Is This The Real Reason Trump Declined to Back Netanyahu?

The publisher of the daily Israel Hayom told the police that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife repeatedly contacted her about their coverage in the paper, Channel 12 News reported Thursday.

Miriam Adelson said that Sara Netanyahu “once told me that if Iran gets nuclear weapons and Israel is wiped out, I’ll be to blame, because I’m not defending Bibi,” referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.

Initially, Adelson said, Sara Netanyahu treated her and her husband, Sheldon Adelson, nicely. But as time passed, “there were only complaints.”

For instance, “Her picture was too small. They didn’t write something [when] she visited some children with cancer or something. Complaints all the time. All the time. And it started to be unpleasant. We would listen; we’d hear it and not respond.”

[...] Eventually, Adelson said, she and her husband got fed up and stopped visiting the Netanyahus. “From the honored prime minister I would get screaming phone calls in the United States,” she said. And when she heard screaming, “I’d simply put the phone down” and pick it up again only when the screaming stopped, “which could be five or 10 minutes.”

Multi-billionaire Sheldon Adelson, once Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s key supporter, and his wife Miriam testified to police that Sara Netanyahu was “crazy” and that “she decides everything,” including key appointments and even some political matters, in the Netanyahu household, Channel 13 reported Sunday.

[...] Dr. Miriam Adelson told police that Sara chooses the people who work with the prime minister. “She chooses the workers, the people around him, the staff, his secretary. Then she knows everything that goes on,” she said. When asked if Sara Netanyahu influences governmental appointments, Adelson said, “Those too, I believe.”

[...] In her testimony, Miriam Adelson described an outburst by the first lady, saying, “At dinner at our house she screamed terribly loudly, to the point where Bibi told her they were leaving.”

[...] Referring to Sara Netanyahu’s hatred of Yamina leaders Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked, Dr. Adelson testified, “It bothers me that we have a prime minister whose wife decides everything. I was livid after the last election when he [the prime minister] didn’t form a coalition with Bennett because she hates him.”

"The fate of the Jewish people is decided because the lady hates Bennett and Shaked, so he doesn't form a coalition with the fitting right-wingers," Adelson said.

U.S. business magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam suffered verbal abuse from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's wife, Sara, despite their efforts to accommodate the premier's request to give him favorable coverage in the Israel Hayom daily that Adelson owns, Channel 13 News reported Wednesday.

Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan, a key witness in Case 1000 – which focuses on suspicions that the premier received lavish gifts from tycoon friends – told police in his tesimony that he attended a dinner at the Prime Minister's Residence in which Netanyahu's wife lashed at the Adelsons.

"I was present at a dinner with Sheldon and Miri Adelson at the Netanyahus on Balfour [street]," Channel 13 quoted Milchan as saying in his tesimony. "Sara started screaming at Miri [Miriam Adelson]: 'You are spilling my blood, you are all spilling my blood.... You with your 'Bibi-paper' don't help at all, only ruin.'"

Milchan then said that Sheldon Adelson responded to the verbal assault by saying: "Calm down, we're doing the best we can. I lose 40-50 million dollars a year [on Israel Hayom] … We regularly write in your favor and you keep shouting at me."

According to Milchan's testimony, as cited by Channel 13, Sara Netanyahu continued screaming and then spoke badly of another one of her associates: U.S. businessman Ron Lauder, the former owner of Channel 10 News. "Ronald [Lauder] is not a friend, he is a traitor and evil and doing nothing in the channel for us."