Netanyahu: ‘No precedent’ to bribery charges involving positive coverage

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims that there is “no precedent” to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s decision to announce bribery charges based on positive coverage — “two and a half stories in the Walla website” — rather than money.

He brings up US attorney Alan Dershowitz’s letter earlier today defending him, in which he said the announcement would undermine the democratic process in Israel, as an example to his “unparalleled” standing in the international arena.

“We turned Israel into a rising world power, but not with dangerous concessions,” Netanyahu says in his impassioned statement. “The left knows it can’t beat us with such achievements. So for three years it has engaged in an unprecedented political witch hunt with one purpose only: To topple the right-wing government I lead and put in power the left-wing party of [Yair] Lapid and Benny [Gantz].”