The testimonies from Netanyahu's circle bring nothing new, and that only strengthens the shock

Within a week, we received two interviews, or more precisely, two testimonies from the heart of darkness, from the "holy of holies," as the universe in which the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu lives and exists is called.

One from Yehiel Ohav-Ami, the employee who was forced to scrub the floor of the Prime Minister's residence while exposed, apparently, to abuse by the Prime Minister's wife, Sara Netanyahu. The second, yesterday, an interview with Yoav Horowitz, who was the Director General of the Prime Minister's Office and Chief of Staff. Someone who knows. Someone who saw from the inside how Netanyahu manages his office and his country.

What the two testimonies have in common is that we did not hear anything new. This does not diminish the intensity of the shock but even strengthens it. When the same pattern, the same behavior, the same format repeat themselves again and again, there is no escaping the recognition of their truthfulness. Horowitz gives the impression of an honest man, even though the circumstances of the interview are rooted in his joining Gadi Eisenkot's Yesha party.

Horowitz said that he blocked improper initiatives of the family, such as having office and residence employees sign a declaration of personal loyalty to Netanyahu and the family. This reminds one of the story of the candidate for head of the Mossad who was required to pledge loyalty to the family as a condition for his appointment. "I will be loyal to the State of Israel," the candidate promised and lost the appointment to Yossi Cohen.

The family's obsession with personal loyalty is probably derived from their awareness of the injustices and crimes committed within their areas of control. The attempt to turn employees into confidants is an attempt to impose a blackout on what is happening inside. They are not really succeeding. Some stories leak out, some confidants become state witnesses, and some affairs turn into labor court lawsuits or criminal cases. The doctrine of proving a method and similar acts applies here; it is impossible that so many people saw the same thing and decided to lie.

Horowitz added his own perspective on Netanyahu's statement that if he is not at the head of the state, there is nothing here. A kind of narcissistic megalomania that means "the state is me." A kind of smug self-aggrandizement that turns exactly on the heads of those who hold it, as happened to him and to us on October 7. From now on, say: if I continue as head of the state, there will be nothing here. And this is exactly Horowitz's message: another term for Netanyahu as Prime Minister means, in his words, an "existential danger" to the state.

Horowitz put his finger on the destruction of the judicial system as the existential crisis and the greatest danger of all. Netanyahu marks the judicial system as the central target for elimination—an elimination that will benefit his personal troubles: his criminal trial and the two investigative commissions that threaten to destroy his legacy, the submarine commission and the commission that has not yet been established to investigate the massacre.

And the Likud's response is pathetic as usual—Horowitz was at Kaplan, which means he betrayed and moved to the left. The lie of labeling and painting Kaplan as left-wing is one of the centers of Netanyahu and the Likud's poison campaign. At Kaplan, the senior figures of security, economy, high-tech, science, academia, education, and medicine stood up. At Kaplan, the fighters of 1973 stood up. At Kaplan, all those who hold this state on their shoulders and allow Netanyahu the achievements of the army and the economy that he is destroying because of political incompetence and the enslavement of the state to the Kahanists and the Haredim stood up. The truth is that without Kaplan—and not without Netanyahu—there would be no State of Israel.