Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu filed a libel suit Tuesday against a list of newspapers, broadcasters and individual journalists over their reports that he received advance warnings from the United Arab Emirates and Egypt about a Hamas attack before October 7. The claim describes the reports as "fabricated lies."
Threat carried out
Netanyahu sues over Oct. 7 warning reports
Prime Minister names Haaretz, Channel 12, and six journalists in 2.6 million shekel claim, calling the reports of advance warnings from the UAE and Egypt complete fabrications and a national-level fraud
The suit names Haaretz and Yedioth Ahronoth newspapers, Channel 12 News, and the ynet website. The list of defendants includes journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruti Yuval, who published the original investigation in Haaretz on the phone call from Mohammed bin Zayed to Netanyahu, as well as four other reporters: Uri Misgav, Nadav Eyal, Barak Ravid, and Attila Somfalvi.
"The Emirates denied it, the Egyptians denied it, this is an absolute lie," the Likud statement said. "It is no coincidence that these lies are being spread now on the eve of elections by political rivals and hostile foreign elements. They want to bring down the right-wing government led by Netanyahu, and to install a left-Arab parties government of Gadi Eisenkot, Yair Golan, Lieberman and Bennett that will establish a Palestinian state."
The claim states that "it will be clarified and noted in capital letters, no meeting and/or conversation of any kind took place between the Prime Minister and the President of the United Arab Emirates and no meeting and/or conversation took place between the Prime Minister and Egyptian Intelligence Minister Abbas Kamel on the dates claimed and in the entire period between September 2023 and October 7, 2023, which completely pulls the ground out from under the false publications mentioned above."
"This is a complete fabrication intended to severely harm the security of the state and the Prime Minister, while grossly violating all rules of journalistic ethics and with full knowledge that the things are not true," the claim continues. "This is an act of fraud on a national level in the guise of 'journalistic work,' which constitutes a new and dangerous peak in the poisoning of democratic public discourse in Israel. The defendants' choice to spread these false claims at the height of an election period was also intended to exert improper and illegal influence on the election results in Israel."
"The lies published by the defendants were done intentionally with a clear purpose to harm the plaintiff, and in order to obtain for themselves a clear personal, commercial, political and image profit by means of publishing malicious, false and destructive libel," the claim concludes. "In these acts the defendants have severely harmed the purity of elections and they are poisoning the democratic process, while making cynical and manipulative use of the national disaster by means of using complete lies, which extremely exceed the boundaries of legitimate freedom of the press, expression and public criticism."
