Netanyahu Condemns 'Monkey' Slur Against Eisenkot, but Says Likud Voters Face Worse | Israel Politics Post
Netanyahu Condemns 'Monkey' Slur Against Eisenkot, but Says Likud Voters Face Worse
The prime minister called a Channel 14 commentator's remark about his chief election rival inappropriate, while using the controversy to accuse Eisenkot of ignoring similar insults aimed at Likud supporters.
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By Israel Politics Post Staff·Published
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits supporters in Haifa ahead of the election · Source: Sharon Leibel/Flash90, via The Times of Israel
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday condemned a Channel 14 commentator's on-air remark calling Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot a "monkey," even as he used the controversy to accuse Eisenkot of staying silent about comparable insults aimed at Likud voters, The Times of Israel reported.
"That is a highly inappropriate remark, and I condemn it," Netanyahu told Radio North 104.5FM, referring to commentator Yinon Magal's remarks a day earlier on Channel 14's "Patriots" program, in which Magal called Eisenkot a "monkey" and suggested he was being used as a front for Israel's Ashkenazi elite, a comment widely read as a dig at Eisenkot's Moroccan heritage.
Netanyahu pointed in response to businesswoman Galia Albin, who had separately drawn criticism for mocking Sephardic Likud voters in a podcast, and to other instances he said saw Likud supporters called "chimpanzees and baboons," arguing Eisenkot should have condemned those remarks too. Yashar rejected the comparison, with Eisenkot calling Magal's comment "crass" and saying the real problem was Netanyahu, not his commentator allies.
The exchange, which drew in Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman and a member of Likud's own internal disciplinary court, lands just over a week before the October 27 vote, in which recent polling has shown Eisenkot's Yashar running ahead of Likud, with neither governing bloc projected to reach a 61-seat majority.
