Israeli Press
Netanyahu's former office chief says aides pledged loyalty to the family
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
The man who ran Benjamin Netanyahu's office until 2019 told Israeli television on Friday night that he was asked to make employees of the prime minister's bureau and official residence sign pledges of loyalty to the Netanyahu family.
Yoav Horowitz, a former chief of staff and director-general of the Prime Minister's Office, gave the interviews to Channels 11, 12 and 13 on the same evening, and the liberal daily Haaretz led its election coverage with them on Saturday.
Sarah and Yair Netanyahu had what Horowitz called "very, very aggressive involvement" in how the bureau was run, he said, and the prime minister was aware of his wife's conduct.
"I think that since 2019 there has not really been a democracy in Israel," Horowitz said in one of the interviews. "The Prime Minister's Office controls the Knesset completely."
Likud did not deny the account in its response to the broadcasts, Haaretz reported.
Horowitz speaks from inside the campaign that hopes to replace Netanyahu on 27 October. He has joined Yashar, the party of former army chief Gadi Eisenkot, where he leads the team drafting its first hundred days in office — a position his critics will read into every sentence.
For Palestinian readers the interviews describe the machinery, not a scandal. The office Horowitz says answers to a household is the same office that decides the pace of the Gaza roadmap, the fate of the clearance revenues and the reach of the settlement enterprise in the occupied West Bank.
