← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
'The Bibi Files' Follows the Investigation into Netanyahu's Alleged Corruption
00:25:06
The new documentary film "The Bibi Files" tells the story of the corruption investigation into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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Alison Stewart
This is all of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful you're here on today's show. Jesse Eisenberg his new film is titled A Real Pain. He doesn't just star in it, he also wrote it and he directed it as well. He joins me in studio to discuss. Musician Saba is here to talk about his collaboration with the producer. No idea. D We'll listen to some music from his latest album and we'll speak with two experts about how to start talking about end of life issues with your loved ones, even if they don't necessarily want to talk about it. That's the plan. So let's get this started with the BB Files. It has been reported that Israel and Hamas have reached a proposed ceasefire, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that that Hamas is reneging on some elements of the agreement. Netanyahu is a polarizing figure. To some, he is protecting victims of the hamas attacks on October 7th. To others, he's a war criminal. One thing he is well Benjamin Netanyahu is the first Israeli prime minister to appear in court to testify as a defendant in an alleged corruption investigation. A new documentary traces the corruption allegations against Netanyahu and his role in the war. The film is called the Bibi Files. It includes leaked footage from private police with Netanyahu, not Netanyahu, his wife, associates and witnesses. Let's listen to a clip from the film. Ami Aylan, former commander in chief of Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency, and Gili Schwartz, an Israeli citizen who witnessed the October 7 attacks on her kibbutz. And after the catastrophe of 7 October.
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Alexis Bloom
The wall became another instrument to stay in power. He survived in a state of he survives in a state of instability. He survives when we fight each other. He survives when our enemies fight each other.
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Alison Stewart
A forever war is beneficial to Netanyahu. This makes people feel like they are always in danger, like they always need him. There is always some huge threat. I think that that helps him remain prime minister. The BB Files is shortlisted for best documentary at this year's Academy Awards. I have in studio now, director Alexis Bloom. Nice to meet you.
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Alexis Bloom
Nice to meet you, too.
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Alison Stewart
All right. At the start of the film, you focus on Netanyahu's questioning as part of this corruption case. Basically gifts for favors and bribes. He has denied it. And these are tapes of Prime Minister Netanyahu being interrogated. And they were sent to your ep, Alex Gibney, on the messaging platform Signal. What did the messages say when they showed up?
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Alexis Bloom
Well, we have to protect the identity of our source and we're very careful about that. So I'm not going to go into the details of how the leak came to Alex. But needless to say, one day he was messaged on Signal by somebody he didn't know. And the message said, essentially, I have some very interesting material. It concerns Israel. Do you want to speak to me? And Alex gets a lot of messages. He has a very long career being an investigative journalist. And many of them are not legitimate. You know, people sort of contact him about untold number of things. Some of them are completely kooky. But to his credit, he sort of tugged on this thread and then ensued a back and forth whereby finally Alex saw a portion of the tapes and established that they were indeed police interrogations with Netanyahu, with his wife, with his son Yair, who's also very important politically and with his inner circle.
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Alison Stewart
Alex reached out to you as you were combing through these interviews, how did you begin to see the narrative for the documentary out of what you found in the leaked interviews?
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Alexis Bloom
Well, it took a while. It's a process. We had to understand the cases first and identify which of the tapes related to which case. So it's actually a very long and methodical process whereby you have to separate the people, separate the cases, get the material translated. I don't speak Hebrew. Alex doesn't speak Hebrew. We got a number of great Hebrew speaking collaborators on board and we looked for the human behavior, really. We looked for times when Benjamin Netanyahu got irritable, got excited, got angry, ditto with his wife, who is central to his political decision making, and his son. And then we started constructing the content, you know, the forensic connect the dots of each case. And I have to say, I had fantastic editors. Andy Grieve was invaluable, Halil Efrat as well. I mean, it was testing, it was, you know, poison. Chalice is too strong a term. But the material was both unbelievably exciting and fascinating and also really challenging.
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Alison Stewart
For the record, did you seek out an interview with Netanyahu or any of his allies?
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Alexis Bloom
Yes, of course. I approached Netanyahu three times to be interviewed, but he declined. He did an interview with Dr. Phil instead.
