‘You’re spreading lies all the time’: Netanyahu berates journalists during press conference

During the question and answer portion of his press conference, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has combative exchanges with reporters from the Kan public broadcaster and Channel 12 news.

“How much fake news can you make up?” he asks Kan’s Michael Shemesh, in response to a question asking why the premier once offered to give up the Golan Heights in exchange for a peace deal with Syria.

Netanyahu says there was no deal with Hafez al-Assad in the 1990s because “I insisted on remaining in the Golan.”

“I’ve listened enough to your lies. Now listen to the truth. All the time, you’re spreading lies all the time.”

To Channel 12’s Yollan Cohen, after she implies he got in the way of a hostage deal with Hamas, Netanyahu makes sure the cameras are still running, then says: “You spread this slander all the time, that there was a deal, and I blocked it.”

When she tries to respond, he points at her and says: “You for one minute listen to me! You listen to me. Because the Israeli public, because the families hear these lies.”

He accuses Cohen of harming the hostage families by spreading lies, as she tries in vain to ask a follow-up question. She attempts to highlight that she spoke to families who he met with in two separate meetings yesterday and that they told her he said different things to them about the prospects of a deal. He interjects that “it’s hard for you to hear the truth,” before his spokesman moves the press conference on to the next question.

Later, he says, “The quantity of lies that are disseminated is so vast and so relentless. I give credit to the citizens of Israel. I wouldn’t be standing here if they believed all the falsehoods disseminated by the media and political opponents. They see the truth.”

Asked about his opposition to a state commission of inquiry into the October 7 failures, he again rules it out: “A state commission is not acceptable to a considerable portion of the people. A government inquiry is not acceptable to another portion. What is needed is to find a different mechanism that will get to the truth and that is acceptable to most portions of the people.”

In response to another question, regarding the indictment of his aide Eli Feldstein and an unnamed IDF reservist for the theft and leaking of classified IDF intel, he again denounces the media for lying about the case, and repeats allegations he made nine days ago that the two suspects were treated in a “shocking manner” by Shin Bet investigators — handcuffed and blindfolded like terrorists. As with the charges in his trial, he says, the investigators probing Feldstein pressured him to “give us something on Netanyahu” and treated him harshly so that he would do so.

He continues attacking law enforcement by protesting last week’s arrest of Israel Prison Service Commissioner Koby Yaakobi in an ongoing case. Yaakobi “is threatened by crime families; his small children are threatened by crime families,” says Netanyahu. And yet, he was arrested last week because “everything goes, in the effort to bring down Bibi.”

” I think it’s awful. It’s not acceptable in a democratic state,” he says.

Asked whether he intends to fire Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar and/or not extend the term of IDF Chief Herzi Halevi, Netanyahu says he works with them both to achieve the goals of the war. “Israel is a democracy. and in a democracy, the political echelon sets the policy, and the professional echelon carries it out,” he notes. “There can be differences of opinion
but the political echelon makes the ultimate decision.”

He dismisses the notion of recusing himself as prime minister during his trial, declaring, “recusal does not exist” as a possible course of action, since he was elected by the people and “that’s the basis of democracy.”