- Credit: Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, via Wikimedia Commons
Jerusalem, May 9 - Upheaval gripped the pundit class and political realm in Israel today following the release of a comprehensive academic study that found Binyamin Netanyahu the least corrupt prime minister of Israel in office right now.
A team of researchers from the Political Science department at the Hebrew University issued its findings today after examining numerous criteria to rank heads of government in terms of public trust and freedom from influences such as blackmail, cronyism, bribery, and other symptoms of corruption, determining that of all prime ministers of Israel serving at the moment, Netanyahu ranks highest in those categories.
Members and supporters of the prime minister's ruling Likud Party took the findings as vindication for the embattled premier, while few Opposition figures and critics within right-wing circles voiced willingness to go on record regarding this development. Accusations of corruption, leading to police investigations and talk of prosecution, have dogged Netanyahu for years, to the point that his rivals invoke them almost daily to assert his alleged unfitness for office. Now that Netanyahu has been declared scientifically the least corrupt figure occupying the post of prime minister since 2015, the power of those accusations is expected to wane.
"We've been saying for some time that this is all a witch hunt," declared a gratified Gilad Erdan, Minister of Internal Security and a longtime Netanyahu loyalist. "Now we have the statistical and mathematical proof. I've said before and I'll keep saying that Bibi's enemies will resort to whatever means possible to unseat the man they could not defeat by democratic means, and that is a major problem we need to address."
"Bibi is officially the least corrupt prime minister Israel has had in at least nine years," stated Minister of Culture Miri Regev. "Let that sink in. Nobody said that even about Ben-Gurion, let alone convicted criminals such as Olmert. I hope this puts to rest all the sordid efforts to unseat an elected prime minister through methods that do not involve the ballot box, but given our experience with the political opposition, that may be too much to hope for."
The few Opposition figures who agreed to speak on the matter include Zionist Union alliance head and Hatnua Party leader Tzipi Livni. "It means nothing," she insisted in a telephone interview. "When Bibi can claim victory in the mock-elections held at the Bleich high school in Tel Aviv, then maybe he can claim some legitimacy. That says it all."