Yair Netanyahu tweeted the addresses and phone numbers of three men who led protests against his father’s administration. All three said they later received death threats.
An Israeli court on Sunday ordered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s older son to stop harassing three people helping to lead protests against his father’s administration after he tweeted out their home addresses and cellphone numbers.
Judge Dorit Feinstein of the Jerusalem Magistrates Court also ordered Yair Netanyahu, to delete the tweet, which called on his more than 88,000 followers to demonstrate in front of the homes of the protest leaders.
“I instruct him to refrain for the next six months from harassing the petitioners in every shape, way and form,” Judge Feinstein wrote in her decision.
The ruling came a day after large crowds of protesters across the country demanded Mr. Netanyahu’s ouster, criticizing his handling of the economic and health problems stemming from the coronavirus and arguing that he should not be permitted to serve as prime minister while under indictment on corruption charges.
The judge said in her decision that she was concerned the prime minister’s son would continue to harass the petitioners and infringe on their privacy, adding that he did not rebuke calls for violence that were posted in response to his tweet.
One of the protest leaders, Yitzhak Ben Gonen, who represented himself and the two other petitioners, said that Yair Netanyahu’s tweet prompted incessant phone calls, and that each of the three received death threats from callers.
“We are very happy about this legal victory, but the threats keep coming,” said Mr. Ben Gonen, who is a member of A New Contract, an anti-Netanyahu group popularly known as “Crime Minister.” The group says Mr. Netanyahu should not be able to serve as prime minister while on trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. The trial got underway in May, and is still in its initial stages.
Later Sunday, the younger Mr. Netanyahu deleted the tweet, but in a series of other social media posts, he strongly criticized the court’s ruling, calling it Kafkaesque.
He also contended that courts in Israel would one day ban Israelis from voting for his father’s Likud party and order all those on the political right placed in “re-education camps.”
“For a long time, Israel hasn’t been a democratic state,” he wrote in another post, remarking that a petitioner, Haim Shadmi, had been recorded speaking about hurling a firebomb at the prime minister’s official residence but that Mr. Shadmi was still permitted to protest near it. “There’s a law for right-wingers and another law for left-wingers,” the Facebook post said.
Yair Netanyahu, 29, is a fierce defender of his father and has a history of stoking controversy through his social media posts, some of which even the prime minister has condemned.
In December 2018, the son wrote on Facebook that he wished the deaths of two Israeli soldiers killed by a Palestinian gunman in the West Bank would be “avenged,” adding, “There will never be peace with the monsters in human form known since 1964 as ‘Palestinians.’” In a separate post at the time, he wrote that he would prefer an Israel without Muslim residents.
Facebook removed those posts following a flurry of complaints. It said they included hate speech and violated its community standards.
In February, Yair Netanyahu posted on Twitter a picture of a young Israeli, Dana Cassidy, who had been photographed earlier with Benny Gantz, the leader of the Blue and White party. He also posted unsubstantiated accusations that Mr. Gantz engaged in extramarital affairs.
The posts prompted some of the son’s followers to spread unfounded rumors that Ms. Cassidy and Mr. Gantz were having an affair.
Mr. Gantz has repeatedly clashed with the prime minister even though they are now coalition partners.
And in a tweet in May, the prime minister’s son questioned how Dana Weiss, a well-known Israeli journalist, got her job at Channel 12, a major Israeli television outlet. That tweet led some of Yair Netanyahu’s followers to make unsubstantiated allegations that Ms. Weiss had sexual relations with her bosses to get her position.
The son apologized for that tweet — after Ms. Weiss and Channel 12 threatened to file a lawsuit against him.
Mr. Ben Gonen, the lawyer representing his fellow protest leaders, said he sensed that the protests were gaining momentum. “We see young people, who are very angry about the situation in Israel and determined to change it,” he said. “It’s too early to determine if we will change everything, but I feel that something important and new is happening.”
