TEL AVIV — Benjamin Netanyahu, who left workplace a 12 months in the past, his spouse, Sara, and their eldest son, Yair, are suing his predecessor as Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, for libel after his description of them as “mentally ill” and in want of psychiatric remedy.
Mr. Olmert, for his half, is unapologetic concerning the aspersions he forged on the Netanyahu household in two interviews across the time of a bitter and inconclusive election within the spring of 2021.
Now the 2 former prime ministers — ardent political foes — are preventing it out in a lurid defamation trial that some liken to a cleaning soap opera.
On Monday, Israelis had been left to parse the fallout a day after the principle protagonists and different Israeli public figures took the witness stand for greater than 13 hours of testimony rife with bickering, sniping and accusations of a wide range of issues afflicting the Netanyahus.
In unusual occasions, Sunday’s listening to within the Tel Aviv Magistrates’ Court might need been dismissed as a typically grotesque signal of the depths to which Israeli political discourse can sink.
But the libel case is taking part in out simply because the nation’s present governing coalition, a fragile alliance of eight ideologically disparate events led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, is teetering getting ready to collapse — and Mr. Netanyahu seems near engineering a attainable comeback.
Another member of Mr. Bennett’s coalition give up on Monday, leaving the federal government accountable for solely 59 seats within the 120-seat Parliament and bringing the prospect of one other election, the fifth in underneath 4 years, ever nearer.
“It was a reality show,” Gadi Wolfsfeld, a professor of political communications at Reichman University in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, mentioned of the trial. “Or worse, a soap opera. It’s sad.”
Still, he mentioned, the courtroom drama was unlikely to have a lot impact on the political panorama.
“Let’s remember, there are very few people who don’t already have a firm opinion about Bibi,” he mentioned, referring to Mr. Netanyahu by his nickname. “So for the vast majority of the population, it won’t make a bit of difference.”
Neither Mr. Olmert nor Mr. Netanyahu is a stranger to court docket. Mr. Netanyahu, who holds the file as Israel’s longest serving prime minister after a complete of 15 years in workplace, is presently on trial within the Jerusalem District Court for corruption. Mr. Olmert, in workplace from 2006 to 2009, was convicted in 2014 of taking a bribe whereas he was mayor of Jerusalem and served 16 months in jail.
The newest courtroom spectacle resurfaced alarming allegations over the pressures Mr. Netanyahu confronted inside his household and his lack of ability to face up to them, provided this time underneath oath by a few of his closest former advisers.
As the day of testimony progressed, the wild rumors and studies of disturbing goings-on that accompanied Mr. Netanyahu’s lengthy tenure got an airing as Mr. Olmert’s lawyer and witnesses for the protection bandied about references to consuming issues, obsessive-compulsive habits, uncontrolled tantrums, narcissism and paranoia within the Netanyahu family.
“The testimony heard in court Sunday was nauseating and horrifying, reviving grim memories of what we got rid of exactly one year ago,” Yossi Verter, a political columnist, wrote in Monday’s left-wing Haaretz newspaper.
But Mr. Verter, like different analysts, mentioned none of it was more likely to postpone Mr. Netanyahu’s die-hard allies and supporters and will even profit him, as he performs the function of a sufferer of persecution.
One political ally of Mr. Netanyahu’s, Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right lawmaker, wrote in a Twitter submit that he was “squirming in disgust” on the “satanic baseness” of the efforts to defame the Netanyahu household.
The Netanyahus are suing Mr. Olmert for greater than $250,000 in damages as a result of, they mentioned, his characterization of them as mentally sick steered he was privy, as a former prime minister, to some hidden scientific analysis that didn’t exist and that he had crossed a pink line.
Mr. Olmert’s lawyer, Amir Tytunovich, mentioned in an interview that his consumer’s most important traces of protection had been that he was expressing an opinion at a stormy time in Israeli politics, talking “out of emotion and concern for the future of the country,” and that Mr. Olmert was telling the reality, although he was clearly not providing an expert scientific analysis.
“This is my opinion and I won’t change it,” Mr. Olmert mentioned in a quick interview with The New York Times exterior the courtroom.
Mr. Netanyahu was the primary to take the stand on Sunday, usually turning round to play to the viewers, largely made up of the Hebrew information media’s authorized reporters.
“I have no psychiatric history, and the burden of proof is on you, not me!” he declared as Mr. Olmert sat throughout from him within the small, crowded courtroom.
Sara Netanyahu, a licensed psychologist, categorically denied studies that she had been hospitalized in a sanitarium in Vienna final 12 months, insisting that was “a lie from start to finish.”
She asserted that an audio tape of her screaming at a publicist over the cellphone in 2009 had been “cooked” and “manipulated.” And when Mr. Tytunovich, Mr. Olmert’s lawyer, steered that she was a fan of vodka, she retorted that she didn’t drink alcohol however {that a} wholesome inventory of it had been left within the prime minister’s residence by the earlier tenant, Mr. Olmert.
Yair Netanyahu, the couple’s elder son, was confronted with a slew of his personal social media posts through which he ascribed psychological sickness to different public figures. Explaining why he had written {that a} former protection minister and Netanyahu rival, Moshe Yaalon, needs to be in a psychiatric establishment, he mentioned, “I wanted to make fun of his obsession over my father.”
Tamar Almog, the authorized commentator for Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, described the proceedings as “half circus, half preschool.” But Uzi Arad, a witness for the protection who served as Mr. Netanyahu’s nationwide safety adviser and shut confidant earlier than a pointy falling out, mentioned the dysfunction he had witnessed within the Netanyahu family “exacted a price from the country.”
He described one incident when Mr. Netanyahu left unprepared for a visit to Washington and couldn’t be briefed on the aircraft as a result of he insisted on sitting with Sara the entire means, stopping Mr. Arad from sharing categorised info. According to Mr. Arad, the lapse led to an enormous blowup in Mr. Netanyahu’s assembly with Robert M. Gates, the U.S. secretary of protection on the time, prompting the Pentagon to chop off ties with Israel for 2 months.
Nir Hefetz, a former spokesman for Mr. Netanyahu who has turned state witness in his corruption trial, advised the court docket of fixed interference by Ms. Netanyahu and her son in nationwide decision-making. He associated that Yair as soon as burst into a gathering his father was holding with different officers, received down on all fours and wagged his tongue, berating his father in crude phrases for sucking as much as these current.
“I should apologize after today?” Mr. Olmert mentioned exterior the courtroom.
In a Facebook submit on Monday, Mr. Netanyahu wrote that Mr. Olmert “brought former employees who would give false testimony and slander my family with a baseless blood libel.”
The attorneys for the perimeters should now sum up their arguments earlier than the choose reaches a verdict, the timing for which isn’t but scheduled.