says cannot prove negligence to a criminal standard.

There are disputes over whether a minority of those 10 witnesses support the Newman’s allegations against Ettinger, but he has rebuttals for each person, and once again, the prosecution has said that an overall canvassing of the 10 student witnesses cannot support an indictment.

Besides denying any negligence accusations, Ettinger also told the Post that his response from the moment Newman collapsed was precise, professional and by the books, crediting his IDF training.

He said he called for a helicopter and coordinated its landing in the middle of a desert using the 12 digit coordinates from the special map he was using, while treating Ariel and making sure that he was in a shaded area, with lots of water, and still breathing. Read more at JPost