Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman and acting chief of staff Ziv Agmon made extreme racist statements against Likud lawmakers and others, and called his boss “finished” after Hamas’s onslaught of October 7, 2023.

Following the report, multiple Hebrew media outlets reported that Netanyahu was expected to fire Agmon, who in a response issued hours later stated that “a real injustice” was done to him.

“I do not intend to respond to all the slanderous remarks attributed to me this evening,” said Agmon in a statement, “but there is one thing I could not let pass in silence. Anyone who knows me and my work with the prime minister knows very well that the words allegedly attributed to me regarding Mizrahi communities are completely foreign to me—not least because a large part of my own family comes from Mizrahi and Moroccan backgrounds.”

According to Channel 12, Agmon criticized Netanyahu as “old” and declared him “finished” after October 7.

“The question is whether we’ll still have a state. He must go home. I wonder who will be responsible for negotiating for the hostages, [Likud ministers Shlomo] Karhi or [David] Amsalem? The country is finished,” the network quoted him as saying.

“It’s over for the Likud,” he also reportedly said, adding that “the Egyptians need to release the recording of the conversation with Bibi” — a reference to claims that Egypt warned Netanyahu ahead of October 7. “And then he’s finished.”

Recalling that Netanyahu “fainted in the synagogue on Yom Kippur [in 2022], Agmon reportedly mused, “Why isn’t [opposition leader Yair] Lapid playing on the fact that he’s old and we need a leader for the long-term?”

All of the quotes broadcast by the network were said to have come from private conversations. No recordings were shared.

Agmon also allegedly used extreme rhetoric when referring to Likud lawmakers of Middle Eastern, or Sephardic, descent, calling MK Nissim Vaturi a “baboon” and MK Eli Revivo a “retarded Moroccan,”........

© The Times of Israel