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Haaretz analyst ‘took Qatari cash’ in expanding Qatargate scandal. Allegations centre on claims that Netanyahu’s aides accepted Qatari money to promote favourable coverage of Doha while Qatar led negotiations between Israel and Hamas By Jewish News Reporter. 12 January 2026. JNews Avishai Grinzaig @avishaigrinzaig:The editor of Haaretz found out about this back on April 25, and whitewashed it. Only when Bar Peleg discovered this information in his own way was this information revealed and now published in Haaretz. Bar Peleg is truly a special kind of journalist. Jan 10, 2026. [https://x.com/avishaigrinzaig/status/2010057443359994219 On X] [https://archive.is/0VXWB] ____ This is the third such...

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett posted a video message on X on Monday addressed to protesters in Iran, saying they deserve a better future and that the free world stands with them. ​“The Iranian people have a glorious past, and they can have an even more glorious future. That future depends on every one of you." "So to all the brave men and women now rising up across your country, all the nations of the free world stand with you in your just struggle. Change is possible; there will be a better Middle East,” Bennett said.

State prosecutors on Monday filed an indictment against a Rishon Lezion resident accused of carrying out surveillance missions on behalf of a foreign agent, including filming the street outside the home of former prime minister Naftali Bennett, in what authorities described as another attempt by Iranian intelligence to collect information on senior Israeli figures. The indictment, filed with the Central District Court in Lod, charges Lekachao Demsash, 31, with contact with a foreign agent, an offense that carries a potential prison sentence. Prosecutors have also requested that he be held in custody until the conclusion of legal proceedings, citing the...

In the suitability for prime minister polls, former prime minister Naftali Bennett continues to emerge as the principal challenger to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a direct head-to-head matchup, Channel 12 places Bennett within one percentage point of Netanyahu. In the multi-candidate Channel 14 poll, Bennett ranks second, holding a 12-point lead over the next closest challenger. The dominant topic this week was the fallout from revelations of betrayal within Netanyahu’s office, following reports that senior advisers received funds from Qatar. A Maariv poll shows that 60% of respondents with an opinion do not believe Netanyahu’s claim that he was...

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett warned that Israel’s status in the United States “has never been so bad” and that it is being seen as a “leper state” in a lengthy social media post on Tuesday. The post castigating the current government’s public diplomacy efforts came after Bennett, who plans to run in next year’s elections, spent 10 days in the US… “The Democratic party hasn’t been with us for some time. We’re also losing the Republican party, whose support for Israel could once be counted on,” he wrote, though he credited US President Donald Trump with retaining support for...

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resign on Monday, accusing him of engaging in the cover-up of the Qatargate affair, which Bennett called “the most serious act of treason in Israeli history.” The statement from Bennett, who is running against Netanyahu in next year’s election, follows new revelations about the scandal. The affair involves allegations that top aides to the prime minister were acting as paid lobbyists for Qatar, where Hamas’s leadership is based, while simultaneously working for Netanyahu. On Sunday, i24 News reported that communication between the suspects showed they had fabricated information,...

Last week, Townhall exposed how Qatar is spending billions of dollars to indoctrinate students at Western colleges and universities while also funding Islamic terrorism across the globe.In addition to fomenting anti-Western, pro-Hamas sentiment on college campuses and funding terrorism, Qatar also wages an information war in the media and online. By using outlets like Al Jazeera and The New York Times, as well as Facebook parent company Meta, Qatar seeks to manipulate algorithms and influence our political process.Qatar and JournalismQatar started Al Jazeera, the Muslim world's biggest outlet, in 1996 with a $150 million grant from the Qatari Emir. Based...

Former PM Naftali Bennett denounced Tucker Carlson for his allegations that Jeffrey Epstein had been an Israeli agent.

As a former Israeli Prime Minister, with the Mossad having reported directly to me, I say to you with 100% certainty: The accusation that Jeffrey Epstein somehow worked for Israel or the Mossad running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false. Epstein’s conduct, both the criminal and the merely despicable, had nothing whatsoever to do with the Mossad or the State of Israel. Epstein never worked for the Mossad. This accusation is a lie being peddled by prominent online personalities such as Tucker Carlson pretending they know things they don’t. They just make things up, say it with confidence...

The Likud Party has experienced a significant rise following the war with Iran…The survey reveals that Likud gained 4 seats, increasing its total to 26, up from 22 in the previous poll. This marks the first time since October 2024 that Likud has surpassed Naftali Bennett’s new party, which has dropped to 24 seats. Although Likud is strengthening, the shift primarily reflects changes within the coalition bloc. Otzma Yehudit, led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, has lost two seats, dropping to 6. Meanwhile…the Democrats, led by Yair Golan, have gained ground, rising to 12 seats at the expense of Yesh Atid, the...

