Far-right MK serves defamation papers in live interview, hostage father rips them up

"Instead of talking about the hostages, about our daughter, about our children, 128 hostages, this is what we need to deal with?" Eli Albag, father of hostage Liri, yelled.

 MK Almog Cohen seen shouting at hostages' families during a National Security Committee discussion on November 20, 2023 (photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)
MK Almog Cohen seen shouting at hostages' families during a National Security Committee discussion on November 20, 2023
(photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)

As a guest at Ofira and Levinson’s show on Friday, Knesset member Almog Cohen handed Chaim Levinson a defamation lawsuit, which later in the show, Eli Albag, father of the hostage Liri Albag tore and stated, “This is how our government looks like.”

During the live broadcast of Ofira and Levinson's show, before the interview began with Cohen, the Knesset member took the opportunity to hand the host Levinson a defamation lawsuit against him.

Cohen dramatically pulled the documents from his back pocket and handed them to Levinson, as he said, "When you chop wood, chips fly."

Eli, father of Liri, one of the observers taken hostage by Hamas terrorists on October 7, arrived for an interview. Before his interview began, he asked Levinson for the lawsuit he had received and tore the envelope and papers that it held in front of the cameras.

"This is a Knesset member. A member of the Knesset. This is what interests him in the middle of the broadcast, right? This is what our government looks like," Albag said.

As complete silence fell in the studio, Albag continued, "Instead of talking about the hostages, about our daughter, about our children, 128 hostages, this is what we need to deal with?"

IDF observers hostage video

 Liri Albag and Agam Berger are pictured bloody and distraught in bodycam footage from Hamas terrorists. (credit: The Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum )
Liri Albag and Agam Berger are pictured bloody and distraught in bodycam footage from Hamas terrorists. (credit: The Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum )

The interview on the show took place two days after the parents of the IDF observers released the video showing their capture by Hamas terrorists. Albag referred to this in context as he said, "We are in such a charged period. I am revealing, we, all the families are revealing the most precious thing to us. Clearly, so the world will see, so the world will cry out, so our country will cry out, so our loved ones will understand that we are fighting.”

“It is exposing the most personal thing. When you see an 18-year-old girl, when she was kidnapped, she was 18, seeing terrorists, death, ten girls murdered in front of their eyes, and one more soldier, lying in front of them for two hours,” Albag continued.

Albag further stated, "This video, what we see, is a three-minute and ten-second video, and there is a fourteen-minute video. In this post, it's not a base, it's a post, 54 soldiers, fighters, and observers were killed in the war and murdered. That means people lost their lives there, and there was a big failure, and we will still know about it, talk about it for many, many years, but it is important to me ... those who were there fought to the last bullet."