Netanyahu backs son’s assessment of left-wing protesters as ‘aliens’

After Yair Netanyahu says “aliens” were protesting against his father, prime minister agrees some of the protests have “weird phenomena.’

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday slammed the protests against him. He also said that his son’s comments referring to anti-government protesters as “aliens” – remarks criticized by certain pundits – had to do with the fact that there were bizarre things happening at the demonstrations.

“These are political demonstrations, left-wing demonstrations, they are fueled by left-wing organizations and to my regret with full backing of the media,” Netanyahu said.

“I think it’s a political thing in which there are also weird phenomena and that is what I think my son meant,” Netanyahu said.

In an Israel Army Radio interview on Sunday, Yair Netanyahu talked about the nightly demonstrations against his father outside the prime minister’s official residence in central Jerusalem, saying that he and his father got a laugh out of some of the pictures of the protesters. The interview itself has been deleted from the station’s website, Channel 13 reported.

“I sometimes show Dad a few selected passages, trying not to do too rude things – but it entertains him and even gives him some strength,” Yair revealed. “It’s funny to him, he sees the sights we all see about these aliens and all the demonstrations, it’s funny to him – it’s like entertainment.”

After coming under harsh criticism for the comment, the Yair Netanyahu explained that he meant many of the protesters showed up in bizarre costumes.

“When I spoke of ‘aliens’ in the left-wing demonstrations in Jerusalem, I meant those who disguise themselves as aliens and UFOs, those who undress …those who put spaghetti on their heads or those who dress up as Spider-Man. There are too many and it’s funny,” Yair Netanyahu said.

“Everything else is not funny at all – the incitement and explicit calls for murder [of the prime minister], which intensify in the anarchist left’s demonstrations day by day, breaking new records with constant media encouragement. I still hope the media will condemn this incitement,” Yair Netanyahu said.

His father echoed the comments, slamming the demonstrators who called for him to resign and who had posted social media calls for his murder.

“We have always said – you change governments at the ballot box, you don’t change it in any other way,” the prime minister said.

However, the younger Netanyahu’s comments are seen by his father’s Likud Party as a source of potential trouble.

“His statement about the demonstrations and the aliens could do damage to the Likud and the prime minister. The left is inflating things and this is fueling their protest,” a Likud source told Israel Army Radio