“The way to try and topple the Likud [party] under my leadership is to divert attention from the central election issue: who will lead the people and the state.” This was what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted this past weekend, Jan. 30, on Facebook in an attempt to deflect public criticism of the way he and his wife managed their household in the prime minister’s official Jerusalem residence. The post was written following several reports in recent days about the couple’s conduct, which grabbed the main headlines in most media and cast a cloud over the Likud’s election campaign.
As mentioned here last week, polls indicate that the Israeli right wing has a strong interest in diverting attention from social-economic concerns, those that most occupy the Israeli voter. The deaths of two soldiers on Mount Dov on Jan. 28 and the undermining of stability on the Lebanon border intensified the criticism against the Jan. 18 attack on the Golan, attributed to Israel, in which an Iranian general and the son of Imad Mughniyeh were killed. Netanyahu’s controversial plan to address a joint session of Congress on March 3 diverted the election agenda from the negative campaign against the “anti-Zionist left” to stinging criticism of what has been termed “a diplomatic terror attack” on Israel’s relationship with the world’s most important power. The third damaging issue for the Likud to hit the headlines again is the affair known as “Bibi-Tours,” exposed some three years ago by Channel 10 News analyst Raviv Drucker.
