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TEL AVIV – Benjamin Netanyahu, who left office a year ago, his wife Sara and their eldest son Yair are suing his predecessor as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for defamation after he described them as “mentally ill” and in need of psychiatric treatment.
For his part, Mr Olmert does not apologize for the slanders he leveled at the Netanyahu family in two interviews around the time of a bitter and inconclusive spring 2021 election.
Now the two former prime ministers – ardent political enemies – are fighting in a lurid libel trial that some have compared to a soap opera.
On Monday, Israelis had to analyze the aftermath, a day after the main protagonists and other Israeli public figures took the stand for more than 13 hours with testimonies riddled with bickering, sniping and allegations about a variety of unrest plaguing the Netanyahus.
In normal times, Sunday’s hearing in the Tel Aviv District Court might have been dismissed as a sometimes grotesque sign of the depths to which Israeli political discourse can descend.
But the libel case is playing out just as the country’s current ruling coalition, a fragile alliance of eight ideologically diverse parties led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, is on the brink of collapse – and Mr Netanyahu appears on the verge of conceding a possible comeback to plan.
Another member of Mr Bennett’s coalition resigned Monday, leaving the government to control just 59 seats in the 120-seat parliament and raising the prospect of another election, its fifth in less than four years, ever closer.
“It was a reality show,” said Gadi Wolfsfeld, a professor of political communications at Reichman University in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, of the trial. “Or worse, a soap opera. It is sad.”
Still, the courtroom drama is unlikely to have a major impact on the political landscape.
“Remember, there are very few people who don’t already have a firm opinion about Bibi,” he said, referring to Mr Netanyahu by his nickname. “So for the vast majority of the population, it’s not going to make a difference.”
Neither Mr Olmert nor Mr Netanyahu are aliens to the court. Netanyahu, who holds the record as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister after a combined 15 years in office, is currently on trial in the Jerusalem District Court on corruption charges. Mr Olmert, who served from 2006 to 2009, was found guilty of bribery in 2014 while he was mayor of Jerusalem and served 16 months in prison.
The latest courtroom spectacle has resurfaced alarming allegations about the pressures Mr Netanyahu faced within his family and his inability to stand up to them, this time under oath from some of his closest former advisers.
As testimony day progressed, the rampant rumors and reports of disturbing events that accompanied Mr Netanyahu’s long tenure were released as Mr Olmert’s lawyer and defense witnesses weighed in on evidence of eating disorders, compulsive behavior, uncontrolled tantrums, narcissism and paranoia in the Netanyahu household.
“The testimonies taken in court on Sunday were sickening and chilling and brought back grim memories of what we unleashed exactly a year ago,” wrote Yossi Verter, a political columnist, in the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper on Monday.
But Mr Verter, like other analysts, said none of this would likely deter Mr Netanyahu’s die-hard allies and supporters, and could even benefit him as he plays the role of a victim of persecution.
A political ally of Mr Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right lawmaker, wrote in a Twitter post that he was “writhing in disgust” at the “satanic baseness” of efforts to defame the Netanyahu family.
The Netanyahus are suing Mr. Olmert for more than $250,000 in damages because, they said, his characterization of them as mentally ill suggested that as a former prime minister he was privy to a hidden clinical diagnosis that did not exist and that he had crossed one Red line.
Mr Olmert’s lawyer, Amir Tytunovich, said in an interview that his client’s main lines of defense were that he was expressing an opinion at a tumultuous period in Israeli politics, speaking “out of emotion and concern for the future of the country” that Mr Olmert was telling the truth, although he obviously wasn’t offering a professional clinical diagnosis.
“That’s my opinion and I’m not going to change it,” Mr. Olmert said in a brief interview with The New York Times outside the courtroom.
Mr. Netanyahu was the first to take the witness stand on Sunday, often turning to play in front of the audience, which consisted mostly of the legal reporters from the Hebrew news media.
“I have no psychiatric history and the burden of proof is on you, not me!” he declared as Mr. Olmert sat across from him in the small, crowded courtroom.
Sara Netanyahu, a psychologist, categorically denied reports that she was hospitalized at a sanatorium in Vienna last year, insisting it was “a lie from start to finish”.
She claimed that a tape of her yelling at a publicist on the phone in 2009 was “cooked” and “tampered with.” And when Mr. Tytunovich, Mr. Olmert’s lawyer, suggested that she was into vodka, she retorted that she did not drink alcohol, but that the previous tenant, Mr. Olmert, left a decent supply of it at the Prime Minister’s residence.
Yair Netanyahu, the couple’s elder son, was confronted with a series of his own social media posts blaming other public figures with mental illness. Explaining why he had written that a former defense minister and Netanyahu’s rival, Moshe Yaalon, should be in a psychiatric facility, he said, “I wanted to poke fun at his obsession with my father.”
Tamar Almog, the legal commentator for Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, described the trial as “half circus, half preschool.” But Uzi Arad, a defense witness who was acting as national security adviser and close confidant of Mr Netanyahu before a heated argument, said the dysfunction he witnessed in Netanyahu’s household “demands a price from the country”.
He described an incident when Mr Netanyahu left unprepared for a trip to Washington and could not be briefed on the plane because he insisted on sitting with Sara all the way and prevented Mr Arad from divulging classified information. According to Mr Arad, the omission caused a huge uproar at Mr Netanyahu’s meeting with Robert M. Gates, then US Secretary of Defense, prompting the Pentagon to sever ties with Israel for two months.
Nir Hefetz, a former spokesman for Mr Netanyahu who became a state witness in his corruption trial, told the court about the constant interference by Ms Netanyahu and her son in national decision-making. He said that Yair once burst into a meeting his father had with other officers, got down on all fours and wagged his tongue to rudely berate his father for snapping at those present.
“I should apologize after today?” Mr Olmert said outside the courtroom.
In a Facebook post on Monday, Mr Netanyahu wrote that Mr Olmert “brought in former employees who would make false statements and slander my family with unsubstantiated blood libel.”
The sides’ lawyers must now summarize their arguments before the judge comes to a ruling, the timing of which has not yet been set.
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