Days before national elections, incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lays out an elaborate plot to unseat him, which he claims is being run by foreign liberals who want peace. ‘They’ll withdraw to the 1967 boundaries and they will divide Jerusalem — just as Tzipi and Buji promised they would do. They know that unlike Tzipi and Buji, the Likud and I will never surrender to pressure,’ Netanyahu writes in a long Facebook status.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent Facebook status, posted on Friday in Hebrew, is distinctly odd. It makes him sound like a rambling paranoid who’s off his meds, and local reporters have definitely noticed, with various Israeli journalists exchanging comments in Hebrew and English on social media platforms. In response to popular demand, I’ve translated the status into English (below).
A couple of explanatory notes: Noni Mozes is the publisher of Yedioth Ahoronoth, a veteran publication that for many years had the biggest share of newspaper readers until Sheldon Adelson launched Israel Hayom about five years ago, which is distributed for free. Israel Hayom is a serious newspaper, but its news and analysis follows an unswervingly pro-Netanyahu editorial line. For this reason it is often referred to as the “Bibiton,” which is a portmanteau of Netanyahu’s popular nickname and “iton,” the Hebrew word for newspaper.
According to the final pre-election polls, with results posted on Friday, Likud is down to 20, an all-time low in the polls this election season, while the Zionist Union (led by Tzipi Livni and Isaac “Buji” Herzog) is at 24. Netanyahu is now under tremendous pressure. He runs the risk of losing the election for Likud. And his party seems to be blaming him for running a disastrous campaign, including the heavily criticized speech to Congress that ended up generating a backlash in Israel.
The translated status:
The government of the Right is in danger. Leftist activists and the foreign and international media are conspiring to get Tzipi and Buji elected via illegitimate means, using innuendo and foreign money.
Their goal is to widen the gap so that the Zionist Union polls higher than the Likud. The only way to ensure they fail is for us to close that gap in the remaining days before the elections. Those who vote for the nationalist camp don’t have the privilege of voting for other parties. You must vote for the Likud.
We have received many reports from people who work for Yedioth Ahoronoth regarding [publisher] Noni Mozes, who is leading a carefully orchestrated campaign against me. He is aided by various organizations that function with the support of tycoons in Israel and abroad, and also with the support of foreign governments. A similar effort was made in 1999 [the last time Netanyahu lost an election].
Mozes and the Yedioth Group are working in full cooperation with the head of the Labor party. Tzipi Livni herself admitted this month at a public event that she had spoken with the publisher of Yedioth Ahoronoth, Noni Mozes, about pushing forward legislation that is meant to stop the publication of Israel Hayom [the pro-Netanyahu, free daily newspaper owned by Sheldon Adelson].
According to the Zionist Union party’s manifesto, Tzipi and Buji are committed to closing down Israel Hayom. This was reported in The Marker [an Israeli financial newspaper that is published by the Schocken Group / Haaretz].
It’s well known that the Yedioth Ahoronoth Group levels allegations related to social-welfare issues at me and the Likud, but it’s less known that during the 2011 social justice protests, which were the largest Israel has seen, Mozes gave the order to bury reports about the protests. He thought the protests were harming his business with a drastic decline in advertising revenue during that period.
The public should know the truth: Noni Mozes is leading a campaign against the Likud and against me in the name of his business interests. He wants to bring back the dangerous, undemocratic monopoly that prevailed when his newspaper was the most dominant. Mozes’s goal is to bring a leftist government to power. Leftist activists in Israel and abroad are pouring tens of millions of dollars into organizations that are leading the “anyone but Bibi” campaign.
These organizations are working to persuade Arab voters to cast their ballots for the left. They have even initiated a house-to-house campaign in recent weeks.
The enlistment of foreign organizations is not for financial reasons or social reasons, but for political reasons. Those foreign organizations understand that if Tzipi and Buji are in charge, they will give up everything. They’ll withdraw to the 1967 boundaries and they will divide Jerusalem — just as Tzipi and Buji promised they would do do. They know that unlike Tzipi and Buji, the Likud and I will never surrender to pressure.
These foreign organizations understand that the only thing blocking a withdrawal to the ‘67 boundaries, dividing Jerusalem, the establishment of “Hamastan B” on the hills that overlook Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport and all of Israel, and accepting a nuclear Iran — the only thing — is a Likud government.
The only response to Noni Mozes’s campaign of seduction and to the millions of dollars that are flowing in from abroad to leftist organizations, is to go next week and cast the only ballot possible: only Likud.
