Before elections, Netanyahu held up to five daily calls with Israel Hayom editor
PM spoke to Amos Regev on 15 of the 19 days leading up to 2015 ballot, had 120 phone conversations in 3 years with owner Sheldon Adelson
Raoul Wootliff is a former Times of Israel political correspondent and Daily Briefing podcast producer.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with editors of the Israel Hayom newspaper, seen as staunchly loyal to him at the time, as often as five times in a single day during the run-up to the March 2015 election, according to information provided by the Prime Minister’s Office following a freedom of information appeal.
Forced by a Supreme Court order to reveal the dates of his phone calls with the owner of Israel Hayom and its then-chief editor, Netanyahu said last week that from 2012 to 2015 he spoke with American Jewish casino mogul Sheldon Adelson almost once a week and nearly double that with editor Amos Regev.
According to the full phone log, provided to Channel 10’s investigative reporter Raviv Drucker and released in part Sunday night, Netanyahu spoke with Regev multiple times on 15 of the 19 days leading up to the 2015 election. The calls, both before the election and throughout the three-year period released, often took place late at night, shortly before the next day’s edition was put to bed.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court accepted an appeal by Drucker and ordered Netanyahu to release the information on the phone calls, citing the public interest.

In a lengthy Facebook post Thursday night, the prime minister said that between 2012 and 2015, he spoke to Adelson 0.75 times a week on average. The calls with Regev occurred around 1.5 times a week on average, Netanyahu said.
“I will tell you something that everyone knows: All the politicians in Israel speak to publishers, editors-in-chief and journalists,” Netanyahu wrote in his own defense. “Between politicians and the media there is a constant and ongoing dialogue — this is what is accepted in democracies.”
The full log reveals that Netanyahu held a total of 120 phone conversations with Adelson during those three years and 223 with Regev.
In many of the cases cited by Channel 10 news, late-night phone calls were followed by Israel Hayom front pages praising the prime minister, attacking his detractors or even quoting unnamed sources providing questionable revelations about dramatic political developments.
In one such example, three days before he called the 2015 elections, Netanyahu spoke with Regev minutes before the print deadline. The next day, the front page carried a story quoting “various sources” saying that Shas party leader Aryeh Deri had told associates he was considering joining efforts to remove Netanyahu without elections and form an alternative coalition. On the same day, rival newspaper Yedioth Aharonoth ran an interview where Deri said the opposite.
A month later, on January 25, after the prime minister accepted an invitation to speak before a joint session of the US Congress without telling then-US president Barack Obama, Netanyahu spoke with Regev four times in a single day. The next morning, as most papers reported on US anger at the move, Israel Hayom’s front page led with a staunch defense of the planned speech, declaring in its headline, “The speech is against Iran, not against Obama.” The article when on to criticize Obama for saying he wouldn’t meet with Netanyahu when he arrived in Washington because the White House doesn’t want to interfere with the Israeli elections.
The same front page also ran an op-ed titled, “Yedioth and Ynet have crossed all boundaries,” slamming the rival news outlets for what columnist Itzik Saban called “a blatant effort remove the Likud and its head from power.”
On January 31, 2015, a day when Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, was accused of bilking the state out of thousands of shekels by pocketing the small change from bottle deposits, Netanyahu spoke with Regev once in the morning, immediately after the news broke, and an additional four times after 9.p.m.
תיקון: למעשה 6 שיחות, אחת אחרי חצות ב00:27 pic.twitter.com/Adf84Ql7ab
— Tamar Ish Shalom תמר (@tamarishshalom) September 3, 2017
The next day, as all the other major dailies focused on the scandal and a potential cover-up by the attorney general, Israel Hayom offered a different narrative to the whole affair, saying that the money never even got to Sara. Victor Sarga, the former driver for Sara Netanyahu, told the paper that it was he who was in charge of returning the bottles and that the prime minister’s wife never touched the money. It was used, he said, as a petty cash fund for the Netanyahu household and its employees.
Instead, the paper led its front page with accusations that the anti-Netanyahu coalition V15 was made up of far-left organizations receiving millions of dollars of foreign funding.

If Netanyahu directly coordinated or directed the newspaper’s coverage, then the many millions of shekels Adelson spent on the newspaper could be construed as illegal campaign financing, as was claimed in a complaint submitted to Israel’s Israel’s Central Elections Committee in February 2015. In response, Netanyahu submitted an affidavit to the committee at the time saying he “does not have, and has never had, any ties of control or any other organizational ties, in any form, with Israel Hayom, or with newspaper staff or journalists writing for it, that would influence the paper’s editorial considerations or its contents.”
The full details of the phone calls come as Netanyahu faces deepening legal trouble in several criminal probes, including suspicions that he tried to arrange more favorable coverage from the publisher of the Yedioth Ahronoth daily newspaper in exchange for curbing Israel Hayom’s circulation numbers. Both Adelson and Regev have given police testimony in the corruption probes against the prime minister.
Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing.

Israel Hayom was long regarded as strongly pro-Netanyahu in its orientation. Drucker, the Channel 10 investigative reporter, asked for the details on the the phone calls in order to shed light on the extent of any links between Netanyahu and the daily — as well as any possible conflicts of interest. The details of the phone calls had originally been requested in accordance with the Freedom of Information Law on the grounds that the information is of public interest.
Since its founding a decade ago, Israel Hayom has consistently supported the prime minister. Its unfailing backing of Netanyahu has been characterized by the playing down of his failures, the hyping of his achievements and the lashing of his critics. Furthermore, it has shied away from praising his rivals.
Some media analysts have noted a shift in its coverage of late that may suggest a cooling in the paper’s support for Netanyahu and his family in recent months.
Netanyahu confidant MK David Bitan responded Sunday to the Channel 10 report by filing his own Freedom of Information Act request to the Prime Minister’s Office demanding the release of similar information about phone calls to newspaper editors by former premiers Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon.
The Prime Minister’s Office agreed to release the information within 60 days.