The emperor strikes back
King Bibi lashes out at lawmakers who grilled him over his police investigation, and the press soaks it up
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fiery speech at the Knesset in response to lawmakers’ inquiries about the police investigation into alleged misconduct grabs headlines across the media spectrum on Thursday morning. The prime minister’s dismissal of questions out of hand trumps the US president’s signing an executive order to get the ball rolling on building a wall along the Mexican border.
Netanyahu was peppered with questions by lawmakers during the hour-long Q&A session about the nature of his relations with publishers and businessmen, the subject of recent police inquiries. The papers all highlight one statement of his in particular, that “receiving presents from friends is permissible,” which is apparently the first time Netanyahu spoke in any detail about the two main police investigations into alleged criminal conduct. The press makes sure to mention that even though Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein told Netanyahu when he took the podium that he need not answer questions concerning the investigation, it was Netanyahu who was forthcoming with his repartee.
Haaretz apparently attempts to terrify its liberal-leaning readers with Netanyahu’s comment that “I will remain prime minister for many years.” Meanwhile, it’s the prime minister’s comment that no lawmakers should be investigated for the “complex relations between the press and politics” — referring to allegations that he and the publisher of Yedioth Ahronoth conducted backroom deals — that leads in the paper’s coverage.
Israel Hayom‘s coverage, as one might expect, is a loudspeaker for the prime minister. “You accuse me? What a bad joke,” reads the paper’s headline on an article that’s mostly block quotes of Netanyahu parrying questions from opposition lawmakers about the police investigations and whether he’ll resign if indicted.
Netanyahu’s statements were the prime minister “deploying his defensive line” against the accusations of opposition lawmakers, Yedioth Ahronoth says. Also not surprising is that the newspaper only mentions its publisher Arnon Mozes’s involvement in the fourth paragraph of its reportage.
“This time he dropped the slogan he reiterated in the past few weeks that ‘there won’t be anything because there wasn’t anything,'” the paper reports. “Netanyahu nonetheless didn’t respond directly to MK Omer Bar-Lev (Zionist Union), who asked him if he ‘talked with the ginger,’ as free daily Israel Hayom publisher Sheldon Adelson is called, in the Netanyahu-Mozes conversation, but he used the question to strike back at the MKs: ‘You don’t really mean to say that I am the first to meet with publishers, newspaper editors and others who influence the media, or even that they have friends or even rich friends.'”
Haaretz’s Yossi Verter says that the clearest message from Netanyahu’s speech was directed not at lawmakers, but at Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit. If Mandelblit decides to prosecute Netanyahu for the alleged misdeeds, Verter interprets Netanyahu saying, “it will be a capitulation to media pressure, not a reasoned decision.
“But his main message he directed at his (former?) friend, billionaire and alcohol and cigar dealer Arnon Milchan, who gave information to the police that appears at this point to be the most serious legal problem for Netanyahu,” he says. Netanyahu’s plea that “We’re friends!” and have been for 20 years seems to have been a plea from someone who realizes his fate is in another’s hands.
Beyond Netanyahu’s Knesset tirade, Yedioth Ahronoth follows up on an exclusive it published earlier in the week in which it leaked transcripts from cabinet meetings held during the 2014 war in the Gaza Strip. As with Tuesday’s report, Thursday’s exhibits the infighting, accusations and bickering that characterized the security cabinet during the 50-day war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The new leaks, the paper says, underscore the conflict between then-finance minister Yair Lapid and hardline Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett, who in the immediate aftermath of the preceding elections were close allies.
“A discussion of neutralizing the tunnels is not for the security cabinet — this isn’t a meeting of battalion commanders,” Lapid said. “It’s very much not for battalion commanders, it’s for the security cabinet [to decide],” Bennett snapped back. “Stop playing with the generals,” Lapid retorted.
Four hours later, the paper reports, then-defense minister Moshe Ya’alon accused Bennett of bypassing the chain of command and contacting senior commanders in the field. “You can’t manage the army for me, you can’t come to me from the field and tell me they’re doing this or not doing that, you hear me?”
Israel Hayom publishes a jumbled article on Trump and Israel-related issues headlined with the White House reportedly blocking the transfer of funds to the Palestinian Authority earmarked by the Obama administration in its final hours in office. Along with reporting on former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani telling the Hebrew press that Trump is serious about moving the embassy to Jerusalem, and Sara Netanyahu speaking with First Lady Melania Trump, the paper also cites a New York Times report saying that the Trump administration is drafting executive orders to cut down on American funding to the UN and other international organizations. One of the criteria for cutting funds is whether an organization offers full membership to the Palestinians, the paper says.