Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party is threatening a Blue and White lawmaker with the release of further embarrassing tapes if she doesn’t jump ship, Haaretz reports.
According to the daily, Omer Yankelevich has been told that if she doesn’t defect to the premier’s party, there will be more leaks from a tape in which a senior adviser to Blue and White leader Benny Gantz quotes the ultra-Orthodox lawmaker.
The newspaper says Likud is using additional recordings as a bargaining tool and Yankelevich has indirectly told the prime minister’s party that she is considering crossing over.
Yankelevich responds to the report, tweeting: “All rumors, it won’t happen.”
In recordings released last week, Gantz’s senior adviser Israel Bachar is heard conveying the opinion of Yankelevich.
Blue and White MK Omer Yankelevich attends a Knesset committee meeting on August 5, 2019. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
“She [Yankelevich] says he [Gantz] is stupid and a complete nobody and she says, ‘he can’t be prime minister,’” Bachar said.
Netanyahu personally met the rabbi who is reported to have recorded Bachar — a recording that ended up in the hands of the media a day after the two met. Gantz fired Bachar.
The report comes as a Likud spokesperson says the party has already spoken to potential recruits outside the right-wing bloc, which partial election results show is short of a majority.
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