The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is fighting back against a claim that Netanyahu bashed former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin during Rabin’s funeral in 1995.
The former U.S. ambassador to Israel under President Bill Clinton, Martin Indyk, said on PBS Wednesday that while he was at Rabin’s funeral two decades ago, Netanyahu said he would have beaten Rabin had he not been assassinated.
“Netanyahu sat next to me when I was ambassador in Israel at the time of Rabin’s funeral. I remember Netanyahu saying to me: ‘Look, look at this. He’s a hero now, but if he had not been assassinated, I would have beaten him in the elections, and then he would have gone into history as a failed politician,” Indyk told the public broadcasting station.
The conversation w Bibi took place on Nov 5/95 when we sat together at the Knesset ceremony to receive Rabin’s coffin to lie in state.
— Martin Indyk (@Martin_Indyk) January 6, 2016
The prime minister’s office immediately responded, saying the conversation never happened.
“After the first false version of events was disproved, Indyk has come up with a second version, which is also false,” the prime minister’s spokesman Boaz Stembler said in a statement. “Prime Minister Netanyahu did not say the things which Indyk attributes to him.”
Other sources have noted that Netanyahu and Indyk did not sit near each other at the funeral 21 years ago.
