The White House washes Netanyahu’s dirt

Over the years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has earned a reputation among White House guesthouse employees for bringing a special shipment with him on his trips to Washington: bags full of dirty clothes, according to US officials familiar with the matter. These garments are laundered free of charge by the White House employees, since this service is available to all foreign leaders who hardly benefit from it, given their short stays. However, “the Netanyahu family is the only one bringing bags of dirty clothes for us to clean,” according to a US official, noting that “after several trips, it became clear that it was intentional.” For their part, Israeli officials denied Netanyahu’s excessive exploitation of laundry services provided by his American hosts and described these accusations as “absurd”, but admitted that the prime minister was the target of similar accusations in the past.

In 2016, Netanyahu filed a lawsuit against his private office and Israel’s Attorney General, in an attempt to prevent the publication of invoices for his laundry services, under the country’s Freedom of Information Act. At the time, the judge supported the prime minister’s position and the details of the laundry bills were kept secret. The relatively minor indictment adds to a long list of corruption allegations that have threatened the Israeli leader and sparked a wave of protests in the country this month. Last November, Netanyahu was charged with an indictment that included receiving gifts from wealthy friends, as well as other allegations that he sought to obtain organizational benefits for media moguls in exchange for providing positive coverage, in addition to being accused of accepting gifts valued at $ 200,000 from entrepreneurs.
At this time, a statement issued by the Israeli embassy in Washington claimed that these charges are an attempt to cover up the success of the normalization agreements that Israel signed with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates at the White House in the middle of this month, describing the accusations as “absurd and without foundation”. “It aims to downplay Prime Minister Netanyahu’s monumental achievement at the historic peace summit that was held on Tuesday (September 15) mediated by President Trump in the White House.” He also noted that laundry needs were relatively modest during his recent trip to Washington: “The family had shirts, the prime minister’s suit and his wife’s dress, and the services of the White House were used to iron them. As for Netanyahu and his wife’s pajamas, which were used during the 12-hour flight of the plane from Tel Aviv to Washington, they were washed, ”according to the embassy statement. In the same context, another US official said that, unlike in previous times, the family did not accompany the special bags of clothes this time to obtain cleaning services. However, the controversy over these practices is due to the records revealed in 2018 of the former Netanyahu adviser, Nir Hefetz, in the criminal trial against the latter, who said that Netanyahu’s wife, Sarah, “is carrying out all kinds of maneuvers to hide all kinds of expenses ”, and added:” On each trip, the family takes at least four or five bags full of dirty clothes … I tell them that the journalists asked me about it and I checked the bills. “
On the other hand, the founder of the Movement for Quality Government, Eliezer Shraga, said: “What is different in this regard is that Netanyahu is now accused of using other government resources for his dirty clothes,” noting that his organization has verified the laundry allegations after media leaks were reported. That Netanyahu and his wife carried 11 suitcases on a day trip to Portugal in December. Netanyahu’s office denied claims that the bags were full of dirty clothes, saying they contained items that he would need to work in his office.
(John Hudson – Washington Post)

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