Mysterious anti-media billboard now says 'choose Netanyahu'

"They won't decide. You decide. Despite them. Netanyahu," the billboard read, followed by the Likud logo.

By LAHAV HARKOV
Updated: JANUARY 20, 2019 12:42
Mysterious anti-media billboard now says 'choose Netanyahu' (photo credit: LIKUD)
Mysterious anti-media billboard now says 'choose Netanyahu'
(photo credit: LIKUD)
The Likud officially took responsibility for a mysterious billboard with photos of journalists and the words “They won’t decide” on the Ayalon Highway.
On Friday, the billboard and its message went up unattributed, but on Sunday, a new version was unveiled in the same spot, with the same journalists’ photos and a new message.
"They won't decide, you will decide. Despite them, Netanyahu!" the billboard read, followed by the Likud logo.
The billboard features Raviv Drucker of Channel 13, Guy Peleg and Amnon Abramovich of Channel 12, and Ben Caspit of Maariv.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already said in news conferences and online videos that the media and left-wing activists “won’t decide” who will win the upcoming elections, the public will.
The Likud followed the unattributed billboard with a video on Netanyahu’s Facebook page with the message: “For three years the Left and media have been hounding the attorney-general so that he would submit an indictment at any cost.”
The video then showed photos of activists confronting Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit at the supermarket, on the street and outside synagogue, followed by video clips of angry protesters chanting, “Netanyahu to prison,” and an activist saying, “He’s not an attorney-general. He’s a dishrag.”
“Will they succeed?” the video asked.
The new clip followed reports that Mandelblit is leaning toward adopting police recommendations to indict Netanyahu for bribery in Case 4000, the "Bezeq-Walla affair."
The Meretz party asked State Comptroller Joseph Shapira to check if the anonymous billboard breaks election laws.
“An active body in the election must register with the state comptroller and follow the relevant instructions in the law,” wrote Meretz secretary-general Tomer Resnick and the party’s attorney, Dror Morag. “This is inappropriate election propaganda, hiding sources of funding. Such actions are a crime that carries a prison sentence.”
As for the video, opposition leader Shelly Yacimovich called it “calculated incitement” that calls for violence against journalists, “in a way that characterizes countries in which democracy is on the decline.”
Yacimovich also expressed concern that it is meant to “strike fear in Attorney-General Mandelblit. The goal is to prevent the attorney-general from submitting an indictment in any way, and to ensure that if he does, his professional, measured decision will be colored as treason.”