Former Supporter of Netanyahu Claims He Made Blackmail Threat

In the latest twist to “Bibi-gate,” the sex-and-politics scandal surrounding the popular Likud politician Benjamin Netanyahu, one of his former supporters has claimed he fabricated the episode of political blackmail himself.

The claim set off a volley of charges and countercharges Wednesday between rival camps in Likud supporting Netanyahu and his chief competitor in the upcoming primary for the party leadership, former Foreign Minister David Levy.

The scandal broke last month when Bibi, as the American-educated Knesset member is known, went public with an accusation that he was being blackmailed by rivals in the Likud bloc.

Netanyahu claimed that an anonymous person had phoned his wife and threatened that a secret videotape showing him in compromising circumstances with another woman would be published if he did not withdraw his candidacy for the leadership of Likud, the country’s largest opposition party.

Netanyahu startled and amused the Israeli public by admitting on public television that he had been having an extramarital affair with another woman but had ended it some months ago.

At the time, he indirectly pointed the finger at Levy for threatening him with blackmail and said he planned to sue aides to the former foreign minister over the affair.

The latest development came this week as a certain Baruch Mahlouf, 27, a Likud member formerly of Netanyahu’s camp, told police he invented the whole story of the threat to expose Netanyahu’s extramarital affair in order “to impress Netanyahu himself.”

Levy supporters applauded the news and blamed Netanyahu for wrongly accusing them of the blackmail.

But Netanyahu’s backers claimed Mahlouf was associated only briefly with Netanyahu and was now employed by the city of Lod, whose mayor is Maxim Levy, David Levy’s brother.

According to sources in Netanyahu’s camp, Mahlouf has served as David Levy’s driver and has helped organize political rallies for the former foreign minister.

Netanyahu’s attorney, Dan Avi-Yitzhak, insisted Wednesday that he was in possession of evidence of a campaign to blackmail his client.

“It was not an isolated phone call,” he said, “but a sophisticated operation that ran and financed a smear campaign against Netanyahu.”

In the meantime, another political scandal broke out with Likud Knesset Member Michael Eitan claiming that the computer firm engaged by the Likud in the last election was supplying secret data to the Labor Party. Labor party officials rejected the charges.