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Alison Stewart
He has tried to keep this film from being seen. How is he trying? Through the courts?
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Alexis Bloom
Yes. Before we showed a work in progress at the Toronto Film Festival, Netanyahu went to court in Israel in a kind of urgent, last ditch attempt to block the film being shown. The Israeli courts turned it down. And frankly, I don't know how he thought he had jurisdiction over a Canadian court. You know, the screening was in Toronto.
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Alison Stewart
What did that tell you?
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Alexis Bloom
It told me he's incredibly thin skinned and he was desperate to stop the film being seen. He cares enormously about his public image and that even though logically he must have known that the chances were very slim he'd be able to block the film, that emotionally he couldn't help from doing this.
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Alison Stewart
We're speaking about the BB Files, a documentary about the corruption investigation into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It features leaked footage from interviews with Israeli authorities. The film is shortlisted for best documentary at this Academy Awards. This year's Academy Awards is also current avail, currently available for rent on Jolt Film. All right, along with the leaked footage. We'll talk about that in a minute. You feature fairly high profile figures, interviews with them, like a former Israeli prime minister, a former head of security, Netanyahu's former aide, the head of communications. How eager were they to talk to you about this case?
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Alexis Bloom
Well, it depends on the person. The former head of the Shin Bet, who is the Israeli, that's the Israeli equivalent of the FBI, was very ready to speak to us. Which tells you something that somebody so involved in Israel's security would be willing to speak about. A prime minister so quickly tells you how dangerous Amiyalon thinks he is for the country's security. So he was pretty ready to talk. A Prime minister. Former Prime Minister Olmert was ready to talk, too. And notably, I mean, fascinating. This prime minister had actually been sent to jail for corruption. So he knows a thing or two about the cases that Netanyahu's involved in and the system that he faces. You know, some were a little harder. You know, the ordinary person, say the assistant who had to provide Netanyahu and Sarah and Yair, you know, with all of these favors, pink champagne, cigars to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars. She's unprotected, basically. She's a civilian living in Israel. And it takes some guts to speak out against a prime minister who is famous for retaliating. So we had to ensure her that she could trust us. And we had a long back and forth. I went to Israel four times. I developed a relationship with the people in the film, and I wanted them to know that they were, you know, in good hands in this film.
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Alison Stewart
There was one interviewee who was quite interesting, and he was a friend of Benjamin Netanyahu from way back. And he asks you, can I speak about the prime minister Netanyahu? And then, can I speak to you about Bibi?
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Alexis Bloom
Yeah. Uzi Bella. He was wonderful. He's a childhood friend of Bibi's, and he has a long history with him. And you can see in his mind, there are two people here. There's the private Bibi, who he has known all his life, and there is this construction of the person. Bibi has become this Mr. Security politics figurehead of Israeli politics. And those two people are incompatible. In Uzi Bella's experience, the one man has become something else.
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Alison Stewart
Well, it's interesting because you talk about Bibi Netanyahu's history, about his brother being killed on the raid in Entebbe, how he became the version of security for Israel. When you went back and you looked at the arc of who he was to when he first became prime minister, when did you start to see that maybe he mattered more than the state of Israel?
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Alexis Bloom
Well, we could see it when we started the film. That was apparent to us. It was before October 7th. But at that time, there were massive protests in Israel. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people were taking to the streets every single weekend, every Saturday night, for, I think it was 37 weeks. And he was saying, they're not important. They've misunderstood what I want to do. At the time, he was proposing to completely overhaul the judicial system, to basically take away power from the Supreme Court, to change the way the judges were elected. And the whole of the country, pretty much, with the exception of a small hardcore base of his loyalists, was saying, don't do it. This is dangerous. Don't do it. And he basically said, I don't care. And this happened later in his life.
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Alison Stewart
You think that this sort of turning.
