Likud anger at Knesset speaker ahead of Netanyahu immunity hearing next week

Various outriders of the prime minister went further on social media by accusing the staunch Likudnik and former Prisoner of Zion in the Soviet Gulag of having “sold out to the left.”

Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s son, tweeted a headline accusing Mr Edelstein of an “ugly putsch” and that “his wife’s father is an oligarch wanted for murder in Russia.”

He later deleted the tweet.

Mr Netanyahu had requested parliamentary immunity from prosecution for bribery and fraud earlier this month in the hope of delaying the legal proceedings against him and preventing them from overshadowing the election campaign.

Since the Knesset was dissolved before a government was formed, the Knesset Committee — the body that debates immunity requests — had not been empaneled.

But the opposition has pushed back and united behind a demand to immediately empanel a new committee to hold the hearings.

Speaker Edelstein publicly opposed the opposition’s move, but the Knesset’s legal counsel ruled that he could not prevent them from going ahead and since 25 MKs can demand to convene a special session, the speaker relented.

Mr Netanyahu and his supporters had little sympathy for his legal reasonings however and demanded he continue to oppose the opposition’s demands, even though in such a case they would have moved to replace Mr Edelstein with a new speaker.

Now they are threatening to block his campaign to be Likud’s candidate for president when Reuven Rivlin’s term ends next year.