Netanyahu, on 2015 election day, claimed US part of scheme to unseat him — report

In March 2015, as Israelis went to the polls, Prime Minister Netanyahu reportedly accused the Obama administration of taking part in a vast conspiracy to topple him.

According to a report published Wednesday in the daily Haaretz, Netanyahu told an unnamed journalist in a phone call that “what’s happening today is election stealing” and claimed that “nothing like this has ever happened in any democracy anywhere.”

Sources close to Netanyahu denied the report, suggesting that it may have emerged from Nazi sympathies among Haaretz’s owners.

In the final days before the elections, polls indicated that the opposition Zionist Union faction could win more seats than Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party and go on to be the linchpin of the next governing coalition. However, bucking the polls, Likud went ahead to win 30 seats to the Zionist Union’s 24, allowing Netanyahu to form a new coalition with relative ease and continue as prime minister.

But on the day of the election, when polls still indicated a possible victory for the Zionist Union, Netanyahu reportedly told the journalist by phone that he was “about to lose the election,” and alleged that the left-wing V15 group, a get-out-the-vote movement, “backed by the American administration,” had brought to Israel “super-software that locates voters.”

Netanyahu believed that there was a global conspiracy to unseat him, the report said, accusing the Obama administration, spy agencies, V15, Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog, and the Israeli media of colluding to unseat him. He also reportedly complained to the journalist that the Israeli media was not covering the conspiracy and claimed: “That’s why I am going to lose the election.”

Publisher and owner of the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper Arnon ‘Noni’ Mozes in Tel Aviv, March 26, 2014. (Roni Schutzer/Flash90)

Later that evening following the Likud party’s unexpected electoral landslide, hundreds of Likud members railed at Yedioth Ahronoth publisher and longtime Netanyahu nemesis Arnon “Noni” Mozes, according to the report, highlighting the belief held by many Likudniks that the media had set out to topple Netanyahu.

The prime minister interpreted Likud’s electoral victory not only as a defeat of his political rivals, but as a trouncing of the Israeli media, with one Likud member telling Haaretz that “[Netanyahu] got it into his head that he had won on his own, that he had vanquished Mozes and the entire media establishment. The goal he set himself after the election was to change the balance, to gain control of the business.

“Now he’s set his sights on commercial television in Israel. [Netanyahu] told us explicitly: I already handled the print media when Israel Hayom was founded,” the Likud member added, in a reference to the Sheldon Adelson-owned and Netanyahu-supporting free Israeli daily.

Since the election, his critics would claim that Netanyahu has been following up on his alleged promise to tame Israeli news media, as evidenced by his recent attempts to shut down a nascent public broadcasting corporation, which unnamed Likud sources say “has turned into a broadcaster for Noni Mozes and the left.”

Meanwhile, V15, the grassroots organization, which has since rebranded itself as Darkenu, is again in the headlines following the recent redrafting of a bill that would impose a NIS 11,000 ($2,885) limit per person donation to non-governmental organizations involved in elections, and require those groups to spell out their activities and financing to the state ombudsman.

V15 activists convene at their campaign offices in Jerusalem on February 09, 2015. (Miriam Alster/FLASH90)

Wednesday’s Haaretz report cited sources “close to the prime minister” dismissing the notion that he had alleged a vast conspiracy against him, while insinuating that Nazi sympathies may have been behind the article.

“The list of lies and twisted smears you ascribe to Prime Minister Netanyahu just proves again the degree to which your newspaper is biased and prejudiced against him and the degree to which you distort reality. It does not surprise us,” the sources were quoted as saying.

“For years Haaretz has been the newspaper which besmirches the IDF and Israel to the world, and which does not represent even a tiny fraction of the range of opinions held by the broad Israeli public. It is no wonder that the broad Israeli public has lost its faith in you,” they said. “We can only hope that the fact that the German media concern Dumont Schauberg, which engaged in disseminating Nazi propaganda during World War II and bought 20% of the shares in Haaretz, has nothing to do with this spirit.”

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.