Fresh Netanyahu Footage Backfires; Israel’s Credibility Crisis Gets Worse

Israel is STILL releasing new Netanyahu footage to try and prove normality, but every fresh clip just makes their credibility crisis worse. Right, so fresh footage of Benjamin Netanyahu has been put out again, this time with US envoy to Israel Mike Huckabee laughing off those death rumours and then another clip went out, this time with Netanyahu sat in a command-room style clip beside his war minister Israel Katz and his Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, but again, we’re left pondering over the legitimacy of these videos too, not only because of the inconsistencies some people are claiming they can see them, but just the simple fact Israel are still putting these clips out, their desperation to prove Netanyahu, just getting more and more incredulous each and every day. The thing Israel needed those videos to do is the one thing they are no longer doing. They are not closing the rumours down. They are not restoring confidence. They are generating yet another round, yet another day of freeze-framing, of side-by-side comparisons, of finger counting, lighting arguments, metadata arguments, and the kind of forensic gawping you get when a government has trained half the internet to think every official image they are now putting out, may be one more stitched-up bit of stagecraft. So let’s start with the Mike Huckabee clip here. Have a look at this. How happy they are, how jovial, thank goodness I’m not on your kill list there Huckabee giggles, though no names are conspicuously mentioned, perhaps notable since Iran’s Head of Security Ali Larijani was assassinated yesterday. Israel Katz certainly took to gloating about that the moment Israel got word. Huckabee says Donald Trump sent him to make sure Netanyahu was alright, Netanyahu answers “Yes, Mike, yes, I’m alive,” and the whole thing ends up packaged as a little wink to the audience, a bit of banter, a bit of “look at these silly rumours.”