Twenty-one thousand euros more than last year just to buy men’s suits and suits for his wife. And two restructurings to be paid by the taxpayers. Thus the Israeli premier and his wife are in the crosshairs of satire (and of the opposition)
The official document calls them “expenses for the representative appearance”, the blue suits and cobalt ties (his favorites), the jacket and pant suits for her. Twenty-one thousand euros more a year — almost double than in the past — for the prime-ministerial couple who are now the opposition newspaper Haaretz
draws in satirical cartoons and depicts in political analysis as a Roman emperor and empress.
Thus the decision of the Finance Commission – where the right-wing majority supported the requests of the head – becomes a coincidence. The Netanyahus also obtained that the family villa in Caesarea (on the north coast) e the apartment owned in Jerusalem will be renovated at the expense of taxpayers, because the official residence in via Balfour is a construction site, it will take years of work – and at least 30 million euros – before it is usable again. Sources close to the premier, who returned to power after 563 days in opposition, they try to point to the predecessor Naftali Bennett: he would have left the residence in an uninhabitable state forcing the intervention of architects and masons. Only that Bennett is not the previous tenant (those are always the Netanyahus): he had chosen to stay at his home in Ranaana and had been criticized for the investments caused by the move of the security apparatus in the northern Tel Aviv suburb. To the point of deciding to publish the detailed list to demonstrate that it costs the state much less.
While Israel is engulfed in political chaos — protests have been going on for two months against the government’s plan to downsize the Supreme Court, judges and magistrates — the Likud has asked the allied deputies to present themselves together at the committee meeting and show support for the prime minister. «What do you expect? Let them live in a tent,” one of them shouted to the opposition MPs. «The shekel collapses, inflation rises, people struggle to make ends meet and the Knesset finds time to finance the Netanyahus», comments Yair Lapid, the only one together with Bennett to have ousted the conservative leader from office in the last thirteen years. He recalls that economists fear the flight of investors frightened by the institutional crisis on justice.
During the six terms of the summit lived together, it is not the first time that the demands of his wife Sarah, the bodyguards of the secret services in the service of their two children, the passion for luxury get Netanyahu into trouble. The cases of rosé champagne and cigars given away by two millionaires ended up among the evidence of the ongoing trial against him for corruption, fraud, abuse of power. AND Haaretz reveals Sarah started sending family shopping lists to the prime minister’s office, including three tables for her dressing table, before her husband even got his chair back.
Four years ago he had negotiated a sentence for having paid personal chefs with public funds and in 2015 the State Accountant had accused her of embezzlement: she demanded that assistants bring the empty bottles back to the supermarket (even hundreds) and hand over the 10 cents of the deposit. The problem is that those drinks were bought with the budget available to the prime minister, essentially with the money of the Israelis.
February 24, 2023 (change February 24, 2023 | 21:31)
© breaking latest news