The panel of judges of the District Court in Tel Aviv dismissed a second appeal filed by Yair Netanyahu to the District Court against the verdict of the Magistrate’s Court that required Yair Netanyahu to compensate Avi Alkalai in the amount of NIS 250,000. Now, Yair Netanyahu has been ordered to pay additional costs of NIS 30,000, bringing the total costs against him to about NIS 400,000. Yair Netanyahu now intends to submit a request for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The panel of judges wrote that “it is not possible that when the law allows for the conduct of two proceedings at the same time: a request for leave to appeal (RA) on the decision on the request to annul the verdict and an appeal against the verdict before submitting the annulment request, we will allow the same grounds for annulment to be asserted in both procedures. The appellant had to choose where he asserts a particular reason and chooses to assert it as part of a request to annul the verdict, he must accept the decision and he cannot choose to present the same reason again for consideration by a court by way of an appeal against the verdict.”
The verdict also states that “the posts are serious and accuse Alkalai of committing criminal offenses for which false indictments were filed against the prime minister. Yair Netanyahu’s sounding board, that is, the number of people who follow his publications and are able to share the posts, especially when they are required to do so with the words ‘share share share share’ ‘, is extremely high, when we are dealing with about 65 thousand followers. And each of the followers will be asked to continue sharing, so it is easy to reach a huge circulation.”
The verdict also states that “the fact that the distributor was the son of the prime minister should not be ignored, therefore the post he shared has a higher credibility than a post by Man Dehau, who is not known to the public and apparently has no access to relevant information, therefore it can be assumed that the harm is caused by publications by the appellant on his behalf The goodness of the respondent is extremely high.”
Alkalai filed a defamation lawsuit against Netanyahu, Jr., after he shared information on social media as if Alkalai was an agent of the Wexner Foundation within the Walla system and working against his father, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.