Mandelblit: Parties trying to undermine legitimacy of Netanyahu probes
Mandelblit said he was being attacked as pursuing Netanyahu for political reasons, unjustly and without real evidence.
By YONAH JEREMY BOBUpdated: SEPTEMBER 4, 2018 15:22Avichai Mandelblit and Netanyahu(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Critics who call the probes of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a witch-hunt, or say they are purposely being pursued too slowly, want to undermine the legitimacy of the investigations and the final decisions on whether to indict, Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit told a Channel 2 conference on Monday.Mandelblit said he was being attacked as pursuing Netanyahu for political reasons, unjustly and without real evidence.On the other hand, he said, he was being criticized for dragging out the probes out of fear of a confrontation with the prime minister for whom he once worked.Mandelblit insisted that both theories were wrong, and he is merely reviewing all relevant evidence in pursuit of the truth.Regarding the Jewish Nation-State Law, he said there have been complaints that the law undermines minority non-Jewish rights and is a prize for the settler movement. In contrast, he said, he stopped such efforts, which he contended were the goals of the original law, but which he succeeded in changing the text’s final version.Many of the concerns were about areas on which the law was silent, Mandelblit said, and silence would not harm minority rights where other basic laws already protect them. He said this was also true regarding most settlement issues, including attempts to overtly prevent people from living in a village because of their ethnic background.