Channel 12 journalist Amit Segal revealed on Tuesday that the Axios report claiming that President Donald Trump cursed Netanyahu in a late-night phone call on Monday about the situation in Lebanon is inaccurate.

“According to a very senior official on the PM’s team on the late-night Netanyahu-Trump call, the Axios report is inaccurate,” Segal wrote. “Trump did not say anything personal to Netanyahu — nothing about keeping him out of prison or that Netanyahu is hated worldwide.”

“​Instead, the tense call focused on conflicting social media posts: Trump complained that Netanyahu implied that the war was continuing at full intensity, while Netanyahu complained that Trump implied a total ceasefire.”

“​Trump did note that defending Israel’s position to the world is difficult and leads to hostility toward Israel. Ultimately, the call ended with an understanding: Israel will hold off on striking Beirut as long as it is not attacked within its own borders.”

It should be noted that the author of the Axios report, former Haaretz journalist Barak Ravid, is a leftist who has long espoused anti-Netanyahu and far-left views and often publishes doomsday reports about rifts between Trump and Netanyahu or incendiary reports about right-wing politicians.

Channel 14 journalist Yaakov Bardugo responded to Ravid’s report by saying: “I don’t give credence to Barak Ravid’s imaginary and self-serving friends – I despise them. I prefer a discourse between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump over a situation where there’s no discourse at all, and above all, I prefer our ‘toughest day’ with Trump over our best day with the Biden-Kamala Harris administration, as Barak Ravid wanted.”

Ravid regularly incites against Israeli right-wing politicians in his English-language Axios articles but changes the text for his Hebrew-language Walla articles, knowing he can’t get away with such brazen lies in Hebrew.

Several years ago, Israeli journalist Avishai Grinzaig slammed Ravid for inciting English speakers against Israeli politicians.

Ravid wrote an article about the Biden administration’s “fears” that Betzalel Smotrich would be appointed as defense minister. In his Axios report, he dubbed the merged party of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Betzalel Smotrich as the “Jewish supremacist Religious Zionism list,” but left out that term in Walla‘s Hebrew version.

“The journalist Barak Ravid wrote an article in Hebrew (for Walla) and in English (for Axios) on the concerns of the Biden administration about the expected appointment of Smotrich [as defense minister],” Grinzaig wrote. “Smotrich’s title is the ‘leader of the Jewish supremacist party’ only in English, and his party is the ‘Jewish supremacist party’ only in English. Why?”

Grinzaig added: “Another change: in the English version, Ravid wrote that ‘it’s unclear whether the Biden administration will work with Smotrich, who has a track record of making racist, anti-Arab and anti-LGBTQ comments.’”

“In the Hebrew version, he wrote: ‘due to his racist statements and his extreme positions on the Palestinian issue.’”

“In English, Smotrich is the man of ‘Jewish supremacy,’ and in Hebrew, he isn’t? In English, the Biden administration is worried about his anti-Arab and anti-LGBT statements, but in Hebrew, they’re not?”

“I don’t understand this concept. If you didn’t find it correct to write these descriptions in Hebrew, why write them in English?” Grinzaig asked.

Smotrich slammed Ravid’s description of his party, saying, “Out of its hatred for the right, the Israeli left is willing to irresponsibly harm the State of Israel, slandering it to the world with lies and damaging its foreign relations. From the perspective of Ravid and his friends, if they are not in power, they will do everything to cause the State of Israel to fail and then blame it on the right. Only those who don’t truly love the State can act this way.”

In 2022, Ravid tweeted a photo of Netanyahu and Naom chairman Avi Moaz, accompanied by a caption (in English) calling Noam a “radical religious party that focuses on opposing LGBTQ and women’s rights.”

He was widely slammed by right-wing politicians and journalists for his post. Chareidi journalist Aryeh Erlich responded by stating: “The idea of slandering Israel in a foreign language is despicable in my eyes. Avi Maoz’s positions on the LGBTQ sector are no different from those of Mansour Abbas and the Ra’am party, who were senior partners in the departing government. One could disagree with those positions, but they are legitimate in Israel’s political sphere.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)