Overview
- Channel 14 host Yinon Magal called Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot a “monkey” on his program The Patriots, a line that was broadcast and widely reported on Sunday.
- Eisenkot and his Yashar party issued a formal condemnation at an election rally, calling the language insulting and linking it to past ethnic slurs directed at Mizrahi Israelis.
- Magal released a video defending the remark as a criminal‑underworld metaphor for a controlled public front and said opponents had stripped his words of context to create a controversy.
- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly called the comment inappropriate while also urging condemnations of insults aimed at his voters, and other political figures including Yoram Cohen and Avigdor Lieberman criticized Magal.
- The episode, coming days before voting, underlines the role of partisan media in the campaign, revives Mizrahi–Ashkenazi tensions going back decades, and could shift turnout or messaging in peripheral communities.