Bennett: It was ‘unpleasant’ to learn PM planned media hit job
Jewish Home head responds to reports that Netanyahu conspired with newspaper publisher to attack him and his party in 2015
Education Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the Jewish Home party, reacted angrily Monday to reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu conspired with a newspaper publisher to give him negative coverage before the last elections.
“It is a very unpleasant feeling to learn this,” Bennett told Army Radio. “At the time I couldn’t understand where those articles were coming from.”
Bennett was responding to reports that, ahead of the March 2015 Knesset elections, Netanyahu asked Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Arnon “Noni” Mozes to help dent Bennett’s rising popularity.
“It is very unpleasant to learn that the prime minister turned to the publisher, asking him to run a series of articles against the Jewish Home party,” he said.
According to a report Thursday in Haaretz, in exchange for a promise by Netanyahu to hobble Yedioth’s main competition, the Israel Hayom free daily newspaper, Mozes agreed to Netanyahu’s request to provide negative coverage of the prime minister’s political rivals, in particular Bennett.
At the time, Netanyahu was locked in a fierce competition with Bennett for the support of right-wing voters.
As proof of his good will, Mozes was said to have drawn the attention of the prime minister to a recent negative headline on Yedioth’s Ynet news site, which reported that only 39 of 700 day school centers for preschoolers promised by then-economy minister Bennett were built.
Before that, Bennett was generally considered to be enjoying favorable coverage from Yedioth and was accused by Israel Hayom of “being in the service of Noni Mozes” for supporting legislation, discussed by Netanyahu and Mozes, to weaken Israel Hayom.
However, just before the 2015 elections he published a Facebook post, warning of what he called an upcoming “media campaign of slander and lies against Jewish Home in general, and me in particular.”
It is unclear what prompted Bennett’s post and what, if anything, he knew about the alleged quid pro quo deal between Netanyahu and Mozes.
Netanyahu’s request, to which Mozes apparently agreed, was reportedly made during a series of recorded conversations between the two men. The recordings now serve as the basis of a criminal investigation against them known as “Case 2000.”
Netanyahu’s Likud party said in a statement that “it is very strange that those … who have enjoyed positive coverage from Yedioth Ahronoth and Ynet… are once again preaching to the prime minister.”
The statement also slammed Bennett’s comments as “hypocrisy and pathetic self-righteousness that no one buys.”
Netanyahu is also under investigation, along with his wife, Sara, in a second case, known as “Case 1000,” that involves suspicions that the couple received illicit gifts from billionaires.