Police minister uneasy with Netanyahu speech on graft probes

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) expresses his disapproval of a speech by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a day earlier that roundly dismissed a likely police recommendation to the attorney general that charges be pressed against him.

“If there will be recommendations [to indict] — so what?” Netanyahu told a rally of Likud members on Tuesday. “Here’s a fact I doubt the public knows: The vast majority of police recommendations end with nothing. More than 60 percent of police recommendations are thrown out.”

“I am not satisfied with all of his statements, and I am not satisfied with the style or the interpretation that can emerge from these statements,” says Erdan, whose office oversees the Israel Police, in the Knesset plenum.

“I say from this podium that I think police are doing their job and I do not question their role,” he says, adding that Netanyahu’s remarks demand a more “in-depth explanation.”

Other ministers from the Likud and Jewish Home coalition parties line up in support of the prime minister in a series of morning radio interviews.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett, the leader of the coalition Jewish Home party, dismisses criticism that the style of the prime minister’s address — which also saw Netanyahu slam the media and claim Tel Aviv anti-corruption protests were funded by the New Israel Fund — was unbefitting and brash.

“Leave me out of the style — I’m not Hannah Bavli,” Bennett tells Israel Radio on Wednesday morning, referring to the late Israeli advice columnist and decorum expert.