Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shrugged off the police’s recommendation to charge him with various corruption offenses on Sunday. “They already decided and leaked a year ago that these would be the recommendations, so what’s new?” he said to a packed room of cheering Likudniks in Ramat Gan at a party Hanukkah event. “We couldn’t have expected a different result from a process that was infected from the start.”
Netanyahu accused the police of having a “conflict of interest” because departing Police Chief Insp.-Gen. Roni Alsheich and others accused him and his wife of trying to sabotage the probe by allegedly hiring private investigators to track police detectives, which he called “crazy claims.”The prime minister also went through a long list of recent scandals within the police, including senior officers’ successful attempt to thwart the appointment of Gal Hirsch as chief of police, and an investigator who collected dirt on MKs, which Netanyahu called undemocratic.“Something is wrong and everyone feels it,” he said.In addition, he referred to the specifics of the Bezeq affair, saying that any decisions benefiting Bezeq owner Shaul Elovitch were approved by all the necessary bureaucrats, and he also approved policies that were negative for Elovitch.Netanyahu repeated his slogan of “There will be nothing, because there is nothing” in reference to the allegations, as a call-and-return chant with the audience, which played along.“Israel is a country with the rule of law, and police recommendations have no legal significance,” he argued. “Countless police recommendations are rejected.”Shortly before the event began, Netanyahu released a humorous Hanukkah video, in which he regaled a comedian with a list of his achievements in the economy, international relations and national security, while waiting in line to buy sufganiyot.The video included jokes about his investigations. Netanyahu said that when he tried to order sufganiyot to be delivered, the bakery thought it was a prank and called the police. “Case 5000,” the comedian cracked.In an earlier meeting of Likud ministers, when some offered him encouragement, Netanyahu said they were taking the case more seriously than him.“The police recommendations have no legal standing,” Netanyahu said, but they “are not surprising.”“I am sure that even in this case, the competent authorities, after examining the matter, will reach the same conclusion – that there was nothing [to find] because there is nothing [to find],” Netanyahu added.