Pandemonium broke out in a courtroom near Tel Aviv on Monday during a preliminary hearing in a libel suit against a coalition lawmaker and five others initiated by a prominent anti-government activist.
Judge Rami Haimovich interrupted the hearing at the Lod District Court once and ended it early following disruptions by the public, which included right-wing activists who had come to show support for lawmaker Tally Gotliv, and left-wing ones supporting protest leader Shikma Bressler. A second hearing is expected to take place in the coming weeks.
The hearing focused on Gotliv’s parliamentary immunity, which she is invoking to prevent a lawsuit against her and which Bressler claims does not apply to a libel trial. Bressler is demanding 2.6 million shekels ($686,000) in damages.
Bressler sued Gotliv in February for saying in January that Bressler’s husband, who reportedly works for the Israel Security Agency, the Israeli FBI, had spoken with Hamas leader Yahyah Sinwar days before the terror group’s Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel. Gotliv implied a degree of coordination between Bressler or her husband and Hamas, a claim that both the ISA and Israeli intelligence agency Mossad said was unfounded.
Before Hamas’s deadly onslaught on Oct. 7, Bressler had repeatedly said that unless the government walked back its plans to overhaul the judiciary, “in September you will have no military, no intelligence and no air force.” Her critics have cited this as evidence of intention to foment a rebellion and commit treason, which Bressler and her advocates dismiss outright.
The trial is one of the first legal actions involving a polarizing disagreement among many Israelis regarding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who heads Gotliv’s Likud Party, and his handling of the war triggered by the Oct. 7 onslaught.
