‘Harsh, ugly, criminal act’: Yair Netanyahu files defense against defamation lawsuit by Ya’alon

Yair Netanyahu’s defense statement argues that Ya’alon delayed the lawsuit for five years, filing it only after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his father, sued Ya’alon.

Yair Netanyahu filed a statement this week in his defense against a defamation lawsuit brought against him by former IDF chief of staff and defense minister Moshe Ya’alon.

In the statement, Yair Netanyahu argues that Ya’alon delayed the lawsuit for five years, filing it only after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his father, initiated his own defamation lawsuit against Ya’alon.

Yair Netanyahu described the lawsuit as “a harsh and ugly act typical of criminal organizations, where the criminal attempts to harm the children of his adversary to influence them.”

Ya’alon filed the lawsuit in April, citing tweets from 2020 in which Netanyahu wrote to Ya’alon: “Give your monthly pension, worth tens of thousands of shekels, funded by taxpayers, and go to Abarbanel.”

This tweet was one of several that led to Yair Netanyahu being sued for defamation in a case filed this week at the Tel Aviv Magistrates’ Court, which seeks 318,000 shekels in damages. The plaintiff in the case is Ya’alon.

The X posts in question were posted in 2020 after Ya’alon criticized the prime minister. Yair Netanyahu responded by sharing a link to the Abarbanel Mental Health Center’s website.

Yair claims lawsuit was ‘deliberately delayed’

In his statement, Yair Netanyahu calls the lawsuit “vexatious and harassing, fundamentally flawed, and deliberately delayed.”

He adds that “if the lawsuit had any merit, it would have been filed at the time of the publication in 2020, not now, alongside the defense statement in a case where the father of the defendant is suing the plaintiff here. The timing is ugly and reminiscent of the behavior of violent criminal organizations that harm the children of their adversaries.”