Responding to Likud, Lapid says PM’s party isn’t denying aides received money from Doha

By Sam Sokol 31 March 2025, 2:42 pm

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Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid leads a faction meeting at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, on March 31, 2025 (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Responding to the Likud’s statement accusing the Shin Bet and Attorney General’s Office of investing “fabricated investigations” against the prime minister and his associates, Opposition leader Yair Lapid notes that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party did not deny that those close to the premier had received money from Doha.

“The sentence that does not appear in the Likud statement and that should be noted: ‘No one from Benjamin Netanyahu’s office received money from Qatar,'” Lapid declares in the Knesset plenum.

“The reason this sentence does not appear there is that people in Benjamin Netanyahu’s office received money from a hostile country during wartime. He is being investigated for this now, and they should all be investigated for this,” Lapid states.

“Of all the criminal security scandals in the Prime Minister’s Office, this is not only the most serious, it is also the most disturbing and dangerous.”