Bibi Releases His Inner Trump, Ripping Into Media ‘Witch Hunt’
As a financial scandal threatens the continued reign of Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s prime minister, is he going full Trump? As the premier attacks the media and rallies his base, some say the answer is yes.
Bibi released his inner Trump at a rally last night to shore up his support as possible indictments await him in relation to his connection with foreign businessmen. He characterized the investigation as a leftist “putsch,” and the crowd loved the red meat.
“The Left and the media — which are one and the same — are on an obsessive, unprecedented witch hunt against me and my family,” he said, according to Jewish Insider. He added: “And the ‘fake news media’ doesn’t talk about all the charity work Sarah does all the time for Holocaust survivors and kids with cancer.”
In addition to Trumpian words and themes, the spirit in the crowd seemed similar to that found at a Trump rally. Some wore shirts and held signs referring to fake news. And there was a hostility toward reporters there. Raoul Wootliff, a journalist at the Times of Israel, said on Twitter that he was called a “journalist shit,” a “traitor and a “homo.”
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at solomon@forward.com or on Twitter [@DanielJSolomon) or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO