Netanyahu Goes After the Police for Seizing Advisers’ Phones: This Is a Terror Attack on Democracy

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bashed the Israel Police Monday for confiscating the cellphones of his advisers as part of a probe into suspicions that they had harassed a state's witness who provided testimony in one of the criminal cases against the premier. 

Taking to Twitter to denounce the move, Netanyahu wrote that it was "a terror attack on Israeli democracy and the right to privacy that every citizen should enjoy."

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Haaretz Weekly Ep. 45Haaretz

The prime minister accused the police of trying to "threaten my immediate environment, and thereby stopping me from reacting to the onslaught of criminal leaks against me that has been going on incessantly. Why isn't this being investigated?", he added. 

Netanyahu was likely alluding to several leaks of audio recordings from the investigations into the corruption cases he is embroiled in.

Netanyahu spokesman Jonatan Orich during a Likud campaign rally, Tel Aviv, April 9, 2019Tomer Appelbaum

In the most recent recording released to the media, which was aired by Channel 13 News' Raviv Drucker over the weekend, the premier can be heard threatening Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Arnon Mozes. "If you take me down, I'll come after you with everything I've got… it will become my life's mission," Netanyahu says in the recorded conversation.