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Alexis Bloom
Well, I think that it's all connected to his indictment. The point at which he is indicted for corruption is the point at which he becomes very vulnerable. People think, oh, well, you know, he's a. He's a strong man. He's got this great baritone. He's Mr. Security. It's the opposite. He's a wounded animal. He is weak and he is paranoid. And I think that when he was indicted for corruption, he realized that he could go to jail. And it was at that point that his own political survival became more important than anything else. So his indictment, I think, is everything. He should have resigned at that point and said, I'll fight these charges. I'm going to do it in court, I'm going to do it the right way, but I'm not going to be prime minister at the same time. That's what Ehud Olmet, a predecessor, had done, and that's what every politician in Israel has done. And, you know, if he had beaten the charges, there would have been no disgrace and he could have, you know, entered politics again. But instead he had his back against the wall and he decided to fight in a different way, sort of in a. In a dirtier way. I'm going to make a coalition with these extreme right wingers. I'm going to overhaul the judicial system. I'm going to change everything and I'm going to battle, you know, what he called then the deep State. Everyone's against me.
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Alison Stewart
We're speaking about the BB Files, a documentary about the corruption investigation into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I'm speaking with its director, Alexis Bloom. We see in the film Sarah Netanyahu, and we see her. Wow. What wow is all I'm gonna say. She is his fiercest offender. She is coming at the investigators. They can't even ask a question. When you think about her involvement in the story, what is her involvement?
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Alexis Bloom
Well, we had to. We thought a lot about this. She's important politically, so she has a legitimate place in the story for those reasons. She's also entertaining, as you point out. She is, you know, by many accounts an alcoholic. Certainly if you were to reconcile the invoices of all the champagne that she got, one might be led to that conclusion, because sometimes it was, you know, 20 bottles of pink champagne from Friday to Sunday. I don't about you, Alison, but I can't drink 20 bottles of champagne in a weekend. So she's entertaining, she's outspoken, she is not scared of anything and she's sort of gold filmically. But she's really important politically because she has his ear and she is the person that he entrusts with, choosing loyalists. You know, is this person loyal to us? You know, are they not. Can they be brought into the government? She knows his schedule, she is front and center of a lot of his meetings and she's there. They're sort of a power couple.
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Alison Stewart
So is he scared of her?
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Alexis Bloom
I don't know. I haven't seen them together. But 95% of the people I spoke to who've been in a room with them say, yes, that she. It's not like, scared of. But he is dominant by her, and he fears her, her anger and her outburst. So, you know, off the record, somebody told me, you know, a story about, you know, Netanyahu calling him at night and putting him on speakerphone, and he could hear Sarah in the background, you know, ranting and raving. And this person had to assure Benjamin, you know, on this telephone call that what had happened that day was totally his fault. And I'm so sorry, Prime Minister. You know, I take full responsibility. And it was clear that all of this back and forth was for the benefit of Sarah, who was listening in. So I would say that that's a rather unusual arrangement.
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Alison Stewart
In the film, you describe how Netanyahu is alleged to have used influence to control an online news platform with a very young following. It's. It's called Walla. How exactly is Netanyahu alleged to have gained influence within this news organization?
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Alexis Bloom
Well, he's not on a cell phone, and he doesn't contact people directly. He's a paper guy. So everything he reads and communicates is by paper. This case was said to be done through Nia Heifetz, who you will see in the film, the head of communications, and by Yahya Netanyahu, his son, who is a, you know, rabid social media user, and all over this website, Walla. So using, and in consultation with his head of communications and his son, the family took over this website for the purposes of positive coverage. That's the allegation, and there's a lot of evidence to substantiate it, namely text messages between Nia Hefetz and others and the CEO of Walla and the editor. So there's, there's, there's, you know, the guy who is running Walla basically gave his cell phone to the police. So they've got a lot of communications. So you. It's. But it's not between Benjamin, you know, and a street beat reporter. It's between his people and the people who edit and run Walla. But there's a lot of lines going back. Coincidentally or not coincidentally, the owner of Walla at the time got a piece of paper, well, a series of pieces of paper that allowed him to get a benefit, a regulatory benefit, to the tune of $400 million while this was all going on. So I say coincidentally because it seems somewhat suspicious that this owner of Walla, who was, you know, badly in debt, you know, really, really in debt, suddenly gets a reprieve from this regulatory benefit paper that Netanyahu signed just as the family is taking over the website.
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Alison Stewart
It's so interesting. The family has. They care quite a bit about the media and how they are portrayed in the media. First of all, what role does the media have in Israel? Does it make a difference whether Benjamin Netanyahu or Sarah Netanyahu are portrayed in a favorable light? There's a good looking picture of them. Does it matter?
