Miri Regev's answer to why she does not remove her immunity / Erez Harel
The Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court dismissed today (Sunday) the defamation lawsuit filed by Tel Aviv-Jaffa Mayor Ron Huldai against Minister Miri Regev - after she claimed at a Likud party activist conference in 2020 that he does not allow tefillin to be placed on the streets of the city.
The decision was made with Huldai's consent after Judge Dorit Kovarsky recommended that he withdraw from the lawsuit.
Regev, by virtue of her position as a member of the Knesset, has immunity that also protects her from civil lawsuits like this one.
At a hearing held on Wednesday at the Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court, Judge Kobarski stated that Regev's immunity would prevent a decision and recommended that the parties reach a compromise between them.
"You are wasting my time," she said at the hearing.
In the message given by Huldai to the court, it was written: "In light of the defendant's return from waiving her immunity and in light of her current refusal to remove her immunity in a manner that would allow a decision on the lawsuit against her body, then, taking into account the words of the court on the subject of the last hearing, the need to continue the proceedings became unnecessary."
Miri Regev at the hearing regarding Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai's defamation lawsuit against her, Tel Aviv Court of Justice, January 31, 2024/Flash 90, no
Despite the reasons for which the lawsuit was dropped, Regev was quick to celebrate the decision: "Victory for Tefillin!", she wrote in X, and continued to echo the messages for which she was sued: "Last week, in the midst of the war, Ron Huldai dragged me to court. He sued me and claimed that I took out the His slander when I expressed my disgust at the Tel Aviv municipality's restrictions against the restrictions on placing the tefillin in the public space in Tel Aviv."
The hearing in court revolved around the testimony of Regev, who entered the court through a side entrance and was accompanied by her security guards, answered questions from Huldai's attorney, attorney Shapira, who represents him together with attorney Merav Bar Zi. As part of the lawsuit, Huldai demands compensation in the amount of half A million shekels for false publications that were distributed by her, according to him.
Shapira opened the discussion and demanded that Maregev admit that despite her claims, "there was no prohibition against a private person placing tefillin anywhere in the city of Tel Aviv."
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Ron Huldai, Demonstration against the legal revolution, Kaplan Tel Aviv, July 1, 2023/Photo processing, Reuven Castro
Regev objected to his words and referred to the "advertisement" regarding the decision to remove tefillin stands from the public space in the city: "I joined a public discourse that was shocked by the announcement - rabbis, mayors, secular, traditional, were shocked by the directive to remove the stands. It's not for nothing that mayors wrote against Ron Huldai about the decision Shapira repeated his claim and demanded that the minister admit that there was never a ban on placing tefillin in the public space.
"Have you ever put on tefillin?", Regev answered him.
"If you were to place tefillin, you would understand that according to Halacha tefillin cannot be in the air, to place tefillin you need a surface. The stand itself is a surface for placing tefillin. A restriction on a tefillin stand is a restriction on placing tefillin."
At the hearing, Regev relied on a clause in the municipal by-law according to which the establishment of stalls within the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality requires the approval of the mayor, as part of her attempt to prove that the mayor himself forbids the placing of stalls for placing tefillin.
"We are in a Jewish country. The only restriction in the space in Tel Aviv to pray is for Jews because a Muslim can come anywhere with a carpet and pray," Regev's version.
"The Jew who wants to entitle another person to the mitzvah of placing the tefillin and needs a surface to fulfill the mitzvah, you prevent it from him."
At this point, Huldai's attorney screened a video of Minister Regev speaking at an activist conference in 2020, on which the petition is based: "You know that the mayor of Tel Aviv announced that he would not approve placing tefillin in the street - simply delusional," she claimed at the conference at the time.
"Is there an Israeli, Jewish, religious, secular, who does not connect with this thing called tefillin? There is no such thing. Our parents, our grandparents. There is no Jew in the world who did not pray in secret, put on a tefillin. In places where Jews were persecuted. So here in the State of Israel in Tel Aviv they will not allow
Shapira claimed: "This statement that the mayor made is a false and incorrect statement. There was never a ban on placing a tefillin in the street," but Regev
insisted
In her position: "Of course there is."
More on the same topic:
Miri Regev
Ron Huldai
Tel Aviv Jaffa