Stepping up attacks, Netanyahu loyalist blasts ‘insolent’ AG over interview
Coalition whip Amsalem says he was ‘shocked and embarrassed’ by Mandelblit’s TV appearance, joining PM in calling graft probes a ‘setup’
Michael Bachner is a news editor at The Times of Israel
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party on Sunday stepped up its attacks on Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, who is handling the corruption cases against the premier, with the coalition whip branding him “insolent and arrogant” and saying he had “humiliated the prime minister unnecessarily” in a television interview.
Netanyahu also issued a strongly worded response Saturday night to the profile, broadcast earlier in the evening on Hadashot TV news, of Mandelblit, who is expected to announce whether he intends to indict Netanyahu in the coming months.
According to the TV report, Mandelblit has told his confidants: “The talking points against me are coming straight from the top. The prime minister is dragging the entire country down with him. It’s sad and it’s going to hurt us all.”
The profile piece on the attorney general’s involvement with the various investigations featured extensive quotes attributed to “associates” of Mandelblit. It also featured a brief interview with Mandelblit himself.
“I watched the program about Mandelblit with great embarrassment,” coalition whip and outspoken Netanyahu loyalist MK David Amsalem said Sunday in an interview with Army Radio. “Is that how an attorney general speaks, before he makes a decision? Who even gave him permission to be interviewed?”
Blasting Mandelblit as “insolent and arrogant,” Amsalem said that “had he had the courage, he would have at least voice the remarks himself.”
He argued that the interview degraded the station of the attorney general. “If this weren’t reality, I would have thought it was a play in [national theater] Habima. I’m shocked that an attorney general behaves like that.”
Amsalem repeated messages pushed by Netanyahu that the investigations are “illegitimate” and part of a “setup” targeting the prime minister.
“These are old materials, someone brought them up…. If anyone thinks the public is stupid — it isn’t. The public sees the issue as I see it: Yesterday Mandelblit humiliated the prime minister unnecessarily. I’m ashamed.”
Another Likud lawmaker, Miki Zohar, went as far as claiming Mandelblit would be physically attacked if he decided not to indict Netanyahu.
“From what I know, Mandelblit is a very strong person and is hard to sway,” Zohar told Radio Haifa on Sunday. “But I have no doubt that even he understands that if he decides he doesn’t want to file bribery charges against the prime minister, he will undergo a media lynching.
“People will also come to his home and try to physically harm him,” he added.
Opposition lawmakers sharply criticized Likud’s messages against Mandelblit.
“Intimidating the public, the media, the law enforcement system — that is how oppressive regimes operate,” said Labor MK Nachman Shai.
“These days remind me of the days before [prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s murder” in 1995, said MK Michal Rozin of the left-wing Meretz party. “There is a tempestuous atmosphere, and we are just at the beginning of the election campaigns.”
Rozin claimed that Netanyahu’s Likud party was engaged in a campaign to “mark” Mandelblit as a traitor, using similar tactics to those employed in past campaigns by right-wing NGO Im Tirtzu.
“This incitement had better stop,” she said.
Netanyahu and allies in the Likud Party have dismissed the investigations against him as a “witch hunt” and have accused the left of pressuring Mandelblit into charging Netanyahu, but until recent days had mostly refrained from attacking the attorney general directly.
In a Facebook post Saturday night, though, Netanyahu accused Mandelblit of launching probes without hard evidence against him. The Hadashot news report had alleged that law enforcement authorities initially only worked off rumors regarding gifts received by the prime minister.
“That’s what’s called a ‘setup,”‘ Netanyahu wrote.
Netanyahu said Mandeblit’s decision to speak to the channel was “disturbing” and “unprecedented in the annals of the Israeli judiciary, and raises serious questions.”
According to the Hadashot piece, Mandelblit, whose upcoming decision on whether to indict Netanyahu in three corruption cases could have monumental consequences for the country, has told associates he understands the weight of responsibility placed on him, but that he is committed only to “the truth.”
“I understand the meaning of indicting a prime minister,” Mandelblit was quoted as saying. “It has come on my watch, and I will make the appropriate decision based only on the truth.”
On another occasion the attorney general was said to tell associates: “My entire professional life has led me to this moment, and my entire professional career will be measured by this decision.”
Police have recommended that Netanyahu be charged with bribery in three cases, dubbed by police and the media as Cases 1000, 2000 and 4000. According to legal sources quoted by Hadashot, Mandelblit has already decided to indict Netanyahu in Case 4000, which involves suspicions he traded regulatory favors for businessman Shaul Elovitch for positive media coverage on Elovitch’s Walla news site.
Case 2000 involves a similar suspected illicit quid pro quo deal between Netanyahu and Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Arnon Mozes.
In Case 1000, Netanyahu is suspected of receiving benefits and gifts worth about NIS 1 million ($282,000) from billionaire benefactors, including Israeli Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan, in exchange for assistance on various issues. Some reports have suggested that Mandelblit is leaning toward a charge of breach of trust in this case.
While Mandelblit is expected to announce whether he intends to indict before April 9 elections, actual charges cannot be filed until after Netanyahu is granted a hearing, which would take place after the elections. Netanyahu has pushed for Mandelblit to hold off on announcing anything before elections for fear it will sway the vote.
Though the Hadashot report was chiefly based on unsourced quotations, it did include a short interview with Mandelblit himself. In it, he said he was not surprised by attacks against him from the right and from the left throughout the different stages of the investigations. “From this side or that side, what does it matter? I’m a professional. I operate according to evidence and that’s all,” he said.
“I can’t let it affect me and it won’t.”
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
