Netanyahu’s refusal to back MK who lashed judge said to fluster Likud

Likud MKs are said to be fuming with party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, after he distanced himself from lawmaker David Amsalem, accused of making “poisonous” remarks toward the Supreme Court chief justice and her colleagues.

Likud sources told Channel 12 news on Thursday that Netanyahu was more concerned with his personal legal issues — he is on trial for graft in three separate cases — than the party’s political interests.

On Wednesday, Amsalem raged against the court from the Knesset plenum, alleging that petitions he had filed were rejected by the bench due to discrimination against Jews of Middle Eastern or North African extraction.

“Instead of writing pointless nonsense that you yourself don’t understand, write ‘Mr. Amsalem, I can’t stand you, can’t stand either the Amsalems or the Machlufs, and I will not give you assistance as [the judicial system] is ours and you do not belong in our norms and our world,’” Amsalem said in comments aimed at Supreme Court President Justice Esther Hayut.

Amsalem said that Hayut was belittling all those whose names don’t end with “vich,” a reference to Ashkenazi Euro-centric names, called the Supreme Court “corrupt” and suggested Hayut and others were drunk on arak, an aniseed-flavored liquor popular in the Middle East.

On Thursday, Netanyahu said he had spoken to Hayut and distanced himself from Amsalem’s comments, who is a longtime confidant.

“I made it clear that MK Dudi Amsalem’s words are not acceptable to me, do not reflect my position, and were said without my knowledge,” Netanyahu said in a statement, using the lawmaker’s nickname.

Party sources were taken aback by Netanyahu’s statement, Channel 12 reported. However, sources close to Netanyahu clarified that the ex-premier, a vociferous critic of the court, had rejected Amsalem’s racially tinged attacks, and not his criticism of the justices in general.

According to the channel, Netanyahu’s attacks on the judiciary for what he terms a witchhunt against him, a position taken up throatily by supporters, have complicated his standing legally and may have hurt his chances to negotiate a plea deal last month.

In an open letter to Amsalem released on Thursday morning, Hayut wrote it was “with regret that I heard the defamatory words” against herself and her fellow judges, and noted it was not the first time Amsalem had attacked her.

“Nothing is further from the truth than to say that I can’t stand the Amsalems and Machlufs,” she wrote. “I wonder where this poison and hatred comes from that leads to you say such things about people that you don’t know at all.”

In response, Amsalem said Hayut’s “nonsense” was making matters worse.

Speaking to the right-leaning Galey Israel radio station, Amsalem said he was surprised by the letter, as judges usually don’t respond to public officials, and suggested that Hayut was trying to cover her bias with claims of being acquainted with Jews of Eastern origins.

In December, Hayut said in a missive to Israel’s judges that ongoing attacks on the justice system by politicians “should trouble all those who care about the independence of the judicial system.”

That letter came after Amsalem, known for his brash style, attacked Supreme Court Justice David Mintz for a ruling he issued on a petition Amsalem filed, suggesting the jurist was inebriated when he wrote it.