Karen and Ken Threaten Protesters with Guns
“ST. LOUIS — A white couple who stood outside their St. Louis mansion and pointed guns at protesters who were marching toward the mayor’s home to demand her resignation support the Black Lives Matter movement and don’t want to become heroes to those who oppose the cause, their attorney said Monday. Video posted online showed Mark McCloskey, 63, and his 61-year-old wife, Patricia, standing outside their Renaissance palazzo-style home Sunday night in the city’s well-to-do Central West End neighborhood. He could be heard yelling while holding a long-barreled gun. His wife stood next to him with a handgun.”
Columnist Lindy West Sees ‘Straight Line’ From Trolls Who Targeted Her To Trump Listen· 35:12
New York Times columnist Lindy West knows what it’s like to encounter a barrage of Internet hate. West, who often writes about feminist issues and body positivity, was “doxxed” by Internet trolls — her home address and cell phone number were posted online.
But West hasn’t been silenced; she continues to speak out against harassment and misogyny. In her book Shrill, she writes about learning to like her body and to insist on a place for herself in public life.
.. There are a lot of ostensibly pro-choice people who still believe that if you have an abortion it’s your obligation to talk about it with shame and regret and to apologize and to grovel and to justify it, and I would argue that that’s not really being pro-choice. …Especially pro-choice left-wing men often have a really hard time talking about abortion. I find they have often not really thought about it that much, and have just sort of internalized this messaging that, “Yeah, abortion should be legal but I still feel kind of icky about it, and we should try to avoid it.” …I do not tolerate that argument in my presence and I do not engage with it. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I made the right choice for me and my family. …
The reality is that abortion is a normal, necessary medical procedure that people will always need and we can either make it safe or we make it unsafe. And we can make it accessible or we can make it inaccessible. And those are the options. Putting this layer of shame and stigma on people for exercising their constitutional rights is disgusting.
The Alt-Right’s Chickens Come Home to Roost
it’s hard to escape the conclusion that it was intentional. The car rammed the crowd at speed, backed up, and sped away. This horrific incident capped a day of street brawls after hundreds of alt-right activists, neo-Confederates, and outright Nazis marched together to express and defend their “blood and soil” white nationalism.
.. It would be much easier to write off this small band of racists if they weren’t also part of a larger alt-right movement that was responsible for an unprecedented wave of online threats, intimidation, and harassment throughout the 2016 campaign season. Journalists, writers (including me and my family), and ordinary citizens were targeted with obscene and threatening images, racist messages, “doxing,” and sometimes promises of physical violence — all for the sin of criticizing Trump.
.. Violence then started to spill into the real world. A man wielding a sword hunted and killed a black man in New York City. A member of an “alt-Reich Nation” Facebook group killed another black man in Maryland. A man opened fire on two immigrants at a bar in Kansas, killing one. A white supremacist in Portland murdered two men on a train who intervened when he harassed a Muslim and her black friend. And that’s not an exclusive list. Meanwhile, the online hate campaigns roll on.
.. Incredibly, key elements of the Trump coalition, including Trump himself, gave the alt-right aid and comfort. Steve Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, proclaimed that his publication, Breitbart.com, was the “the platform for the alt-right,” Breitbart long protected, promoted, and published Milo Yiannopolous – the alt-right’s foremost “respectable” defender – and Trump himself retweeted alt-right accounts and launched into an explicitly racial attack against an American judge of Mexican descent, an attack that delighted his most racist supporters.
.. In other words, if there ever was a time in recent American political history for an American president to make a clear, unequivocal statement against the alt-right, it was today. Instead, we got a vague condemnation of “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.” This is unacceptable, especially given that Trump can be quite specific when he’s truly angry. Just ask the Khan family, Judge Curiel, James Comey, or any other person he considers a personal enemy. Even worse, members of the alt-right openly celebrated Trump’s statement, taking it as a not-so-veiled decision to stand against media calls to condemn their movement.