Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Israel’s attorney-general has ordered an investigation into Sara Netanyahu, the prime minister’s wife, on suspicion of harassing witnesses and obstructing justice in her husband’s corruption cases.
Thursday’s decision by Gali Baharav-Miara and state prosecutor Amit Aisman cited an Israeli television investigation alleging that Sara Netanyahu orchestrated a campaign of demonstrations and social media attacks against perceived “enemies” of the prime minister.
The report alleged that the targets included the former attorney-general who indicted Benjamin Netanyahu; the lead prosecutor in the trial; and Hadas Klein, a witness in one of the cases.
Klein and several others filed police complaints against Sara Netanyahu in the wake of the report’s airing.
Benjamin Netanyahu is standing trial on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust relating to allegations of favour trading with wealthy benefactors, and this month he began testifying in his defence.
Earlier on Thursday, Israel’s prime minister published a scathing four-minute video attacking the “left and the media” for perpetrating a “character assassination” and “blood libels” against him and his wife.
“There is no limit to the lies. There is no limit to the despicable fictions, facts taken out of context, fake news, brainwashing,” he said.
Netanyahu’s government ministers and political allies also reacted furiously to the decision to call for the probe.
Yariv Levin, justice minister, criticised the attorney-general on Telegram for “extremely selective enforcement”, which he called a “crime”. He dismissed the allegations as “television gossip”.
The speaker of the Israeli parliament, Amir Ohana, said on Facebook that Baharav-Miara’s motivation was political, claiming that she was “lazy and afflicted by blindness, deafness and muteness when it comes to [investigations against] her political side”.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, national security minister, called for Baharav-Miara to be sacked. “Someone who persecutes government ministers and their families politically cannot continue to serve as the attorney-general,” he wrote on X.
Baharav-Miara has over the past two years criticised the Netanyahu government’s attempts to overhaul the country’s judicial system, a move critics view as a power grab that could damage the country’s democracy.
It remains unclear whether and how the police will act on the directive to open an investigation into Sara Netanyahu.
In a further complication, police commissioner Danny Levy was also implicated in the television investigation.
