PM’s ex-chief of staff: He has ‘one-man-rule,’ demanded personal loyalty, family involved in security decisions

Yoav Horowitz, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s former chief of staff, castigates the premier, saying he considers himself “between a king and an emperor,” and that the Netanyahu family demanded personal loyalty from the prime minister’s staff.

Horowitz led Netanyahu’s office from 2016 to 2019 and is now a candidate with the opposition Yashar party, led by Gadi Eisenkot, seen as Netanyahu’s top rival.

Horowitz tells Channel 12 in an interview that the family inserts itself in the country’s security decisions, and that there is functionally no separation between Netanyahu and his wife, Sara.

“Sara Netanyahu and Bibi Netanyahu are one; it’s impossible to separate between them,” he tells the network. He calls Netanyahu’s son Yair, who is known for making inflammatory statements, “another factor” in the prime minister’s circle.

He says the family members are in contact with the country’s professional security leadership and have influenced decisions. He tells Channel 12, as well as Channel 13 in a separate interview, that a call from one of Netanyahu’s family members led him to abruptly reverse course on an agreement with the United Nations to address the population of African migrants and asylum seekers in Israel.

“The family’s influence is significant,” Horowitz says. “There’s no separation. Everything is connected to everything: personal issues and economic issues and political issues and security issues. Everything is in the same box, and the family has influence.”

At one point, he recounts, a staff member from the Prime Minister’s Office relayed a demand that all employees sign a pledge of loyalty to the Netanyahu family.

“The demand for personal loyalty hovered there the whole time,” he says. “It was a kind of obsession.”

He adds, “One of the office staff came to me and said there was a demand from the house [i.e. the family] to make all of the office staff sign a pledge of loyalty to the Netanyahu family.”

Horowitz claims Netanyahu endorsed the demand, but that he refused to carry it out.

Horowitz says — repeating a claim he has made previously — that Netanyahu is antidemocratic and exercises authoritarian rule.

“When there’s one-man rule, and people are scared and deterred, the idea of the rules, the country’s laws, doesn’t exist,” he says.

“Since 2019, there isn’t really democracy in Israel,” he adds. “There’s a Prime Minister’s Office that rules totally over the Knesset, that degraded the judicial system, took over the police, and there aren’t any checks and balances.”

In a statement responding to Horowitz’s remarks, Likud says Horowitz has “found his new political home on the left.” It does not address his claims.