Netanyahu family sues former PM Olmert for defamation

By Aryeh Savir, TPS

The Netanyahu family filed a defamation lawsuit against former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Thursday after he questioned their mental stability during an interview on television.

Netanyahu’s attorney is demanding monetary compensation of NIS 837,000 for repeated defamations of the prime minister and his family, including a statement during a television interview that Netanyahu, his wife and son are suffering from a mental illness and that “a hospitalization order should be issued for them.”

The defamation lawsuit filed by Adv. Yossi Cohen, on behalf of the Netanyahu family, states that “instead of coming to terms with reality, bowing his head and paying his debt to society, Olmert began to obsessively and successively engage in malicious and vicious slanders against the Netanyahu family.”

“Only a person imbued with blind and unrestrained hatred is able to say such serious and offensive remarks in the media – this is a dangerous statement that the court must condemn and determine that it is not a matter of freedom of expression,” the suit states.

Olmert was offered to retract his statements in a subsequent interview but refused to do so, and when asked about the threat of a defamation suit, he said he would be happy to defend his claims in court.