Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Tuesday night’s Likud Conference in the Maccabiah Village in Ramat Gan strongly criticized the ability of police to recommend indictments at the end of investigating celebrity suspects, and suggested that many times they “destroy people’s lives and shed their blood.”
The PM was forced a week ago to give up his party’s legislative effort to bar police investigators from making recommendations to the prosecution as they turn over their findings. The legislation was exceptionally unpopular with the Israeli public and faced resistance from coalition member parties as well.
Netanyahu, who is currently under at least four police investigations, used the lighting ceremony of the eighth Chanukah candle to tell hundreds of Likud activists that “most police recommendations end up with nothing,” and do not lead to an indictment.
For his part, Netanyahu repeated the party line suggesting that his multiple investigations and the support they get from the media are the Left’s attempt to unseat him despite the fact that the majority of Israeli voters are on his side.
“They know they can’t beat us at the polls,” he said, “So they try to [defeat] us with slander and demonstrations, the kind that are organized and orchestrated, among others, by Left’s new fund (a reference to the New Israel Fund).”
The belligerent PM then predicted: “The slanderers in the public squares and on the news shows will try to inflate this balloon, before all the air comes out of it. Now they are trying to build up tension about what will happen with the recommendations. So I’ll tell you a spoiler – in a few weeks, reporters and commentators will sit in the television studios and they will open the news editions with the headline: ‘Most serious [police] recommendations, very, very serious.”
Netanyahu said that he knows this is coming in light of recent media reports, but commented: “So there will be [police] recommendations, so what? Most police recommendations end up with nothing. More than 60 percent of police recommendations later turn out to be duds.”
In conclusion, Netanyahu mocked the opposition parties, which he had beaten in three consecutive elections: “I tell our friend in the opposition: be patient, and in two years, after we do much more for the country, come to the polls, vote, and I tell you – you will lose again.”
“Why?” he added confidently, “Because the people see the great things we do, because the public is wise, and knows the truth. Because truth wins in the end.”