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Alexis Bloom
It matters enormously to them. You know, they are media obsessed. That is something nobody will disagree on. But it's not that unusual. I mean, look at our own incoming president. He is very keen on the media. And, you know, many people say it's the fourth estate. So how much does it matter? I don't know. That's beyond my expertise. But clearly, clearly the media does matter. You know, it shapes popular opinion, but it matters disproportionately to people who are thin skinned, who are vain, who are obsessed with their legacy. And it's a terrible rabbit hole to fall down because it means that you focus on every tweet, every story, every picture. And Sarah Netanyahu was famous for freaking out about photographs that were from the wrong angle or where her hair didn't look good. And everybody being, you know, hauled onto the line to explain why this photograph is not good. So they really get tangled up in the minutiae. And that matters when the country is at war or the country is negotiating with Saudi Arabia. I mean, Israel, you know, is a contested, difficult place to run. And it would probably be better if the people running it weren't spending hours of every day looking at the photographs that are, you know, put out into the world of themselves.
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Alison Stewart
Netanyahu has allied himself with far right Israeli politics to maintain his power. Based on his history and what you've seen in the videos, does he believe the far right ideology or just an end to the means?
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Alexis Bloom
Well, he wouldn't have his photograph taken with Ben gvir, you know, three years ago, he wouldn't have his photo taken with him. He considered him too loony, right wing. So the fact that this man is now head of security tells you something.
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Alison Stewart
Does that mean it's necessary for him?
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Alexis Bloom
Yeah, it's, it's, it's absolutely necessary for him. There is no debate about that. These are the only people who will share power with him. When he was indicted, the center and the left abandoned him. They said, we're not sharing power with you in a coalition. Israel is a coalition system. You need to go to trial and face these charges. And the only people who didn't care were the lunatic right wing extremists. And they said, said, you know what, this might be our opportunity, Prime Minister, we'll share power with you. And the phrase that is used in the film is they saw him as the Messiah's donkey.
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Alison Stewart
We are talking about the film the BB Files, a documentary about the corruption investigation into Israeli Prime Minister. It has been shortlisted for best documentary at this year's Academy Awards. It's also currently available to rent on Jolt Film. I'm speaking with its director, Alexis Bloom. It was announced yesterday that a temporary ceasefire agreement has been reached between Israel and Hamas. What's your take?
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Alexis Bloom
I mean, I'm just praying that this is going to hold. It's such a tragic situation. I'm just praying that it holds. You know, both for the Palestinians, 46,000 of whom have been killed by all estimates. I mean, that is the estimate that's current. And for the hostages, you know, they're almost around 100 hostages who are still in captivity. So in terms of the ceasefire in Gaza, which is desperately needed, and in terms of returning the hostages, this deal has to happen. And would you believe it? Today, Netanyahu seems to be backtracking. And I just can't believe it. It's just the worst thing in the world. And his equivocation is not that surprising. That's the terrible thing, because as I said before, he is weak, he is paranoid, he is in a tricky situation. He's got this fragile coalition with the extreme right and they don't want a deal. So even though everyone else is putting pressure on him, the families of the hostages, the international community, Biden and Hamas is agreeing to it, by the way, to a deal that was almost identical eight months ago. Netanyahu is now shuffling his feet.
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Alison Stewart
What lessons can the US learn from the Benjamin Netanyahu story?
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Alexis Bloom
That's a tough one. I mean, tread cautiously, I'd say, you know, it's a terrible arc, the Netanyahu arc, and he is a Prime Minister who surrounds himself with loyalists. And I, you know, I don't want it to be an American story. It's an Israeli story and it's a Palestinian story. But, you know, when you look at the criteria for Trump's appointments, loyalty seems to be very high on the list of priorities. And that doesn't lead you to a good place. Integrity matters.
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Alison Stewart
The film is called the BB Files. It's currently available for rent on Jolt Film. I have been speaking with its Director Alexis Bloom. Thanks for being with us.
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Alexis Bloom
Thanks so much for having me here.
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Alison Stewart
There's more, all of it on the way.
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