Justice Amit Yariv, vice president of the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court, yesterday rejected former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s and his family’s requests to hold the defamation trial against Ehud Olmert in Zum and to postpone it for an hour.
Discussions will begin today regarding the defamation lawsuit filed by the Netanyahu family against former Prime Minister Olmert in the amount of NIS 837,000. Both Netanyahu and Olmert are expected to visit the court benches. In a petition filed by the Netanyahu family, the court was asked not to physically attend the hearing in light of “the increasing rate of infection and the morbidity that has increased to dimensions we have not yet seen.”
Justice Yariv rejected the Netanyahu family’s request due to its late submission. “Next, the plaintiffs are proposed to file such applications at an earlier date, which would allow for a serious examination of them,” the judge added.
The Netanyahu family also requested that the hearing be held at ten in the morning, instead of at nine, due to the “strict security arrangements.” Judge Yariv also denied this request, and suggested that “the way to avoid delays resulting from security arrangements is of course to leave the house at an earlier time.”
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The Netanyahu family’s lawsuit deals with the two interviews that Olmert gave, the first to journalist Gadi Sukenik on the Democratic Channel, and the second on the Ofira and Berkowitz program on Channel 12, in which Olmert said:
In his defense, Olmert claimed that “in the context in question, the phrase ‘mentally ill’ is not a derogatory nickname at all,” and that he “would not have thought of taking this phrase out of his mouth in order to insult, despise and insult.”
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