Sara Netanyahu Pledges Half Of Bottle Refunds To Help Poor MKs

Observers note that several MKs do seem to have a glaring need for help in certain areas.

Jerusalem, May 20 – The wife of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu took steps to shore up her public image today, announcing that fifty percent of the proceeds from her redemption of used beverage bottles would be allocated to aid indigent Members of Knesset.

Israeli media and pundits have long treated Sara Netanyahu with hostility, especially in the run-up to elections. As the March 17 voting approached, the media and Netanyahu’s political opponents referred more and more frequently to “Bottlegate,” in which the premier’s wife was accused of collecting the drink bottles used at state-sponsored functions and redeeming them, then pocketing the deposit money, allegedly to the tune of thousands of shekels. Each beverage bottle smaller than 1.5 liters is redeemable for 30 agorot (3 tenths of a shekel, equivalent to about 8 US cents). The attorney General eventually decided the issue was unworthy of his attention.

Hostility, however, remained, even after Netanyahu’s surprisingly strong victory in the elections rendered the scandal politically irrelevant in the immediate term. Mrs. Netanyahu has successfully sued several detractors for libel, but the default treatment of her in the press remains negative. To combat that development, she decided to use the funds garnered through the bottle redemption to help soften her image.

“Sara decided it was time to actually do something positive publicly, to counter the trend of the left-leaning media seizing on her everyday activities as evidence of corruption or spitefulness,” said Pika Don, a longtime fried of the couple. “She thought it best to offer help to poor MKs, who perhaps resent her wealth and position, and maybe neutralize some of the venom behind the media coverage.” Don declined to specify which legislators Mrs. Netanyahu has in mind, but observers note that several MKs do seem to have a glaring need for help in certain areas.

“A number of Yisrael Beiteinu and Likud figures are going to need robust legal defense funds,” said analyst Natal Shohad. “While I rather doubt even the most generous estimates of Mrs. Netanyahu’s bottle deposit refunds will cover a noticeable fraction of that, it would be an important symbolic gesture of support for such a needy demographic.”

“Alternatively, the money could be donated to help train the Arab MKs how to use their positions to actually better their constituency’s economic, educational, and health situation instead of focusing on undermining Israel as the world’s only Jewish state,” she added. “Using the money from the bottles would also serve as an example for that constituency of responding constructively to adversity, rather than merely blaming the society and government for one’s problems.”

“Then there’s the Opposition in general, which is so ideologically impoverished that it is forced to recycle discredited political ideas from the 1990’s,” continued Shohad. “An infusion of cash, however small, might help one or two of them, at least, buy a book with some actual, realistic ideas.”

Shohad conceded, however, that since most retail establishments only provide the refunded deposits in the form of store credit, not all the possibilities she outlined were likely.