Ramat Gan: A combative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formally launched his election campaign Monday, local time, urging his supporters to rally around him because victory was no longer guaranteed amid his mounting legal woes.
“We have to win,” he told hundreds of members of his Likud party in a hotel just outside Tel Aviv. His supporters stood on chairs and cheered so loudly that the Prime Minister’s words were barely audible.
“Bibi, king of Israel,” chanted the crowd, using Netanyahu’s nickname in a twist on a Hebrew song about the biblical King David. Thousands more gathered to watch the Israeli leader speak on screens set up outside.
With just 35 days to go before Israeli elections, Netanyahu is feeling the heat. Calls for his resignation have increased since Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit informed Netanyahu’s legal team Thursday of plans to charge the Prime Minister with fraud, breach of trust and bribery in three criminal cases, pending a hearing in which he can present his defence. Netanyahu has maintained his innocence and described the legal cases against him as a left-wing plot.
Meantime, the Prime Minister has slipped to second place in the polls, trailing a joint ticket of former military chief of staff Benny Gantz and Netanyahu’s longtime rival Yair Lapid. In a concerning turn for the Prime Minister, the polls now also indicate that Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc may struggle to win enough seats in the parliament, or Knesset, to form a governing coalition, even if he prevails in the election.
Read the article by Ruth Eglash and Loveday Morris in The Sydney Morning Herald.