TEL AVIV – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the Israeli media’s “Bolshevik propaganda” aimed at demonizing the right and bringing him down with lies about his family.
“For years they have buried and sugarcoated waste and overspending of tens of millions by prime ministers and presidents from the left, and against me they carry out a campaign of character assassination over ice creams, ready meals and false rumors,” Netanyahu wrote on Facebook.
“Every evening [Channel 2] broadcasts false rumors and character assassinations of me and my family. Real Bolshevik propaganda that is just tales from years ago that never even happened,” Netanyahu said, according to a translation by the Times of Israel. “They repeatedly carry out this demonetization against the right, the religious and traditional Jews — everyone who is not them. It’s clear why the public doesn’t buy their garbage!”
His denunciation comes after Channel 2 broadcast a series of reports detailing phone conversations from 2010 between officials who were once close to the prime minister and his family in which the alleged misappropriation of public funds for personal use by the Netanyahus is discussed.
In one recording, Netanyahu’s former media adviser turned state’s witness Nir Hefetz is heard talking about Sara Netanyahu’s “greedy” demand that the state, among other things, fund a gardening project at the Netanyahus’ private residence in Caesarea.
Hefetz is also quoted as saying that on one occasion the Prime Minister’s Office paid a 6,000 dollar mini-bar bill for the Netanyahus.
He also said that Sara would take up to five suitcases full of dirty laundry on official trips to send to dry cleaning at hotels where they stayed.
On Thursday, Sara Netanyahu was indicted along with Ezra Saidoff, a former deputy director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office, for fraud and breach of trust over having the state foot the bill to the tune of some NIS 359,000 ($100,000) in high-end meals between 2010 and 2013, transgressing regulations banning the ordering of takeout while a chef is employed at the official residence.
The indictment is said to be partially based on Hefetz’s testimony.
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