Minister hammers sports reporter
Limor Livnat gets into shouting match over conflict-of-interest accusations surrounding new soccer report
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleHaviv Rettig Gur is The Times of Israel's senior analyst.
A video of Sports and Culture Minister Limor Livnat shouting down a reporter at a press conference Monday in Tel Aviv went viral on the Hebrew-language Internet on Tuesday, even spawning a remix video.
Livnat was reacting to a long series of questions asked by Moshe Boker, a Haaretz sports reporter, alleging multiple conflicts of interest on the part of Livnat and a committee headed by former state accountant-general Yaron Zalika on reforming the country’s soccer leagues.
Livnat and Zalika were presenting the Zalika Committee’s new report at the press conference when a combative Boker launched into a long series of questions and accusations.
When he was done, Livnat took the podium, asked Boker whether he “sleeps at night,” accused him of “defamation, aspersions and lies,” and suggested those present read an article in the Israeli publication Ha’ayin Hashvi’it (“The Seventh Eye”) about Boker’s alleged lack of objectivity.
Boker repeatedly interrupted Livnat’s response, insisting his questions were not defamation, but facts. She shouted back, “I listened to your defamation without interrupting. Now you won’t interrupt me.”
The back-and-forth degenerated into a shouting match, with Boker interrupting Livnat repeatedly and Livnat yelling back “excuse me” and “you won’t interrupt me” over a dozen times before asking her security detail to remove him from the room.
In what has become something of an Internet status symbol, the video was quickly picked up by Israeli YouTube mixer extraordinaire Noy Alooshe (of “Be My Friend for Peace” fame), who canonized Livnat with the likes of Benjamin Netanyahu, Miri Regev, and Muammar Gaddafi:
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