The tweets that cost the prime minister's son hundreds of thousands: So far, the various courts have required Yair Netanyahu to compensate people he defamed on Twitter at the rate of NIS 630,160, including court costs. This was in addition to the ruling earlier today (Wednesday) according to which he will compensate Dana Chaldee for defamation in NIS 130,30 (NIS <>,<> plus <>,<> court costs) after he implied that she had an affair with Benny Gantz.
Yair Netanyahu at the court in Tel Aviv // Archive photo: Avi Cohen
In three separate rulings, the justices criticized Netanyahu's defamation on the social network Twitter without supporting evidence.
Netanyahu lost a libel suit to former Walla editor Avi Alkalai and was ordered to compensate him with NIS 400,<>, including court costs. Alkalai filed a defamation suit against Netanyahu for distributing on social networks an advertisement linking him to the Wexner Foundation.
Former Walla editor Avi Alkalay, photo: Gideon Markowitz
Stav Shafir in court ahead of the hearing of the lawsuit against Yair Netanyahu, photo: Yehoshua Yosef
Netanyahu was also ordered to compensate former Knesset member Stav Shafir with 70,<> shekels, including expenses for making statements about her as a pedophile lover" and attributing friendship with pedophiles, "find a permanent Arab husband who won't throw you out," "On the other hand, you owe the taxpayer eight million shekels."
Today, as stated, another NIS 160,<> has been added to these in compensation for his defamation against Dana Chaldee.
After the ruling in Alkalai's lawsuit, Yair Netanyahu also appealed to the Supreme Court, and Justices Alex Stein and Noam Solberg rejected it out of hand. When Justice Sohlberg rejected Netanyahu's request to cancel the ruling, he mentioned that the court had already allowed him to do so in return for compensation of only NIS 5,000, but Netanyahu took a strict approach and rejected it.
Justice Sohlberg wrote, "Netanyahu's counsel was quick to announce her rejection on the same day. In my humble opinion, it would have been better to consider it seriously, to accede to it, and to spare all the awkwardness that follows and its derivatives. The end of the act with forethought."
Netanyahu's request to postpone the payment to Alkalai on the grounds of severe economic harm to him was rejected after he did not submit supporting financial information. Alkalai, on the other hand, attached information sheets from the banks that were transferred to him as part of an execution case he is conducting against Netanyahu, indicating that he has about a million liquid shekels.
Two months ago, a half a million shekel libel suit filed by Yair Netanyahu against attorney Ilit Gilad was dismissed by agreement without any compensation and without deleting her tweets against him. The two informed the court that "they were able to straighten things out after the defendant made it clear in mediation that she had no intention of harming the plaintiff personally and regretted the harm caused to him as stated."
Mutual defamation suits between Yair Netanyahu and Molad were also rejected. Nir Hefetz is currently pending another defamation suit against Yair Netanyahu in the sum of half a million shekels, alleging that he exposed intimate and prohibited details, violated his privacy and caused him damage.
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