Senior minister says Netanyahu has overplayed his ‘leftist’ accusation defense

A senior government minister criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vitriolic response to an investigative media report, saying Netanyahu could no longer just label those who disagree with him as being leftist hacks.

The minister, who was not named in media reports, made the comments Tuesday as opposition politicians poured scorn on Netanyahu over a three-page letter he sent to investigative reporter Ilana Dayan in which the prime minister accused her of being an “extreme leftist” who was out to get him in a critical report she prepared.

The profile story by Dayan, broadcast in Channel 2’s long-running “Uvda” program on Monday, included exclusive interviews with various officials who have been in Netanyahu’s inner circle, and inside information on the internal operation of his office.

Hebrew media quoted the senior minister as saying “the usual trick by Netanyahu to shout ‘leftist’ at anyone who argues with him has stopped working.”

The minister added that Likud supporters are no longer buying the attempts to make out all political opponents, even those from Netanyahu’s own party or the right-wing Jewish Home party, to be leftists just because “they don’t agree with his whims.”

The TV report by Dayan depicted a shrewd and calculating politician who appears to be chiefly concerned with safeguarding his own rule, often valuing personal loyalty in his appointments above all other traits.

It also portrayed Netanyahu’s wife Sara as a problematic presence in the prime minister’s decision-making process, a power broker who is intimately involved in her husband’s work and decisions and who often has final say on government appointments. “At least twice,” Netanyahu’s former national security adviser said in the show, furthermore, the prime minister went into meetings with US President Barack Obama “without having spent so much as a second” reading the vital briefing materials prepared for him because his wife, accompanying him on his trips, had taken up all his time.

Speaking to Army Radio on Tuesday, Dayan said she was not acting out of any personal vendetta against Netanyahu when she put together the report.

“The prime minister is not my opponent,” she said. “It is time for Netanyahu to stop being a victim. The tone of the response comes from a feeling that a segment that criticizes is a personal attack on the prime minister. From there, began the charge toward me personally.”

In his response to the report, which was read out by Dayan in full during the “Uvda” broadcast, Netanyahu assailed Dayan’s character, calling her “a left-wing extremist” who “does not have an iota of professional integrity” and who is “one of the ring-leaders of the orchestrated attacks on…Netanyahu, which seek to bring down the right-wing government.”

Dayan told the radio show that she received the response from Netanyahu’s staff before they had seen the full investigation. She sent 32 questions to the PMO relating specifically to issues raised in the report, but instead received a three-page, 680-word tirade which she read out in full, in a 6-minute segment toward the end of the program. In the letter, the Prime Minister’s Office assailed Dayan’s character, calling her “a left-wing extremist” who “does not have an iota of professional integrity” and who is “one of the ring-leaders of the orchestrated attacks on…Netanyahu, which seek to bring down the right-wing government.”

The PMO claimed Dayan systematically went after the right while ignoring transgressions by the left, and called Monday’s report “a political propaganda broadcast against the prime minister and his wife, entirely comprised of recycled slanderous rumors and vile lies.”

“They didn’t see the piece, and decided it was propaganda,” said Dayan on Tuesday, “that it is a personal attack on the prime minister and an attempt to bring him down.”

Dayan claimed that she had received messages of support from a range of politicians on the right, all sent privately to her mobile phone.

The Zionist Union party said Tuesday it has asked Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit to investigate the findings of the television investigation and Netanyahu’s missive to Dayan.

“The response by the prime minister incites against the Israeli media,” the letter said. Netanyahu’s response “is serious and damaging incitement, to the point of being a real threat against the independent media, the likes of which we haven’t experienced in Israel.”

Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog, in a message posted to his Twitter account, quoted from his own weekend speech made at a memorial ceremony for assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was shot by a Jewish extremist in November 1995.

“The incitement is the same incitement. The hate is the same hate. The leader is the same leader,” Herzog wrote.

Fellow Zionist Union member Shelly Yachimovich tweeted that “it is a battle for the right to live in the only democracy in the Middle East.”

Meretz leader Zehava Galon posted a message to her Twitter account saying “if anyone still had any doubts that Netanyahu is not fit to serve as the prime minister of Israel, his response to Ilana Dayan this evening has closed the case. If Netanyahu doesn’t want there to be any media investigations on him he chose the wrong job. His response is a paranoid loss of his senses that should not be overlooked.”

Netanyahu did get support from Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev, who wrote on her Facebook page that “the prime minister yesterday defined anew the rules of the game with the journalists who are acting from political and personal motives.”

“The prime minister did well to redefine the rules of the game,” she wrote. “Lifting the mask and exposing the real face of some of the media, crucial to democracy and the public discourse in Israel. To my regret, some parts of the media are motivated by political and personal calculations, and are harnessing their journalistic work for one thing — to bring down the right-wing government.”

Regev also offered her support for Sara Netanyahu, and added that over the years she has come to know the prime minister’s wife as “a smart woman, sensitive, committed to her family and her work as a child psychologist.”

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.