He told interviewer Leital Shemesh that the protests contained “radical, extremist elements that are difficult to believe.”
By David Isaac, World Israel News
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at length about his worries regarding left-wing incitement against himself and his family at growing protests near his official residence, in an interview with Channel 20 that aired Monday night.
He told interviewer Leital Shemesh that the protests contained “radical, extremist elements that are difficult to believe.”
“I’m talking about people who are calling for the murder of the prime minister within the protests,” he said.
Netanyahu criticized the media for failing to cover the threats of violence. “Not only don’t they cover it, they blame me, that I’m just making it up,” he said.
“It’s their people, people of the left that are calling for murder. To put a bullet in my head,” he said.
Netanyahu also slammed the protesters’ use of blowups of male genitalia with sexually harassing taunts written on them against his wife Sara.
The prime minister said the media isn’t covering the offensive elements in the protests.
Netanyahu said only one organization has taken action. The Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel sent a letter to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit asking him to investigate the “explicit sexual threats” made against Sara Netanyahu.
“But where are the others? The fact that there’s silence here, there’s no chance you’ll hear about this from any of the channels. No chance,” the prime minister said.
Netanyahu said the organization of the protests is unquestionably left-wing, and he said former Prime Minister Ehud Barak is funding them. “Of that there’s not doubt. They’re organizing the busing,” he said.
The prime minister also accused the media of inflating the protests, which are carried out by a “minority,” and presenting it as it were a mass movement.
He said this was a kind of “brainwashing and not appropriate in a democracy.”
Of the protesters he said, “They speak in the name of democracy? When they talk about the murder of the prime minister? That’s what they [the media] play down, that’s democracy?”