A new Likud campaign video starring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is taking the various media outlets promoting scandals about the Netanyahus to task. The video shows Netanyahu in his office on the phone when an adviser runs inside and tells Netanyahu to hold his phone call to the U.S. president to deal with the latest news item: "Netanyahu and the snails in his garden." "They want to divert your attention from the truly important issues and focus on nonsense. But we are focused on the important things: Who will protect our children, who will stimulate our economy. It's either us, or them. And you know: It's us. Only Likud," Netanyahu says to the camera. The video received less than warm reviews from the Zionist Camp and Meretz. "The poor prime minister, constantly distracted by scandals and accusations that don't let him work. I finally understand why he didn't have the time to announce a platform or deal on the cost of living these past six years. Or find a solution to lower housing prices, or the corruption industry his coalition partners were running under his nose this whole time," Meretz Chairwoman Zehava Gal-On said. The Zionist Camp's Tzipi Livni said: "In Bibi's show there is someone holding the telephone on the other side. In reality, there is no one that will listen to him. And that is no longer funny -- it hurts Israel."
The adviser repeatedly enters Netanyahu's office with increasingly outlandish "scoops" from lampooned Israeli outlets such as Lie-Net, a play on the news website Ynet, and scandals involving Netanyahu, among them, "the dirty dishes in the sink," "the unfed fish," and "the wobbling table."
