Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released two new campaign videos over the weekend that mock the recommendations to indict him for bribery in the Bezeq-Walla Affair and depict Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit as caving into left-wing pressure to bring him down.
A video released Saturday night starts with two positive headlines that the Walla News website published about Netanyahu's wife, Sara. In the Bezeq-Walla Affair, Case 4000, Netanyahu is accused of facilitating tycoon Shaul Elovitch owning both the Bezeq phone company and YES cable company in return for positive coverage from Walla News, which Elovitch also owned.
The video asks "if those articles are bribery, then what is this?" It then presents a series of positive cover stories on Netanyahu's political rivals Yair Lapid, Tzipi Livni, Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked in Yediot Aharonot.
"Only when it is Netanyahu is press coverage bribery," the video says and then shows a file with Case 4000 written on it being stamped "absurd."
The star of the video released Friday is left-wing activist Eldad Yaniv, a former bureau chief of then-prime minister Ehud Barak, who ran for Knesset with the Zionist Union in the last election and is currently running at the helm of a party called Eretz Hadasha.
"The Left is pressuring the attorney-general," the video says in a new slogan that rhymes in Hebrew.
The video depicts Yaniv in 2016 predicting that the police would "turn the tables on Mandelblit." It then shows Yaniv boasting this month that "without protests he led and appeals to the High Court of Justice against Mandelblit, an investigation into Netanyahu's cases would have never begun."
The video ends by asking "Will it work? Your answer is in the ballot box."
Yair Lapid responded harshly to the video, sharing it on his own Facebook page and criticizing Netanyahu of "breaking a new record of incitement" and "draggin the whole country into his battle of survival."
Lapid further explained that Netanyahu is a criminal, trying to make it look like the rest of the political leaders are criminals like him. Speaking directly to Netanyahu, Lapid said, "You continue to incite and instigate as if there is no tomorrow. There is a tomorrow, and we and our children will live here after you, as one nation, strong and united."
These are not the first videos Netanyahu released on Facebook attacking the claims made against him. Earlier in January, he released a clip claiming that it would be wrong for Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit to announce an indictment pending hearing before the coming April 9th elections. In that clip, Netanyahu claimed that having the elections "taken away" from him is analogous to one having his arm cut off.
Tamar Beeri contributed to this report.