Protesting outside Avichai Mandelblit's home
Protesting outside Avichai Mandelblit's homeTomer Neuberg/Flash90

Hundreds of Israelis on Saturday night protested Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit's conduct during the interrogations of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

The protest was held outside Mandelblit's Petah Tikva home, with 150 Likud supporters protesting the protest and waving Israeli and Likud flags.

Among the Likud protesters supporting Netanyahu were Coalition Chairman David Bitan (Likud) and MK Nava Boker (Likud).

"We will not leave these protesters alone, because these protests are not democratic," Bitan said. "They are putting pressure on the Attorney General, who has not yet received any information from the police. We need to stop these protests, and we will fight them with another protest: They will not protest only the Attorney General. Only the left could protest the Attorney General."

Likud MK Amir Ohana participated in the demonstration and said, "Despite the fact that some people are already preparing a pole to hang Netanyahu on, I came here tonight, to Petah Tikva, to say this: The Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is the best person to deal with all of the many, many challenges that being Israel's prime minister comes with. And he, like everyone else, is innocent until proven guilty."

"If he is proven guilty, it will be by a just trial in the court. Not by Facebook posts, not by Twitter tweets, and not in studios."

In June, Mandelblit said citizens angry at how he is handling the Netanyahu investigations have the right to demonstrate outside his home.

The suspicions against the Prime Minister stem from two ongoing investigations, dubbed the “1000” and “2000” cases. The investigation into the so-called “1000 scandal” began in December of 2016, and centers around claims the Prime Minister improperly received gifts from a number of wealthy businessmen.

The “2000 scandal” involves allegations the Prime Minister and Yediot Ahronot publisher Arnon “Nuni” Mozes conspired to soften the paper’s left-leaning anti-Netanyahu line in exchange for passage of legislation barring the free distribution of Israel Hayom, a rival paper that has cut into Yediot’s readership in recent years.

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