Netanyahu says aide’s leaked comments on Likud voters ‘unnacceptable’

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he called his aide Natan Eshel and told him that his comments are “inappropriate and unacceptable.”

“He apologized immediately. The Likud is home to all parts of the Israeli public and that’s the way it will always be,” Netanyahu says in a statement sent to the press.

In a recording aired on Saturday, Eshel is heard saying that negative campaigning works well with “non-Ashkenazi” voters and that “hate is what unites” the right-wing camp led by the Likud party.

Eshel appeared to be referring to the Likud base of voters from Mizrahi communities, often in the periphery, who have long supported the party.

“If you haven’t stolen, what exactly have you come [into politics] for? We’ve checked this. And to my shock, they [the public] do not understand [this notion] of going into politics to do what’s good for the nation. You go into politics in order to steal and you need to be a man,” Eshel claims in the recording aired by Channel 12.

“Now, in this public, I’ll call it… non-Ashkenazi…What gets them worked up? Why do they hate the press?…They hate everything and we’ve succeeded in whipping up that hatred. Hatred is what unites our camp,” Eshel says plainly.