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Netanyahu takes Likud hostage

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is hammering Likud members with the narrative that police investigators and the left are not out simply to get him, but are after them and Likud party rule.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a lengthy speech Aug. 30 at the traditional Likud toast marking the forthcoming Jewish New Year. The most significant part of the address was not his attack on Meni Naftali — the former caretaker of the prime minister’s official residence who has sued Netanyahu's wife, Sara, and is at the forefront of anti-Netanyahu protests — nor was it his harangue against the left-wing media for allegedly agitating to unseat him. Rather, addressing thousands of riled-up Likud activists, Netanyahu laid the political groundwork tying their destiny to his personal fate.

After talking about the weekly protests by “the left” near the home of Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, claiming that they were designed to “pressure law enforcement authorities to indict me, at any cost,” he added the following: “Look at the contempt and the arrogance with which they [the left] mock us. They don't just despise us, they despise something much deeper. They are actually contemptuous of the people's choice. They despise the democracy for which they supposedly speak.” The media, Netanyahu added, do “everything to hurt me and my wife, because they think that if they take us [the Netanyahu family] down, they will take us all [the Likud, the right] down.”

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