PM rails against ‘fake news, brainwashing’ media in defense of his wife

Claiming that the long-standing corruption accusations against him are “collapsing” in court, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says in a four-minute video that the “left and the media” were now focusing on a new target — his wife Sara.

Netanyahu says Sara “does so much for Israel’s citizens.” He points out her work as a child psychologist, and her visits to cancer patients, lone soldiers, hostage families, bereaved families and wounded soldiers.

“They say to me, we don’t believe it. We are seeing the real woman, the soul, and it’s a difference of night and day from the character assassination we see in the press,” the prime minister adds.

He claims the press would never report on her charitable activities, because they are trying to harm her in order to get at the prime minister: “There is no limit to the lies. There is no limit to the despicable fictions, taking things out of context, fake news, brainwashing.”

Sara Netanyahu filed a lawsuit for defamation on Monday against Channel 12 News over a report in which it was claimed that she leaked highly sensitive security information, including that Israel was about to assassinate former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah three days before the strike.

Channel 12’s investigative program, “Uvda,” also reported that she sought to intimidate a witness in her husband’s criminal trial and have protesters harass the attorney general, the deputy state attorney and those seen as hostile to the premier or his family.

Netanyahu calls the allegations “a blood libel” that are being broadcast over and over in prime time. He calls on Channel 12 and other outlets to do an investigation into the political left. “It simply won’t happen,” he says, claiming that there were no investigations in the previous Naftali Bennett-Yair Lapid government.

Instead, he says the press engages in “daily incitement” against the right, against Haredim and against settlers. “This is the real machine of poison,” he says, using a term that has been employed to describe his aides’ messaging efforts against rivals. “It’s much more than a machine,” he continues. “It’s an industry.”