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Benjamin Netanyahu denounced for 'improper' household spending in damning report
2/18/2015 4:20:17 PM
Report from Israel's state comptroller comes as film showing crumbling living quarters fails to limit the damage to the prime minister after he is accused of misleadingly portraying servants quarters as his ownFaced with a tricky re-election campaign and an awkward official report into his financial probity, Benjamin Netanyahu possibly felt he had little choice to but to adopt a tactic from the Israeli military text-book: the pre-emptive strike. Except the weapons at the Israeli prime minister's disposal were not the usual arsenal of deadly missiles, but a video filmed by a professional home-designer and TV personality depicting a hard-pressed Mr Netanyahu bearing the burdens of state while living in apparent decrepitude. On the eve of a long-awaited report from Israel's state comptroller into tales of alleged extravagance at the prime minister's official Jerusalem residence, the 15-minute film shot by Moshik Galamin - and subsequently posted on Mr Netanyahu's Facebook page - painted a picture of domestic austerity bordering on squalor. Guided around the Balfour Street residence by Mr Netanyahu's wife, Sara, Galamin homed in such unedifying details as mildewed curtain, broken door frames, peeling paint and a leaking patio roof where the Israeli leader is expected to entertain guests. The entire exercise seemed designed as an antidote to tales that the Netanyahus have embarked on an unparalleled spending spree - lavishing taxpayers' funds on scented candles, ice-cream contracts, garden furnishings and gourmet food. But if the idea was to win sympathy for Mr Netanyahu, it appeared to have failed. The first hitch came after it emerged that a badly run-down kitchen filmed by Galamin - and compared by him to a 1950s Romanian boarding school - turned out not to be that used by Israel's first couple but by their servants. Despite Mrs Netanyahu's protestation that the prime minister was often to be found there late at night nibbling yellow cheese and schnitzel, the Netanyahus real kitchen was a modern state-of-the-art job on the second floor, according to Israel's Channel 10 news. The second blow landed at 4pm local time on Tuesday afternoon, when Joseph Shapira, Israel's state comptroller, published his long-awaited reported which - however dryly - laid out how Mr Netanyahu had failed to exercise his household spending prerogatives in a prime ministerial manner. Netanyahu's wife Sara shows the kitchen compared by Galamin to "a Romanian boarding school in 1954" Public money had been improperly spent on food, maintenance, cleaning and hairdressing, Mr Shapira wrote. Expenditure on meals had soared, the comptroller recorded, with funds being lavished on outside caterers even though an in-house cook was employed. Food costs from lb11,810 in 2010 to lb26,638 in 2012 before falling back drastically the following year, when initial details appeared in the Israeli media about alleged overspending. Similar patterns were noted for cleaning bills, with the cost of cleaning the Netanyahus' private residence in the coastal resort of Caesarea reaching lb1,380 a month, even though they spent little time there. "The way in which the budget of the prime minister's residence was managed during the years 2009-2012 does not comply with the basic principles of money management, saving, and efficiency," Mr Shapira wrote severely. "We can expect a publicly elected official, as senior as he may be, to show more public sensitivity." Amid the extravagance, he revealed, lowly staff at the prime ministerial household were denied reimbursement claims for petty expenses incurred on Mr Netanyahu's behalf while performing their duties That revelation was particularly embarrassing in light of a lawsuit filed by the residence's former caretaker, Manny Naftali, who is seeking damages for alleged mistreatment suffered at the hands of Mr Netanyahu's wife, Sara, during his years of employment. Mr Netanyahu attempted to brazen out the report, blaming the spending rises on Mr Naftali, according to a statement issued by his Likud party on Tuesday. By contrast, opposition politicians, backed by the prime minister's many critics in the Israeli media, seized on it as evidence of what they said was his unfitness for office. Shmuel Sandler, professor of political science at Tel Aviv's Bar Ilan University, predicted that it would have little impact on a general election scheduled for March 17, with polls showing Mr Netanyahu's Likud running neck-and-neck with the Left-of-centre Zionist Camp coalition "It might even help Netanyahu because there is a general feeling that the media isn't fair and is looking for a way to get rid of him," he said. "The only question is whether the attorney general finds a reason in the report for indicting him but I think that's far off. "
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