Former Walla editor Ilan Yeshua, giving testimony in the Jerusalem District Court, lists the various people from the Prime Minister’s Office and the premier’s inner circle who acted as intermediaries between the Netanyahus and the Walla news site.
He says the first of these conduits was a friend of the Netanyahus, the tycoon Zeev Rubinstein, who would direct the outlet to write about different topics or to take down articles that the premier and his family didn’t like.
Yeshua also names Nir Hefetz, Netanyahu’s former media adviser, and former Likud spokesman Shai Haik as intermediaries.
According to Yeshua, this began in 2013.
Yeshua says that while other politicians also request positive coverage or try to get negative articles played down, the requests from the prime minister were on a totally different scale.
“Over the course of years, the numbers of requests from other politicians equaled a week from the prime minister and his wife,” he says.
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