On Tuesday, as reports were coming in of Iran's ballistic missiles hitting Israel, António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the anti-Israel United Nations, posted his demands for a ceasefire. "I condemn the broadening of the Middle East conflict with escalation after escalation," Guterres posted. "We absolutely need a ceasefire," he also insisted, as if we haven't already heard such a call from the UN so many times before. I condemn the broadening of the Middle East conflict with escalation after escalation.This must stop.We absolutely need a ceasefire.— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) October 1, 2024UN Secretary General calls for a CEASEFIRE during the...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu overtook war cabinet minister Benny Gantz as the public’s preferred choice for premier in a television survey aired Wednesday, marking the first time in a year that the incumbent rated higher than his best-polling rival. The Channel 12 news poll also found Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party gaining on Gantz’s centrist National Union, while indicating that a potential all-star slate of Netanyahu’s former right-wing allies could win a double-digit number of parliamentary seats, mainly at the expense of National Union. If elections were held today, according to the poll, National Union would pick up 25 of the...

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett says US President Joe Biden’s decision to delay a weapons shipment to Israel is “deeply misguided,” in an interview with CNN. “If Hamas is granted immunity because it hides behind civilians… that means that the whole global jihad organizations are all going to adopt human shields as the core way of conducting terror,” he says. Interview clipBennet: "...We never target civilians.” “In fact,” he continues, “we have the lowest ratio of collateral damage in the history of urban warfare.” Israel is “bending over backward in order to prevent unnecessary deaths,” he says. “Otherwise we’d get...

ANALYSIS:▪ Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett discussed his efforts to broker peace between Ukraine and Russia. ▪ Pro-Russia commentators have focused on his saying that a peace deal was "blocked" by the West. ▪ But Bennett has clarified that no such deal existed — and said talks broke down because of apparent Russian war crimes.A former Israeli prime minister is walking back his suggestion that the United States may have "blocked" an agreement last year to end the war in Ukraine, a claim that had been amplified by Russian state media and Kremlin sympathizers in the West.But a reader...

It was predictable given the fervor of the left-wing demonstrations against Benjamin Netanyahu that talk of assassination would arise sooner or later. Despite their own calls that right-wing Israelis accept the results of the previous election that propelled Yair Lapid and his center-left allies to power, left-wing Israelis have largely refused to pay the same courtesy to Netanyahu and his new coalition, which won a firm majority in the most recent vote. It’s not just that they oppose his proposed policies. They insist Bibi is an unrepentant criminal and a danger to democracy who must be removed from power. Since...

The Pegasus Affair: This is how the right-wing government was overthrown They had a problem. The majority of the people in Israel vote right. The national camp has been in power for too long and they had no democratic way to replace it, so they found a solution Yehuda Vald, 10.02.22 The revelation this week [https://www.srugim.co.il/?p=645212] in the Calcalist newspaper about the activation of spy software against senior officials in the economy, including those close to Prime Minister Netanyahu, is the tip of the iceberg that has been revealed about the anti-democratic revolution led by influential people in the police...

Russian President Vladimir Putin promised not to assassinate his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky when he met with former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett last year in the early days of the war.“Do you intend to kill Zelensky?” Bennett recalled asking Putin, during an almost five-hour interview he gave to Israel’s Channel 12, that was posted on YouTube on Saturday night.Putin assured Bennett, “I’m not going to kill Zelensky.”Bennett called Zelensky while he was still in Moscow on his way to the airport from the Kremlin to tell him that he was not under a death threat.“Are you sure?” Zelensky asked.“One...

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has told the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog that the Jewish state is ready to use its “right to self-defense” to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons. In a meeting with IAEA chief Rafael Grossi on June 3 in Jerusalem, Bennett accused Tehran of deceiving the world about its atomic activities. Bennett “expressed Israel’s deep concern regarding Iran’s continued progress toward achieving nuclear weapons while deceiving the international community by using false information and lies,” his office said in a statement. The Israeli leader “emphasized the urgent need in mobilizing the international community to...

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is working to officially dissolve his own government. In a move seen by many as the climax of one of the most bizarre sagas in Israeli political history, the political coalition that has held a very slim majority in the K’nesset (Israeli parliament) for the past year is seeking to abruptly end its own rule and bring the Jewish state to yet another round of elections in three months. But why on earth would the Israeli parliamentary coalition do that? The answer is simple: because Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu and his political allies are poised to...

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has not ruled out sitting with MKs Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud), Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionism), and Itamar Ben Gvir (Otzma Yehudit), but opposes the formation for a "fully" right-wing government. In an interview with Channel 13 News, Bennett said, "A fully right-wing government, in the current sense, is, in my eyes, a disaster, because it does not have the balances." He added, "Netanyahu, Bezalel, and Ben Gvir...in a different constellation, can be fine, but a government trapped in the hands of the extreme is horrible and awful, even if it is the other side." .....