Intel: Israeli court orders Netanyahu’s son to stop tweeting personal details of protest leaders

Aug 3, 2020

The son of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was ordered by an Israeli court on Sunday to stop harassing those leading protests against his father’s administration.

Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s older son and a former soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson’s unit, tweeted a document with the names, addresses and telephone numbers of protest organizers and urged his 88,000 followers to demonstrate in front of their homes.

The Jerusalem Magistrates Court instructed him to delete the tweet and refrain from harassing the petitioners in any form for the next six months. The decision added that he failed to rebuke calls for violence posted in response to his tweet.

After Sunday’s ruling, Yair strongly criticized the court’s decision. In one post, he wrote that there are separate laws for right-wingers and left-wingers, citing the petitioner Haim Shadmi who spoke about hurling firebombs at the prime minister’s residence but was still allowed to protest near the site.

Why it matters:  The ruling comes amid large protests across the country, including thousands in front of the prime minister’s residence in central Jerusalem, demanding his ouster in the wake of corruption allegations and his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.